Romans 8 is one of the most important chapters in the whole of scripture. It begins with the wonderful reminder us that there is no condemnation for those who are in Christ Jesus. What Christ does for us on the cross frees us from the effects and consequences of sin. This is the fundamental good news of Christianity!
Next, we are told that we are children of God and therefore heirs of God and joint heirs with Christ. Not only are we saved from sin but we are accepted, loved, valued and welcomed by God. The good new of Christianity gets better and better!
Then, we read that being revealed as the children of God is not only good news for us but also good news for the planet because the creation is waiting with eager longing for the revealing of the children of God. Instead of the selfish and wasteful exploitation of creation’s resources – the domination and abuse – which characterises human engagement with the world, we are intended to creatively realise the inherent possibilities, the essential goodness, of creation through our imaginative ability as those who notice and name. We are able to do this because we have left our old, selfish way of life behind and have been adopted by God as his children, becoming brothers and sisters of Jesus, co-heirs with him of all he possesses.
Unfortunately, large numbers of people in our world have yet to realise that they are God’s children and live selfishly as a result. That impacts our world in many ways which are detrimental to it and, as we wait for further change, we can often feel inadequate to the work of realising the essential goodness of our world and therefore feel lost for words in praying for our world and its transformation.
I wonder how often you find yourself lost for words. While some of us are more garrulous than others, it is an experience that comes to us all, particularly when we have experiences that either raise us to the heights or plunge us into the depths.
I wonder how often you have had that the experience of being lost for words as you pray. In prayer, it is possible that we might feel inadequate as we have heard others pray publicly and think that we are unable to pray as eloquently, so may not pray at all. Equally, we may experience what artists and writers experience, that is the difficulty of beginning – of putting words together or making marks on a pristine page. Equally, in prayer, we may have the experience of feeling that our words cannot match the experience we are having, whether or exaltation or depression. Whatever the reason, we are promised in today’s New Testament reading that the Holy Spirit will help us in such moments.
St Paul acknowledges in this passage that such times come; that there are times when we find it hard to pray. We do not know how to pray he writes to the Church in Rome (Romans 8. 26) but in those times the Holy Spirit himself comes to help us by pleading with God for us in groans that words cannot express.
We are often quite restrained in our relationship with God and in our praying. Therefore, we will often praise God and say that we will obey or follow him but we rarely argue, protest, complain or question him, at least not publicly. Yet here Paul is saying that the Holy Spirit wishes to help us express our deepest feelings – the groans that words cannot express - to God. Doing so is part of our coming to know God more deeply.
Words, themselves, are sometimes inadequate to express how we feel, which may be why St Paul speaks here of groans that words cannot express. We will all have heard, for example, of the practice in some cultures of Keening.
Keening can mean making any long, sad, or wailing sound but is, most famously, the act of making a loud, high-pitched lament for the dead in the Gaelic tradition of Ireland and Scotland. As a ritualized form of mourning involving crying, wailing, and singing over a deceased person, it recognises that words cannot express our grief in the moment of death and that what is needed to feel adequate to the moment are groans that words cannot express.
I had a similar experience following the untimely death of my brother when, at the airport in Pristina towards which the plane on which he had been travelling had been headed, I heard stories of the impact he had had on people in the Disaster Response Team with which he had been working in Kosovo and on the Kosovan people whom he had been helping to rebuild their homes following the conflict in their country. As those stories were told, all I could do was to cry continually; both at the sense of loss and because of a sense that God had received my brother Nick into his presence saying ‘Well done, good and faithful servant’. On that occasion, my tears were the groans that words cannot express.
I had the opposite experience as a young Christian when, following a service, I spent along time confessing by sins to God and then felt an overwhelming sense of joy that meant I was laughing continuously without being able to stop. I was at a campsite at the base of the Malvern Hills at the time and spent the evening wandering around that beautiful site laughing uncontrollably because of the sense of joy that words could not express that God had put into my heart that night.
Being lost for words is not a problem when it comes to prayer, instead it can be an opportunity for us to become open to God in a new way that allows emotions, whether of joy or grief, to flow through us and from us in ways that touch both the depths and heights of our emotions.
Next time you encounter that sense of being lost for words when you are praying ask the Spirit to help you in your weakness, as you do not know how to pray as you ought, and the very Spirit will intercede in you with sighs too deep for words. And God, who searches the heart, will know what is the mind of the Spirit, because the Spirit intercedes for the saints according to the will of God.
The fact that God is with us in this way is a confirmation that, despite the challenges of life and the depressing effects of conflict and climate change in our world, nothing can separate us from the love of God and nothing will separate us because, as Julian of Norwich, all shall be well, all shall be well, and all manner of thing be well. As St Paul writes: ‘I am convinced that neither death, nor life, nor angels, nor rulers, nor things present, nor things to come, nor powers, nor height, nor depth, nor anything else in all creation will be able to separate us from the love of God in Christ Jesus our Lord.’
So, here is the good news of Christianity encapsulated in one chapter. There is no condemnation for us as welcomes us into his family as his children, giving us all that Jesus also possesses. Our world too can and will be transformed and changed as more are revealed as children of God and live as children of God. While we wait for that change to come God speaks in and through us as his Spirit prays in us for that time of transformation to come. This reality is confirmation that the selfishness we see impacting our world currently is not the final story and will not ultimately dominate life of this planet. Instead, our world will know transformation through the love of Christ which ultimately overcomes and changes all that stands in its way. Love wins! Nothing can separate us from the love of God in Christ Jesus our Lord. All shall be well, all shall be well, and all manner of thing be well. Amen.
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