IT IS HARD TO LIVE IN GOD’S WORLD
I Timothy 2:1-7
First of all, then, I urge that supplications, prayers, intercessions, and thanksgivings be made for everyone, 2 for kings and all who are in high positions, so that we may lead a quiet and peaceable life in all godliness and dignity. 3 This is right and acceptable before God our Savior, 4 who desires everyone to be saved and to come to the knowledge of the truth. 5 For there is one God; there is also one mediator between God and humankind, Christ Jesus, himself human, 6 who gave himself a ransom for all—this was attested at the right time. 7 For this I was appointed a herald and an apostle (I am telling the truth; I am not lying), a teacher of the gentiles in faith and truth.
When we only read these verses from Timothy, we are pointed to ideals that even Paul could not live by. Living the Christian faith is always a flawed process and we should never forget it. In the first two chapters, we find Paul seeking to fight the good fight against false teachers and to remember “the aim of such instruction is love that comes from a pure heart, a good conscience, and sincere faith” (1 Timothy 1:5). That may be the aim of prayer and instruction, but, even as he advocates for a loving inclusive God, he says: “certain persons have suffered shipwreck in the faith;among them are Hymenaeus and Alexander, whom I have turned over to Satan, so that they may be taught not to blaspheme.” (verse 19-20) Never mind that the very people Paul considers shipwrecked would think the same of him.
These controversies have existed throughout history and are all too present today. Relationships deteriorate to questions of agreement rather than expressions of respect. The recent killing of Charlies Kirk is a case in point. For some Charlie Kirk is a martyr for his cause and for others he got what he deserved—’live by the sword, die by the sword.’
It is hard to stand against violence and retaliation as a path to peace. It is much more common that differences become dichotomous name calling. In real life, we often contradict our most basic tenets of faith. Love our neighbor as ourselves always runs into the difficult question: “Who is my neighbor?’ We do not like to imagine that God’s love is quite independent of our opinions about who ‘deserves’ it. It is very hard not to be prejudiced against prejudiced people. It is a tension we need to confess rather than judge. It is all too easy to dismiss the people who dismiss us.
I am emphasizing this struggle because I believe living the Christian life is one of the hardest things we can do. It should never be sentimentalized. The Christian life is filled with inadequacy and uncertainty. When lived by real people, we rapidly discover our inconsistency and flaws. That, as much as anything else, is my understanding of the contradictions inherent in Paul’s writing.
Fortunately, God has a long history of using flawed people. Paul is as flawed as you or me. Just because our inconsistencies regularly confront us does not mean the direction of care is invalid. Paul opens with: “I urge that supplications, prayers, intercessions, and thanksgivings be made for everyone.” It doesn’t get any more inclusive than that. Paul was living at a time when ‘kings’ and people in ‘high authority’ were often actively hostile to the faith—yet they are specifically identified as people to pray for. The advantage of such prayer is that even if we are ‘faking it until we make it’, these prayers acknowledge the sovereignty of God. Such prayers acknowledge that God can love those we do not. Keeping our hearts open just a small crack allows us to begin the process of ‘getting over ourselves’. Our ways are not God’s ways. We so badly want God to be on our side that we forget our job is to be the followers not the director of faith. Praying for those who would dismiss, or worse oppress us, is a very practical lesson in humility.
A brief caveat here. The purpose of such prayer is not to entreat God to straighten these people out so they see the errors of their ways. That is simply another way to assume our thinking is righteous. Instead it is the surrender of our certainties. It is the humble recognition that God’s will be done—in God’s own way. We are welcomed, even encouraged, to pray for whatever we desire but it must be done in the knowledge that God may not follow our deepest desires nor our ‘wise’ counsel on how the world could be better.
Prayer allows us to be in relationship with God. This relationship is grounded in what is, not in what we wish for. It is a means by which “.. we may lead a quiet and peaceable life in all godliness and dignity” even as discord and pain confronts us. Jesus, quite unexpectedly embraced the world as it is—even as the world rejected and killed him. We protest that an innocent should not suffer but innocents suffer all of the time. We don’t get to arbitrate the fairness of such suffering. If the Son of God can be unfairly treated, we have no reason to believe any of us should be exempt. But if we are not to be crushed by such pain we must realize Jesus showed us a God that could go through the worst with us. He is with us and sustains us. Jesus’ life and death lived that truth.
Prayer both allows us to voice our deepest hearts and helps us stay constantly mindful of our relationship with God. God is a God of presence not a superhuman whose job it is to remedy what ails us. That is a very disappointing reality when someone we love has cancer or when revenge and retaliation seems to be winning out over compassion. I have come to believe that learning to live in the paradox that we are simultaneously insignificant specks of dust and precious children of God allows us the freedom to live in a universe beyond our understanding. Jesus’ embrace of the whole world—as precious in God’s sight and subject to death as any other human—is saving.
So Paul closes with the words: “This is right and acceptable before God our Savior, who desires everyone to be saved and to come to the knowledge of the truth.” So even when we are inconsistent—even when we protest the unfairness of kings and people in authority, they too are God’s children. To see them as any less is an ‘us problem’ not a God problem. It is hard to be present to the world as it is but when we can do so, we follow Jesus’ example. He saves us by embracing the world—in all of our wayward sinfulness. In such an embrace, we can find hope that “neither life nor death can separate us from the love of God.”
Prayer allows us to be in relationship with a God who loves us and who works in ways outside of our understanding. God cares for each one of us. It is humbling. Let it be so.
