Likewise the
Spirit helps us in our weakness; for 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. [Romans 8:26-27]
Pentecost Sunday presents us with language and concepts
just like that -- Christian truths difficult to talk about clearly. Age, experience, and perhaps even wisdom, have
led us away from wild excitements and enthusiasms about the experience of God’s
Spirit, the Spirit of the Risen Lord. St
Paul is really quite suspicious of signs and wonders, extravagant claims, tongues
and prophecies, miracles and healings, and talk of power and might and
charismatic personalities. In John’s
Gospel Jesus tells Nicodemus that the Spirit is like the wind; you don’t know
where it has come from or where it is going.
In this text from St Paul we find the Spirit’s presence described as sighs too deep for words. Clearly it’s better to be humble and reticent
and receptive, and listen a bit.
God searches the
heart, Paul reminds us. So, in prayer there is actually nowhere to
hide. Whatever facades we may normally
adopt, stories and excuses, life-styles and images, are pretty useless here
because they are not what God sees. Our
hearts are being read instead with love and mercy and understanding. God is seeing all the aspects of us which we
ourselves entirely miss or ignore or deny.
Prayer deals with truth.
This passage from St Paul is about praying. He says we
don’t know how to pray as we ought. It
always seems to me, when we get some great Christian occasion of worship – a
funeral in Westminster Abbey, a solemn commemoration following some tragic
disaster, or the simplicity of Christmas Eve in some great church, for instance
– that we get beautifully crafted prayers in noble, rhythmic English,
sonorously delivered and often very moving.
When I write prayers, which is seldom these days, I think they say more
about Ross Miller than about the yearnings of creation. But this is the value of silence and
stillness. All of that, whatever its
value, along with far more noisy charismatic occasions, is set to one
side. The point is what St Paul
said: The Spirit is reading our hearts
and is already praying the prayer of our hearts, which is at another level than
our best words and concepts and images.
The Spirit is doing this for us and in us.
It is not magic, it is not spooky or even specially
mysterious. Good things start to happen,
which couldn’t happen before, once we decide to be still and silent. Precisely what Jesus promised, another
“Advocate” – Paraclete [παρακλητος], the counsellor who stands alongside you and
knows you and speaks for you – comes and makes prayer possible to us in what St
Paul calls our weakness.
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