Sighs Too Deep for Words

Old Mystic, May 31, 2009
Romans 8:22-27
Acts 2:1-21

Summary

The coming of the Holy Spirit at Pentecost is the realization of the promise of Emmanuel in its fullness: God is with us. It began with the Advent of Jesus Christ, followed by the life, death and Resurrection of the Lord, and came to full circle with the bestowing of God’s Spirit upon all believers. God is with us through the Holy Spirit that is in us, who is our Helper, the bearer of hope, the source of our strength, and the means of our empowerment.

Sermon

According to the dictionary, to groan is to voice a deep, inarticulate sound, as of pain, grief, or displeasure. It is then obviously related with suffering of which I don’t think I need to expand or explain because there is too much in the world. Indeed there is a lot groaning taking place. We hear it in the hospital, in the nursing home, at the workplace, at home, and even in church. Henry David Thoreau said, “Even trees do not die without a groan.” As a lover of nature, he had a sense of its plight of and the pain that is involved even in natural processes. As for human beings, William Blake, when reflecting about life, said, “My mother groan'd, my father wept into the dangerous world I leapt, helpless, naked, piping loud, like a fiend hid in a cloud.” And, in terms of the unequal arrangements of societal relations, it was Henry Wadsworth (Longfellow) who came up with a famous saying that described reality as he saw it: “One half of the world must sweat and groan that the other half may dream.”

But groaning acquires a different meaning in the context of the text we read. Paul wrote, “We know that the whole creation has been groaning in labor pains until now, and not only the creation, but we ourselves, who have the first fruits of the Spirit, groan inwardly while we wait for adoption, the redemption of our bodies.” It is still a groan, an utterance that expresses grief or pain, but it is a hopeful groan because we have a foretaste of what God has in store for those who are waiting for the adoption, the time when the fulfillment of the “shalom,” of God’s perfect peace, will be complete. And that foretaste, the first fruits of that future reality is the ineffable presence of God, sealed in us, becoming part of our being and our becoming, and the power of our existence. It is the person of the Holy Spirit.

It is because of such an indescribable blessing that the historical event that took place at Pentecost is so significant. It was a visible experience of the presence of God as He empowered a group of common folk to utter words in tongues they could not speak or comprehend themselves but which brought good news to their hearers. It came like a rushing wind and as tongues of fire but, beyond the miraculous character of the signs, we can hear God saying, “I am with you and in you.” God’s Spirit is part of our being and a “down payment” of the wholeness of our full adoption as God’s children. We still groan as we wait for that moment. Life is still difficult; we have to deal with ups and downs; with failures, and pain. The “explosion” that took place among Jesus’ disciples gathered in the Upper Room on the celebration of the Jewish feast of Pentecost, the ancient feast of the harvest, reminds us that God’s promise of Emmanuel stands and that the Holy Spirit is with us as our Helper.

It is on this name of the Holy Spirit that I want to focus as we reflect on Paul’s writing to the Romans: our Helper. It is because of that help, confirmed by the presence of the Holy Spirit in us, that we have hope. We often say when going through pain and suffering that we cannot see the “light at the end of the tunnel.” But Paul invites us to dwell in the hope that the Spirit Helper offers. To hope means for him to wait for what we don’t see knowing that it is waiting at the end of the road. We may not see the light at the end of the tunnel; perhaps we don’t need to see it, but there is such a light. The Spirit Helper bears hope to us and equips us with spiritual eyes to see what remains obscure for our weak human spirit.

It seems to be quite difficult to live expecting something that we can’t see or touch. The whole idea of blessings coming in an unknown future is not satisfying for everyone. Not all of us have patience to wait. In fact, in this day and age of instant gratification, patience is not an abundant commodity. Paul said, “…if we hope for what we do not see, we wait for it with patience.” When our imagination, ignited by faith and empowered by the Spirit, has a vision, a desired future that we can hope for, patience is required. We need patience to deal with circumstances, with people, and with pain and suffering. It is not by chance that Paul names patience as one of the gifts of the Spirit. It is only by virtue of the presence of the Holy Spirit of God that we can exercise patience.

Patience, however, is not a deterrent to action. It is not a passive attitude of waiting and seeing life go by. In fact, patience is required in any course of action since, as I mentioned before, in life we have ups and downs, victories and defeats, and pain and pleasure. Yet we can’t be static; we need to walk the road and perhaps into the tunnel where we see no light at the end if it. Yet, at every moment, all the time, God is with us.

We may have hope and patience and still be groaning and the sounds or utterances of groaning may vary from person to person. I’m not sure whether we need help to groan or not—some of us may be quite good at groaning with displeasure. Yet, there is a groaning with “sighs to deep for words” which is not ours when our whole being is empowered by the Holy Spirit. And those sighs are a powerful connection with the Living God. As Paul put it: “we do not know how to pray as we ought, but that very Spirit intercedes with sighs too deep for words. And God, who searches the heart, knows what is the mind of the Spirit, because the Spirit intercedes for the saints according to the will of God.”

Very often the Holy Spirit is associated with the power of performing signs or miracles in the lives of people such as healings and other manifestations that seem to defy the order of nature. Indeed, God has the power to do those things. However, that power is evident in our lives when we enter into that relationship with God that is prayer. It is not the calculated, or scripted, or even the spontaneous intercession from believers that is purposeful, directed, and wishful. There is nothing wrong with that type of prayer, however, the kind of powerful prayer the apostle is speaking of is that one when we completely surrender to the ineffable presence of God through the Holy Spirit, perhaps beginning with silence, and with a humble approach that does not make any assumptions or predict any outcome, but that simply sighs before the majestic presence of God because, in fact, it is the Holy Spirit the One who prays.

How much we need to sigh with those perhaps unintelligible sounds! Whenever we experience this we have a foretaste of God’s perfect peace because we can rest assured that, even if we don’t know what needs to be said, or what is being said, it is the will of God. Isn’t it funny? The perfect will of God is not what we can write about him, or a theological statement, or a uniform, normative interpretation of the Scriptures. It is what The Holy Spirit of God expresses through a prayer of complete submission, of unintelligible sounds; our submission to the Great Helper.

Do we need that help? The answer is so obvious that we run the risk of missing it! After all, don’t we all know that we need to depend on God for all we do? Yet, we are free, rationally empowered, and independent individuals—or so we think—that the idea of surrendering to a Spiritual Being seems to be bizarre. Yet, we keep on groaning! Because the suffering continues, the pain doesn’t go, and the uncertainties remain. The promise is powerful; we have the first fruits; just a sample, perhaps, but powerful. It is God in us; it is the confirmation of Emmanuel. God the Father (and Mother), the Son, and the Holy Spirit, Three and One, coming to abide in us to help us. And that is just the beginning of abundant life and a future of peace, love, and justice.