On Monday of this week, I had a clever title for this sermon but by the time we were preparing the bulletin, I could not recall what it was, try as might. Of course, “Protest, Prayer and Peace,” prosaic as that might sound, may come closer than my cleverness to communicating the word God has for us this morning. On the surface, it is difficult to see the how protest figures into this text, though prayer and peace are clearly on the writer’s agenda.

Though this letter is attributed to Paul and addressed to his protégé, Timothy, it is doubtful that this is the case. It is more likely that this letter was written after Paul’s death, perhaps as late as the second century A.D. This is significant because of the tone the letter takes toward the life of the church.

As we noted last week, these letters to young churches and their leaders were addressed to a radically different cultural environment than we know or have ever known. Even as late as the second century, the church was a suspect group trying to survive on the margins of Roman society. The church and its members had known and would continue to know persecution. It would be another century or more before Christianity became the religion of the empire; it was still dangerous to be a member of the Jesus movement at the time this letter was written. For much of the earliest life of the Jesus movement, its adherents, including Paul, expected Jesus’ imminent return. Living in faithfulness, risking persecution and martyrdom were not as much of a concern in the earliest years as it would become the longer they hung around without Jesus’ coming back.

In 1st Timothy, the writer shows significant concern for the survival of the community on earth and for its institutionalization. It sounds as if the hope of Jesus’ quick return was fading and we find the writer working on issues of institutional maintenance. In this letter the writer focuses on appropriate behavior for church leaders and members. Over the years, many have argued that the writer is urging the church to be cautious in its dealings with civil authorities in order to preserve the lives of its members and the safety of the community. He seems to be saying that survival depends on flying under the radar when possible and exercising circumspection when confronted by the powers or the culture.

As people of privilege, living in a representative democracy, in the early 21st century, we know little about such personal persecution. We live in a nation where some form of Christianity is said to be the national religious base. Clearly, Christians are the majority and American civil religion uses Christian language and imagery liberally. With few restrictions, we are free to practice our faith as we see fit. Our religion is thoroughly institutionalized, our creeds and professions of faith standardized, and the cost of discipleship often little more than club dues.

What can this ancient writer then say to us? Will we have to take his words too far out of context to make them relevant for us? Does God still have a word for us in these ancient ones? “First,” the ancient authority exhorts his younger subordinates, “I urge that supplications, prayers, intercessions and thanksgivings be made…” Basically, he is speaking of the ways in which we approach God, he is speaking of prayer. This little list can be read as four different words for the same phenomenon, a way of stressing his point through an accumulative build up of language.

We spent some time Tuesday on these four words for prayer. Supplications or requests come first on the list. In Bible study we thought maybe this should not come first, but its placement at the head of the list is probably an accurate reflection of how most of us come to pray. We tend to pray first when we need or want something. Prayer of this sort is inevitable at some level as the creature reaches out to the Creator. This kind of prayer can range from “Gimme, God!” to the anguished cry of one who knows nowhere else to turn for help. William Barclay argues that “Prayer begins with a sense of need. It begins with the conviction that we cannot deal with life ourselves” (William Barclay, The Letters to Timothy, Titus and Philemon, The Daily Study Bible, p. 65.) For those of us who are so privileged and seemingly self-sufficient, such prayer often comes only on the heels of tragedy. It takes a crisis to help us see our need for God.

On Tuesday we also speculated that the word translated here as “prayer” had something to do with being centered in God, open to God’s presence all around us, aware of God’s movement in all of creation. Perhaps this is the spiritual discipline of prayer that moves us past going to God only when we are in need or when we want something. Perhaps this is prayer that develops from experiences of the holy, developed in our need based prayers, but practiced beyond. This is prayerfulness as a state of mind and a way of life.

Intercession is prayer born of compassion. It is prayer on behalf of others that requires we recognize that others have needs and wants as well as we. It is also prayer for our diverse, multi-cultured world, as it is prayer for the well-being of all creation. It is speaking up on behalf of those afraid to speak and of the voiceless. It is prayer that asks God to act on behalf of others as well as ourselves, and it is prayer that demands that we act as we ask.

