Sunday 20 May 2018

Groaning and Sighing (Romans 8:22-27)



(Homily for Gayton Road Christian Church's Worship on May 20, 2018, Pentecost)



Changing Plans

A little over 20 years ago, my family went to Glorieta, New Mexico for a summer missions conference.  You could think of Glorieta as a southwest version of Craig Springs.  We had gone there several times before for the same conference, and my brother and I had become familiar with the territory.  My parents could turn us loose, and we would wander across the various landmarks: the lake, the putt-putt course, the great sanctuary, the Chuck Wagon where meals were served.

This time, my brother and I decided to take a trail up a nearby mountain.  We hiked up to the vista, which was wonderful, drank plenty of water, and then started our trek back down.

Hiking in New Mexico is different than hiking in Virginia.  Here there are plenty of trees, making the trail unmistakable.  But in New Mexico, the trees are scattered.  After guessing between several apparent forks in the path, it became clear that we were lost.

We groaned and we sighed.  And then we made some calculated plans.  First we decided to follow what looked like a dried out creek bed.  A creek, we figured, would lead us to a river, which would lead us to civilization.  But the creek bed disappeared.  We groaned and sighed some more, and then we refined our plan.  We would bushwhack down the mountain in the direction from which we had come—or from which we thought we had come.  When we neared the bottom and saw no landmarks or even hints of civilization, we groaned and sighed some more.  But then we heard them: voices!  Changing our plan once again, we followed the sound for several hundred yards and stumbled finally into a graveyard.  Not quite civilization, but close enough for us!  The cemetery was just off the conference center. 

After much groaning and sighing and changing of plans, we had made it.

Beyond What We Can See or Say

Today is Pentecost, the day on which we celebrate the Spirit of God that fell upon the first followers of Christ that day in Jerusalem and that falls upon us still, if we would believe it.  Pentecost captures our imagination because of the spectacle: the speaking and understanding of different languages, the whirlwind above the faithful, and the flames that danced on their heads. But the real miracle is deeper than all this dazzle.  In ancient Palestine, people thought the Spirit only came to the prophets, and most people thought the Spirit had even stopped visiting them.  The real miracle, then, was the Spirit of God taking up residence in everyday folks like you and me. 

In today’s scripture, Paul talks about this miracle of the Spirit living in folks like you and me.  His description is perhaps a little surprising.  When I think about the Spirit coming upon someone, I think of someone suddenly acquiring superhuman strength and ability.  But Paul doesn’t talk about strength or intelligence.  He talks about the Spirit as an experience where we can’t exactly see or say where we’re going.  He talks about groaning and sighing.

Holy Groans and Sighs: Pulling Us Past Our Plans

The way that Paul talks about the Spirit, I cannot help but think of my brother and I, groaning and sighing on the side of that mountain in New Mexico.  More than once, we made a plan.  And more than once, things did not go as planned.  The creek did not lead us to water.  The bushwhacking did not lead us to familiar territory.  So what kept us going when those plans failed?

What kept us going, I think, was something like the Spirit.  Our sighs and our groans were expressions of our inability and our helplessness, which is to say, an expression of prayer.  The Spirit lives in us, I think, when we sigh and groan and open ourselves to what we can’t see and can’t say.  The Spirit is not in our plans, which are things that we can see and say, but in what lies beyond our plans and keeps pulling us forward when our plans inevitably fail.  The Spirit is not us, but God pulling us.  Holy sighs and groans pulling us.

Stronger Than Any Problem, Any Plan

Of course, those groans and sighs of my brother and me in New Mexico are minimal compared to other sighs and groans that we hear in our world.  The Spirit has moved in much more significant ways.

When I think about the history of the church in this nation, I am continually reminded of one story in particular.

According to many historians, the Civil Rights movement did not begin with Rosa Parks and Martin Luther King, Jr.  Nor did it begin with the spectacle of sit-ins and strikes.  It began in potlucks and women’s prayer circles and Bible studies and worship services longer than you’d like to imagine.  It began in the church.  It began in the groans and sighs that had sounded first in slavery and then in the racial terrorism of the Jim Crow era and finally in the era of legalized discrimination, known as segregation.

Groans and sighs are stronger than any problem.  And they are stronger than any plan.  The Civil Rights movement shifted strategies more than once.  What powered the movement through each change were groans and sighs.  Even when major legislative victories were won, Martin Luther King could be heard groaning and sighing, for as he put it, “Laws only declare rights; they do not deliver them.”[1]  Even today, we can still hear groans and sighs.  They are, I believe, the voice of the Spirit, pulling us toward communion.

From This Call, Plans Will Rise and Plans Will Fall

What about here at Gayton Road?  Have we heard the groans and sighs of the Spirit? 

Nearly a couple of years ago, a visioning team of folks from our church began meeting.  I didn’t hear many audible sighs or groans.  But as individuals shared their memories and their hopes, their joys and their frustrations, there did emerge a common sense of call.  You can see it in the image here, designed by our youth.  We feel called to share the life of faith around tables, in small groups, and with the needful.  Perhaps those who were here this past Wednesday night heard an echo of this call.  Gathered around the table, a small group of us learned about the needs of the homeless.  And I think we felt a pull, a tug, a call.

I believe that this call our visioning team heard, and the echo we heard this past Wednesday, comes from the Spirit.  And the like the groans and sighs of the Spirit, which are an experience where we can’t see or say exactly where we’re going, this call is beyond our best calculations and plans.  Which is to say, from this call plans will rise and plans will fall.  What keeps pulling us forward is the Spirit and its call.

Today at our board meeting—to which everyone is invited—there will be shared proposed revisions to our constitution and church structure.  Which is to say, there will be shared a new plan.  I’m excited about the new plan because I believe it lines up well with our sense of call.  But even more than that, I’m excited about the Spirit in which it was drawn up and in which it will be shared, the Spirit that lies beyond this plan and every plan and will keep pulling us forward when our plans inevitably fail.  I’m more excited about the Spirit of sighs and groans that pull us steadfastly toward what matters most.  The Spirit is sometimes a struggle.  But as Paul reminds us, this is a struggle not of death throes but of birth pangs and new life.  May it be so today.

Prayer

Spirit of God,
Be present
In our sighs and groans,
In what we can’t quite see or say;
Bless our struggle
And make it one
With the struggle of God;
Pull us irresistibly
Past each obsolete plan
Into your unspeakable, unimaginable
Kingdom. 
Amen.




[1] Martin Luther King, Jr., Where Do We Go from Here: Chaos or Community? (Boston: Beacon, 2010), ebook loc. 2355.

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