“PRAYING WITHOUT WORDS”
Midweek Lenten Worship III
March 11, 2015
Bethel Evangelical Lutheran Church
Glenshaw, Pennsylvania
TEXT:
The Spirit helps us in our weakness. For we do not know what to pray for as we ought, but the Spirit Himself intercedes for us with groanings too deep for words. And He who searches hearts knows what is the mind of the Spirit, because the Spirit intercedes for the saints according to the will of God.
Romans 8:26, 27 (ESV)
Call it an occupational hazard if you will, but there is a certain uneasiness that I feel whenever I’m at a wedding reception. It doesn’t really matter whether I was the officiant at the wedding or a guest. I never really feel quite comfortable at these events until after the meal starts because I often don’t know whether or not I’m expected to offer a prayer and I don’t want to be caught off guard. Perhaps this feeling is the result of something that I remember about our own wedding reception. We got married right after my vicarage year and we invited my supervising pastor and his family to the wedding. At the precise moment when the master of ceremonies called on Pastor Pflug to have the prayer, Pastor Pflug was walking across the dance floor from the bar to his table, carrying several drinks for himself and the rest of the adults at his table. It gave everybody a good laugh, but I realized that he must have felt at least a little bit self-conscious in that all of the guests knew that he was neither expecting nor completely prepared for this “honor.” In retrospect, I guess I should have told him about it ahead of time.
But when you get right down to it, are any of us really prepared for prayer? I’m not talking just about corporate or formal prayers that are offered to the Lord in the presence of an audience; I’m including also our personal and private prayers when we bare our soul to the One who knows all and sees all--the One in whom we trust. So many times I have reflected on concerns in my life or the lives of the people who I care about, and my reflections have turned into prayer, but don’t ask me to repeat the words that I prayed, because there were no words. Particularly in very dire situations we find ourselves imploring the Lord to help us but the desires of our hearts are beyond words--or at least beyond our understanding. That is exactly what the apostle Paul, writing under the inspiration of the Holy Spirit, is talking about in this evening’s text as he tells us about our feeble attempts at prayer and the Spirit’s intercession for us.
No matter how eloquent we may be and no matter how comfortable we may feel when speaking to an audience, somehow when it comes to speaking to God, it’s an altogether different story. Even the chosen disciples of Jesus--those who were the closest to Him when He walked this earth--felt the necessity to ask Him: “Lord, teach us to pray” (Luke 11:1). The Savior responded by giving them what we know today as the Lord’s Prayer, which is not so much the formal prayer that we recite so often as it is a simple outline of the things that we should be praying about. Perhaps the reason why this prayer has transformed into a rote prayer for us is that there is a certain awkwardness that we feel in prayer. Rather than being awkward when speaking to God, we simply pray the words that He Himself has given us, knowing that His Word is infinitely superior to anything that we might be able to come up with on our own.
There is a very simple reason why we feel awkward and inadequate when we are speaking to God. It is because we know that He is the holy and just God and that we are poor miserable sinners. There is a great gulf between us--a gulf established and maintained by our sin and rebellion. By our sin we have made ourselves spiritually blind and dead and enemies of God. As converted sinners--people who know that Christ has redeemed them and trust in His sacrifice of atonement--we know that we are reconciled to God through the blood of Jesus but we are still mindful of our sin, even as we are aware of the fact that “the old Adam in us” (Small Catechism, the Sacrament of Holy Baptism IV)--our old sinful nature--still clings to us and tries to pull us away from our Savior. To have this kind of awkwardness and feeling of inadequacy in prayer is not necessarily a bad thing. On the contrary, it shows that we know who we are and who God is. It means that we see ourselves as the sinners that we are and that even though we approach God confidently in the name of Christ, we nevertheless approach Him humbly, well aware of the fact that He is by no means our equal, but rather our God.
The Good News, according to the text before us, is that “the Spirit Himself intercedes for us with groanings too deep for words” and that “the Spirit intercedes for the saints according to the will of God.” “The Spirit,” of course is the Holy Spirit--the Spirit of Christ--the continued Presence of Christ in the world after His ascension into heaven. It is the Spirit who makes Christ present with us through the Gospel in Word and Sacrament. He is the Communicator within the Trinity--the One who communicates the Word of God to us and who communicates our prayers and concerns to God. When we don’t know what to say or cannot bring ourselves to say what we need to say, the Holy Spirit communicates our needs and concerns to the Father. In other words, He speaks for us when we cannot speak for ourselves. What this means for us is that when we pray we need not worry about making ourselves clear to God. After all, Jesus taught us in His Sermon on the Mount: “When you pray, do not heap up empty phrases as the Gentiles do, for they think that they will be heard for their many words. Do not be like them, for your Father knows what you need before you ask Him” (Matthew 6:7, 8).
There is perfect harmony between the Persons of the Trinity. This perfect harmony is expressed in the text with the words: “He who searches hearts knows what is the mind of the Spirit, because the Spirit intercedes for the saints according to the will of God.” Because the Spirit is One with the Father, His intercessions on our behalf are in complete harmony with the will of the Father and because He is One with the incarnate Son of God, He knows and understands us intimately. He intercedes for us in view of the sacrifice of atonement that Christ has made for us. Regardless of what we may think we need, He knows what we really do need and communicates that need perfectly to the Father.
The observation has been made that couples in love and even close friends often get to a point where they can communicate without words. They know each other so well that they can almost sense what the other is thinking and wishes to say. The most intimate relationship that we have, created and maintained by the Holy Spirit, is our relationship with Jesus Christ--God in the flesh. He is our closest Friend. His Spirit not only communicates the saving Gospel to us; He also communicates our needs and desires to God. We pray, not so much to let God know what we want to say to Him, but in order that we might be aware of our own need and our dependence upon Him. He accommodates us in every way, even to the point of receiving us and all the desires of our hearts, especially when we cannot adequately express them. That is how great His love for us is.
Amen.
May the One who loved us and washed us from our sins in His own blood, making us kings and priests before His God and Father, lead you to a life of repentance and trust. May He also be glorified in the lives of you, His people. He who calls you is faithful, and He will do it. Amen.