at the First Congregational Church of Stoughton

United Church of Christ

One of my favorite movies is “Bruce Almighty,” which takes an irreverent but loving look at God. The story focuses on a frustrated television newscaster named Bruce, played by Jim Carrey, whose career is going nowhere. After he is fired, Bruce needs to blame someone, and God becomes his target. Yelling to the heavens, Bruce says to God, “The gloves are off, pal! You’re not doing your job!”

So God, played by Morgan Freeman, decides to let Bruce have the powers of God for a week. But Bruce shows the selfish nature of his character when he uses his newfound power to benefit only himself. When he begins to hear millions of prayers in his head, he dismisses them all by proclaiming, "Yes! Yes to all prayers." Chaos ensues, and so many thousands of people win the lottery that they wind up with only $17 each.

Then God encourages Bruce to try praying himself. Obviously unaccustomed to prayer, but holding a string of prayer beads, Bruce stammers out a bland prayer. "Lord, feed the hungry and bring peace to all of mankind.”

“How’s that?” he asks God, and God replies, "Great -- if you want to be Miss America." Then God encourages Bruce to try again. “What do you really care about?” he asks Bruce. And with tears in his eyes, Bruce prays for the first time a heartfelt, unselfish prayer for his girlfriend, Grace. And God replies, "Now that's a prayer!"

Some profound truths about the spiritual life can be revealed in the unlikeliest of places, and I think this movie hits upon some important points. As God shows Bruce, prayer – real prayer – must come from deep within your heart.

But praying is difficult. We probably all find that is true at one time or another, no matter the depth of our faith. I know I do. Perhaps you do, too.

And I think it’s a safe bet to say that the Apostle Paul found it hard to pray, too. Yes, he was a spiritual giant who knew God intimately. And yet, he writes in this morning’s epistle lesson, “we do not know how to pray as we ought.” Perhaps that observation was rooted in his own feelings of inadequacy when it came to prayer.

The disciples also felt insufficient in their prayers, beseeching Jesus with the words, “Lord, teach us to pray.” In response, Jesus taught them how to pray by giving them the model prayer which is known today as "The Lord's Prayer."

When it comes to prayer, let’s face it -- most of us are weak. How many of us repeat the Lord's Prayer every Sunday, but let the words roll from our lips without ever considering their meaning? If we even bother to say grace before meals, how many of us only mouth words of thankfulness to God without pausing to consider and be grateful for all of God’s blessings? Or maybe we intend to pray for a friend or relative but decide to just put his or her name on the prayer list; we’ll let "the church" pray instead, and that lets us off the hook.

And when we do pray, if we do pray, we may think that we don't know how to do it. How many of you are petrified that you’re going to be called upon to offer a word of prayer at a meeting or, heaven forbid, during a worship service? We pray so seldom that we fear our feeble words will humiliate us before our friends and God.

But praying is not saying the right words in the right form in the right position at the right time. Words, created by humans and used in human life, are not the essence of prayer. Indeed, words can get in the way of our communication with God when, in the words of the Psalmist, "deep calls to deep" [Psalm 42:7]. What makes a prayer a prayer is not its form or its eloquence or the things that are prayed for. First and foremost, prayer must come from deep within here, deep within the heart.

Because God searches our minds and hearts [Psalm 7:9], God searches our innermost beings [Proverbs 20:27] and knows our hearts [Psalm 139:1]. And when we are unable to come up with the words to express our deepest achings and longings, God through the Holy Spirit will give us strength in our weakness; when we can’t find the words, the Spirit intercedes for us with sights too deep for human words. It is precisely in our weakness, in the insufficiency of our vocabulary, in our lack of articulation, in our inability to express what is deepest in our hearts, that we can discover help and strength from the Spirit.

The Holy Spirit – promised by Jesus. On the last night of his life, Jesus assured his disciples that God would give the Holy Spirit to serve, in his absence, as their Advocate and Counselor, to be God within their hearts [John 14:16-17a]. And as our lesson from Acts describes, in Jerusalem, at a harvest festival fifty days after Jesus’ resurrection, the promised Holy Spirit shows up on the day we celebrate now as Pentecost, the birthday of the universal Church.

As Paul writes to the Corinthians, “The Spirit searches all things, even the deep things of God” [1 Corinthians 2:10b]. If our Creator is God Up There, and Jesus is God With Us, then the Holy Spirit is God In Us and in prayer, it is that Holy Spirit -- something in us which is not we ourselves -- that intercedes before God for us. The Holy Spirit knows what our real motives and intentions are, and then turns our feeble groans into prayers that are too deep for words.

In our Gospel lesson this morning, Jesus tells us that the Spirit offers streams of living water, and invites anyone who is thirsty to drink. The thirst Jesus speaks of is not a biological condition; thirst is a metaphor for every ache, every longing, every yearning we might have. Thirst is whatever depletes life, or kills love, or keeps us from wholeness; whatever prevents us from experiencing life’s joy and possibility. And the living water that comes from the Spirit will satisfy our thirsty hearts and souls and brings us healing, wholeness, and new life.

Do you try to pray, but can’t find the words?

Are you hesitant to open yourself up to God and express all that burdens your soul?

Do you want to come before God, but feel inadequate, unworthy, unlovable?

The Holy Spirit, the gift that Jesus promised and which God gave to all of us on Pentecost – that same Holy Spirit will give us strength in our weakness, and turn our inarticulate, incoherent, and faltering attempts at prayer into inexpressibly eloquent sighs which are too deep for human words, but are nevertheless understood by our God, who hears them with unconditional, infinite, and eternal love.

Amen.

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