The parables of Jesus we read today are about finding treasure -- fine pearls and good fish.  The finding of these precious objects are of great value.  They are worth everything in life to those who find them.  “That is what the Kingdom of God is like,” Jesus says. 

 

Searching and finding are common themes in scripture.  In our scripture for today we see searching and finding.  But it is God who is searching and we who are found.  We are found by the spirit who intercedes for us when we don’t know how to pray as we ought.  That phrase has always caught my attention as it did as I prepared to preach today, because there are so often times I don’t know how to pray as I ought -- meaning -- I don’t know what to pray for; I don’t know how to pray; and the best outcome of a situation is not clear to me.

 

There are issues large and small in the life of the believer in which perfect knowledge and clear un-ambiguity of the right path ahead is lacking.  The U.S. is engaged in war in a number of countries.  The war is a matter of controversy among people of good faith.  Devout Christians take many different sides when the war arises in conversation.  The situation becomes seriously complex as Congress debates provisions of the Patriot Act and London is bombed and bombed again.

 

More and more American military die overseas.  Since the tragedy of September 11, there have been many moments when good people of faith in this country and around the world have been unclear as to how to pray as they ought. 

 

There is a vacancy on the Supreme Court and interest groups on many sides are working to energize their troops, spending millions of dollars to see one action or another action take place.  For many people of faith there is only one issue that matters in terms of who will fill that spot.  The problem is that many of those people of faith do not agree on the one issue that the fight is about.  For some it’s abortion and reproductive choice; for others it’s gender (even Judge Sandra Day O’Conner said, while approving the President’s choice, that the only thing wrong with him was that he is a man); for other people there may be some other issue. 

 

For many people of faith, the issues seem clear enough that prayer meetings have been organized in many churches to pray for a specific kind of outcome.  It seems that some people are clear on how they should pray (even if I am not).  We can bring this issue down to the arena of what we might deem smaller issues -- those of our personal lives, our families, and our loved ones.

 

There was an article in the New York Times last Sunday about a new law in the Netherlands for infant euthanasia.  It sounds sufficiently horrifying for good people to condemn the practice and the people who put it in place.  But if we stop long enough to read the article, we find the story of a baby born with a rare disease.  This disorder causes the baby’s skin to come off if touched, causing scarring and excruciating pain.  There is no treatment for this disease, and there is no relief except for drugging the baby into a coma until he or she dies.  This can take eight-to-ten years.  What would you say was the proper way that the parents of this baby should pray?  Even in cases where we don’t have a desperately ill baby in the mix, we can get caught up in a quandary about what to pray for.

 

As a parent or a spouse becomes lost with Alzheimer’s, no longer recognizes anyone, and has become completely dependent upon around-the-clock-care; as a loved one has survived an auto accident (just barely -- but the doctors tell us that brain function has ceased though the machines can keep the body alive, perhaps indefinitely); what should those whom the injured person loves pray?  How should they pray?

 

The Terry Schiavo case (in all its 14-year glory) proved at least that good people of faith are not of one mind on how we should pray or what we should pray.  Even in my dealings with my children (including one teenage son who is neither brain dead nor mortally ill at the moment), there are times, I must confess, when I want to pray and I need to pray.  But for the life of me I can’t think what to pray or how to pray.

 

In the letter to the church at Rome, Paul builds an argument that addresses the role of humankind in relation to God and the role of the Spirit in relation to humankind.  A crucial part of these relationships is prayer.  Prayer is a needful part of our relationship with God.  It is how we communicate with God and how we remain open to communication from God.  But prayer is not easy for us as we are often stuck in prayer.  Our communication with God is not smooth nor restful.  There are times when we search and search for the right words to say or even the right form in which to place words.  Paul names what we experience as “weakness”, a condition in which we need help from the Spirit.

 

If we back up a few verses from our text today, we will find that what we do in prayer is termed “groaning”.  Have you ever groaned in prayer?  I think this groaning (this weakness) is indicative of the condition in which we find ourselves.  We are human beings in need of God.  And in our need, we groan.  We groan for the day when justice will come.  We groan for the day when pain and death will cease.  We groan for a time when we will not hear of thousands of people massacred -- in Rwanda, or Sudan, or Sbrebrenica, or New York City.  We groan for a glorious day when we will be able to treat and cure Alzheimers, and cancer, and AIDS.  We groan for the words to say when a loved one’s suffering seems to increase to the level of unbearability.  We groan when a friend is hurting.  We groan as parents as we try to guide an adolescent toward maturity.  Groaning seems to make up a lot of our prayer language.  We simply do not know how to pray as we ought -- so we groan and the Spirit intercedes for us. 

 

We live in the time between Christ’s coming and Christ’s coming again.  This is a hard place to live.  We know what God wills.  God wills justice, salvation, and peace.  We know this because the prince of peace, the one just judge died on the cross in order to defeat death and sin once-and-for-all.  It is in his resurrection that we have hope.  It is in that hope that we live and move and have our being.  But oh, Lord, the unhopeful signs and symptoms of our world can leave us desolate, in despair, and groaning.  We do not know how to pray.  We search for words, for articulation, and for clarity of expression.  And so often all we come up with is groaning. 

 

By the grace and wisdom of God, it does not depend in the precision of our speech.  God is engaged each day in searching our hearts.  God is searching for us, working with us, and interceding for us.  We have found what we have sought; we have found the riches of the kingdom of God.  That is why we are here.  The awareness of God’s glory and love is what draws us to approach God in prayer.  We know how precious this gift that we have been given really is and we are grateful.  But we also have those moments when the already not yet nature of the world’s salvation leaves us utterly discouraged.  God knows this about us; God understands that we cannot find the words to say we who have been found by a searching God are not alone in our groaning prayer communication. 

 

The good news for us today is that God hears us and God understands, even when we do not.  When we are unclear as to what we should pray or how we should pray, God knows and God sends the Spirit of God who intercedes for us.  We have been found by a searching God so that in the groaning of our prayers, we can find rest, hope, and peace. 

 

That, my friends, is enough as we wait for the time when God’s plan for the world comes to glorious fruition and the world comes to know in its entirety that nothing will separate us from the love of God.  In this in-between time it is enough that God hears, God knows, and God understands our groaning prayers.

 

Amen.