I don’t often preach about prayer, because the truth is I’m not very good at it. Oh sure, I can launch into a spontaneous spoken prayer at the slightest provocation – I have a natural flair for improv and one of the occupational hazards is being asked to pray without warning at any number of events. And I’m pretty good at writing prayers as well – next to forward-planning, my most favourite nerdy activity is stringing words together. But the really deep, connected life of prayer? That’s not my gift. I struggle with prayer. Struggle to put aside time for it, struggle with any sense that it ‘works’ and struggle with the idea that God is even remotely interested in anything I have to say.
I spent this past week on retreat in the desert at Koora Retreat with the inimitable Anna Killigrew and Peter Harrison. Each morning at the immensely civilised time of 10.30am we had a cup of tea and a snack, then said morning prayer together. It was nice to pray with other people, and nice to have a daily discipline. But I suspect that each year when I say I’m going on retreat, people imagine that I’m spending much of the day doing things that look and feel super spiritual. Perhaps you imagine me sitting still for hours immersed in meditation, or avidly reading some great spiritual writer. But the truth is that I spent quite a bit of time playing in the mud on the salt lake with my new puppy Moira, who got more dirty than she has ever been. I clambered through the bush looking for the first few wildflowers, and ate chops cooked over an open fire. I sat by the campfire and read a Terry Pratchett novel. It is a peculiarity of this job that I have a professional obligation to take a week each year to ‘turn off’. If clergy don’t go on retreat, we go mad, and that benefits nobody.
But even after a week on a spiritual retreat, I still don’t feel like a particularly prayerful person.
I’ve said ‘I’ a lot already in this sermon, and I hate doing that. But I wanted to start off by telling you a bit about my own struggles with prayer so that you can think about your own. Some of you, I know, are really good at prayer. Some of you walk labyrinths. Some of you pray with icons and candles. Some of you take a quiet time each day to offer your thanksgivings and concerns to God. Some of you meditate. Some of you collect written prayers from around the place and put them around the house as prompts for prayer. I know that when I ask for prayer for someone who is sick or struggling, there are lots of people in this congregation who will jump on the case, and hold that person before God with perseverant enthusiasm. But I imagine that there are also people here who really don’t pray in any formal sense on a regular basis - who say the responses and the Lord’s Prayer on Sunday but are not really sure what else to do the rest of the time.
So be heartened by the Apostle Paul. Poor guy, he gets a bad rap because he’s so obtuse and grumpy and convoluted. But he really knows how to drop zingers in the midst of otherwise turgid prose.
…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.
Ugh. Sighs too deep for words. We’ve had a few of those lately. What the heck is going on in the world? Why are people so stupid? Why are people so kind? What’s my place in all this? Where is it going to end up. I can’t tell you how many conversations I’ve had lately where we just end up sighing together.
Paul, who really was a remarkable mystic trying to run a start-up, lets us know that we don’t need to panic when we have no words or no time, and even when we don’t have the desire to pray in the conventional sense. The Holy Spirit is on the case. She connects us to God regardless and speaks to God the Father on our behalf.
This is the beginning of a trinitarian spirituality, peeking out of Paul’s wordy and complicated letter to the church in Rome. God is not merely a solo, distant figure. God’s self is three persons in dynamic unity, interconnected and interrelated. And we are drawn into that life – some would say into the dance – so that God’s thoughts become our thoughts and God’s ways become our ways. We are not cowering before some angry deity, begging for morsels or pleading for mercy, we are embraced by God and absorbed into an intimate relationship. We don’t need to prove anything to God, or convince God – we simply lean in to the presence of God, like a little doggo on God’s lap, and enjoy the warmth.
…we do not know how to pray as we ought, but [the] Spirit intercedes with sighs too deep for words
The Lord Be With You