When the Spirit Groans
In a recent episode of one of my favorite podcasts, “Everything Happens,” Kate Bowler interviewed one of the great Christian theologians of his generation, N. T. Wright. I’ve always thought of Wright as important, but a bit too conservative for my taste theologian. In my Easter blog post last year, I wrote the following:
According to New Testament scholar and theologian N. T. Wright, “The practical, theological, spiritual, ethical, pastoral, political, missionary, and hermeneutical implications of the mission and message of Jesus differ radically depending upon what one believes happened at Easter.” That very well may be true–and it’s a problem for me, since I’m not sure what I believe happened that day. I believe in resurrection. I believe in the beauty of the Christian narrative. And to be honest, I’m gripped more powerfully by the many meanings of the story than by questions about the historical accuracy of its details.
As is almost always the case when one hears a person in conversation rather than reading something in a book, I found Wright much more compelling in the podcast conversation.
Wright’s conversation with Bowler is wide-ranging, but focuses particularly on what a person of Christian faith is to think when God noticeably fails to show up in circumstances which would seem to be an obvious oportunity for divine intervention. During the pandemic, major news publications reached out to Wright as a well-known and respected theologian, asking him to provide a “Christian” response to what was going on. His response was probably not what they and their readers expected.
I basically said there is no good Christian answer for this except lament. And I said the Bible gives us plenty of lament . . . Paul talks about the groaning of all creation and us groaning and the Spirit groaning within us and God knowing . . . Read the Book of Job for goodness sake and read the Psalms of lament. There are many, many times when, as with Jesus in Gethsemane, you know, or on the cross, “My God, why did you abandon me?” And if we’re not prepared to face that apparent randomness, then we’re not actually being faithful to scripture itself . . . Those moments of unknowing, when even God the Holy Spirit hasn’t got words to say, the Spirit is groaning without words. If God, the Holy Spirit hasn’t got words to say . . .
Perhaps We Should Be Silent as Well
Later in the conversation, Wright engages with one of the most used (and abused) New Testament passages when grappling with why God is silent and doesn’t get off its divine ass to do something. In Romans 8:28, Paul writes “We know that all things work together for good for those who love God, who are called according to his purpose.” That’s one hell of a platitude when things are going badly. But as Wright describes, the problem is one of translation. Once during a meeting with a number of pastors, he asked them to quote Romans 8:28. They replied,
“All things work together for good to those who love God.” And I said, okay, I’m sorry. But actually what the Greek says is not, “all things work together for good for those who love God,” it’s that “God works all things for good WITH those who love him.”
The passage refers to those in the previous two verses who “do not know how to pray as we ought,” with whom the Holy Spirit intercedes “with sighs too deep for words.” Sometimes we find ourselves in a place where nothing but lament is possible. Remember Jesus in the Garden of Gethsemane sweating drops of blood and begging to be spared from what was to come. Remember “My God, why have you abandoned me?” There is no great proof in scripture that Jesus was fully human.
Wright continues,
And we’ve resisted that “with” because we’re frightened of anything that looks as if we are adding to our own salvation. This is not about salvation, it’s about vocation. Yeah, it’s about who we are called to be in the present. We are called to be people who allow that agonized prayer to happen.
Kate Bowler regularly ends each podcast with a blessing, because as she says “here at ‘Everything Happens’ we like to bless the crap out of each other.” Here’s her blessing for this episode:
Teach us how to pray, God, when our faith doesn’t feel like comfort. When there are no easy answers or tidy scripts. When there are no other words but lament. Teach us how to pray, God, when we see Christ in Gethsemane at the center of it all. Teach us how to pray, God, when the Spirit groans alongside of us. Speechless, too, at the pain, at the inexplicable, at the unfair. Joining the chorus of others in this agonized prayer. Teach us how to pray, God. May our words of lament turn toward acts of love as we remake this beautiful, terrible world together.
That’s telling it like it is rather than trying to clean things up. A good prayer for the days we are living in.
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