Sighs Too Deep for Words
The Reverend Shearon Sykes Williams, Nineth Sunday after Pentecost, July 30th, 2023
Our passage from Romans today is one of my absolute favorites. I have preached on it a number of times, usually at funerals, most memorably, my father’s. It seemed especially fitting for his service since I had heard him preach on it so often. He was a Baptist pastor and I still have a vivid picture in my mind’s eye of him standing in the pulpit, holding his Bible in his right hand, and giving witness to his faith in a very impassioned way. He never met a passage from one of Paul’s letters that he didn’t love.
I tend to look at Paul’s letters with a little bit more of a critical eye. As theologian Peter Gomes once quipped, “Saint Paul never met a social norm he didn’t like.” Paul is often judged harshly for some of his earlier letters because he seems to be “baptizing” the existing hierarchy of the first century Roman household, so to speak, encouraging women and slaves to conform to the patriarchal social order. But just like all of us, Saint Paul evolved. He was continuously being transformed by the work of the Holy Spirit in his life, in the crucible of his ministry.
Romans is his last letter and it is by far his most sophisticated and thorough work. Scholars often refer to it as Paul’s “last will and testament”. It is the culmination of years of prayer, struggle and hardship as he went from city to city throughout the Roman world founding churches. He had been in prison and suffered all kinds of abuse, both inside and outside the fledging Christian communities he started. So Romans is grounded in his deep experience of finding Christ in both joy and struggle. Paul never met the Christians in Rome, but he had heard that they were going through a difficult time. He knew that people sometimes lost their faith when they were going through challenges and he wanted to encourage them to hang on with both hands with these enduringly beautiful and inspiring words:
“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…Who will separate us from the love of Christ? Will hardship, or distress, or persecution, or famine, or nakedness, or peril, or sword?... No, in all these things we are more than conquerors through him who loved us. For 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.” Romans 8: 26-39
It really doesn’t get any better than that. That is the Christian life is a nutshell, my friends, trusting that no matter what era we live in, whatever befalls us, Christ is there with us, suffering with us. And the Spirit is always interceding on our behalf, even when we aren’t able to pray, especially when we don’t have words for prayer.
Life is so hard sometimes, life is hard, and when things get really, really bad, and no words will come, the Spirit is working feverishly to comfort us and sustain us, to give us courage and the perseverance to endure. When we can’t do it anymore, we give it all to Jesus. And he helps us bear our burdens.
When someone we love dearly dies, and we sit vigil at their bedside and hold their hand, telling them how much we love them and helping them transition to the next stage of life, life in God’s full presence, Christ is there. When a relationship is strained and we don’t know what to do to make it better, Jesus is with us. When we feel overwhelmed and just feel like there isn’t enough of us to go around, we are not alone. When we realize that our lives have become disordered and we don’t even know where to begin getting our priorities straight, the Spirit is there “interceding with sighs too deep for words,”
Life can be very hard. And our struggles can really undo us and make us wonder if God is real, if God is truly there for us. But that is the unique beauty of Christian faith. We believe that “nothing can separate us from the love of God in Christ Jesus our Lord.” We worship a God who is intimately acquainted with suffering and grief. God sent Jesus into the world, a world full of pain and heartache, to be submerged in that pain and heartache. The forces of darkness in this world put Jesus to death, but death did not have the last word.
When we are in moments of despair, and we can picture Jesus coming into whatever nasty, horrible place we find ourselves, it makes all the difference. We can see that he is bringing us peace, that he is helping us to get through and realize that things will get better, that one day all things will be brought to perfection. That is the essence of Christian hope. Nothing can separate us from Christ’s love for us, nothing. Jesus is always there for us. We just have to be able to recognize him when he shows up, and he does show up, over and over again.
Whenever I am with church members who are near death, it is a great blessing to see that they have a deep well of faith that they can draw on that makes all the difference. There is sometimes fear, yes, there is sometimes doubt, there is often pain, but there is also something more. A peace that passes all understanding, a hope that they are about to be united with Christ forever and a trust that he is already with them, as they transition from life as we know it to life as it shall be. It is a very sacred experience and I always feel Jesus with us in a very tangible way, in those moments when there is only a thin veil separating this life and the next.
Life is beautiful. Life is joyful. Life is good. And life is also very hard at times. Remembering that Christ is with us through thick and thin makes all the difference, in this world and the life to come.
“For 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. “