Back in the day, Paul Tillich was the most liberal of all theologians. Well, not entirely true, of course. There was John A. T. Robinson (not to be confused with the Mayflower's pastor) and, of course, our good friend Rudy Bultmann. But in the mainstream, Tillich was pretty liberating for this twenty-something guy who wanted to go into the profession of pastoral ministry.

He was, after all, a "religious socialist" and while I wasn't too sure what that meant exactly, I did like the turn of phrase. It made him a radical on this continent, his adopted home, and I liked the idea of being his intellectual friend but certainly not his equal.


But now, when I sneak back into the Tillichian territory, I find him marvelously orthodox even confessional. In preparing for tomorrow's sermon on Romans 8 I find myself in his debt in marvelous ways. First of all, he uses the Revised Standard Version rendering of "sighs too deep for words." The RSV was the only "mainline" option in those days. Published in the mid 1940s it was all we had then besides the King James Version (or as so many of my parishioners say, the "Saint James Version.") But on this particular phrase, the RSV gets it just right. 

Likewise the Spirit helps us in our weakness; for we do not know how to pray as we ought, but the Spirit himself intercedes for us with sighs too deep for word. And he who searches the hearts of men knows what is the mind of the Spirit , because the Spirit intercedes for the saints according to the will of God.

The King James version has "groanings that cannot be uttered." Not bad, but this most poetic of all translations misses the poetic mark while, as always, remaining most faithful to the Greek: στεναγμοῖς ἀλαλήτοις Groanings that cannot be uttered. Groanings is just not the right word there, it seems to me. 


Luther's translation uses "mit unaussprechlichem Seufzen" --unspeakable sighings. Just right.


Back to my friend Tillich.


He notes the marvelous contradiction in Paul who certainly knew how to pray--he was trained as a Pharisee, who can pray better than they? But because of that he knew that he did not know how to pray and found himself in need of the Spirit of God to help him "pray as we ought."


I'm a professional who does a lot of praying in public. If I'm in a public space and there is need of a prayer, I'm always asked to pray. I am, after all a professional and I always oblige. I say, "Let us pray" and then launch into some sort of formulaic prayer that I have likely prayed many times. 


I pray publicly pretty well. I get compliments on my prayers. But they are all pretty self-conscious.


Tillich in his book The New Being has a marvelous chapter on this very passage from Romans 8. In it he notes that there are two kinds of prayer. The fixed liturgical prayer and a free spontaneous prayer and both are important but lacking in a certain way. 


The first is lacking because while poetic (the best prayers are written by poets) they become "mechanical or incomprehensible or both." Even the "Jesus Prayer" or the "our Father." Jesus said, "Pray like this" not "Pray this." And yet this may be our only universally memorized prayer.


I have a good friend who is an Episcopalian priest who confesses that he doesn't know how to pray spontaneously. All the prayers he is confident about are written out. He is suspicious of prayers that use the phrase, "Oh Jesus we just come to you..." He calls them "wejus" prayers. The Evangelicals pray in this way. It is an attempt at humility and while they have the gift of spontaneity, they often lack poetry. "We are not better off" Tillich says. Spontaneous prayer is a prayer addressed to someone called God but seems more addressed to someone "who is actually another man to whom we tell things, often at great length, to whom we give thanks and of whom we ask favors." Such prayers don't prove we "know how to pray as we ought."

The liturgical Churches which use classical formulas should ask themselves whether they do not prevent the people of our time from praying as they honestly can. And the non-liturgical Churches who give the freedom to make up prayers at any moment, should ask themselves whether they do not profane prayer and deprive it of its mystery.

This is the day of Pentecost--the day of the Spirit and perhaps we should allow the Spirit to do the Spirit's work.
In a deep humility we ought, Tillich says, confess that we are in need of a most holy help in the art of prayer.


Prayer is humanly impossible Tillich says! 


We are having a conversation with somebody who is not our buddy nor ourselves, but someone who is nearer to us that we are to ourselves. We pray to someone who knows us better than we know ourselves. God knows "all the unconscious tendencies out of which our conscious words grow." Prayer is humanly impossible. We all have ulterior motives in our prayers and God, fortunately, knows them all.


Prayer must always begin with the confession that we don't know how to pray. Then and only then can real prayer begin.