The Tuesday group seemed to feel that thanksgiving ought to be the beginning of prayer. We thought all prayer should be grounded in gratitude. This may be especially true for us who have so much. “Thank you, God, for all that you have given, not the least of which is the gift of life itself and the promise of abundant life in you.” From this ground blossoms an attitude of appreciation for ourselves, for others, for all creation, even in the face of suffering, pain and death. The prayerful practice of thanksgiving is bound to be life-changing as it is life-affirming.

Now here is where the text becomes potentially revolutionary. For whom are we to pray? Our sisters and brothers? Our family and friends? Those who think like us or look like us or live like us? No…the answer is “everyone.” No exceptions, no outsiders, no one left behind in this circle of prayer. In fact, the writer puts “kings and all those who are in high positions” right at the top of his list. You can imagine that, for a people who were being persecuted and martyred for their faith, this was not a word they wanted to hear. This is Christ’s challenge to love one’s enemies brought home only too dramatically. “You mean I must practice prayer for the emperor and his cronies?”

Admittedly, one could stress the argument here that one prays for the powers so that one might “lead a quiet and peaceable life in all godliness and dignity.” This does sound like a kind of conservative accommodation to power that allows one to live in comfort and security. And it may be that this is what the writer has in mind. Praying for the powers might make it look like you are respecting their authority personally; the words about godliness and dignity might help to create a good enough impression that you would not be hassled by the authorities. Unfortunately, the church has too often followed this very path into accommodation, comfort and security, moving further and further away from our founder and his challenges to love enemies, to care for the least, to make peace and to do justice.

Barclay translates the word for dignity here as reverence and says that, for one caught up in this practice, “…all life is one long act of worship; all life is lived in the presence of God; he moves through the world…as if it is the temple of the living God. He never forgets the holiness of God or the dignity of [humankind.] He is [one] whose attitude to God and to [others] is right” (William Barclay, The Letters to Timothy, Titus and Philemon, The Daily Study Bible, p. 71.)

Today we are left to walk an awkward road between institutional maintenance and faith community, between being good citizens who don’t rock the boat and challenging injustice where we find it, between being good American Christians and risking salvation as we come to the knowledge of truth. Like true prayer, godliness – grounding ourselves in God’s will and way and dignity and reverence – for ourselves, for others, for the creation, are revolutionary activities. They may inevitably place us positions of protest as they did Jesus. The writer of our text, perhaps in spite of himself, says “This is right and acceptable to God our Savior…” That is, living our lives prayerfully in godliness and reverence may save our comfort and security, but living like that is far more likely to disrupt security and afflict our comfort – and fulfill our lives.

Bruce Epperly says that “I Timothy calls us to ‘picket and pray.’” He goes on to say that “While this passage has often been abused by those who wish to maintain the unjust economic and political status quo, praying for our leaders, as Gandhi and Martin Luther King asserted, may also involve public protest and civil disobedience…Timothy reminds us to protest in a dignified and godly way. In church meetings and the political sphere, our calling is to work for reconciliation rather than polarization and to see the divine, rather than the demonic, in those whose positions and power we are challenging” (Bruce G. Epperly, Process and Faith Lectionary Commentary, Pentecost +17, 2007.)
In her book, Plan B: Further Thoughts on Faith, Anne Lamott, tells a poignantly amusing tale about her struggle to love her enemies, in particular, George W. Bush. Her story tells of going to church and being challenged in her hostility toward the president. She says that in her sermon the pastor said that “if the president was the last person on earth, Jesus still would have loved him so much he would have come down and died for him. Lamott’s response, “This drives me crazy, that God seems to have no taste and no standards. Yet on most days,” she admits, “this is what gives us hope.” She goes on “To be honest, I am never going to get anywhere with this president. But Jesus kept on harping on forgiveness and loving one’s enemies, so I decided to try.” As an aside she quips, “Why couldn’t Jesus command us to obsess about everything, to try to control and manipulate people, to try not to breathe at all, or to pay attention, stomp away when people annoy us, and then eat a big bag of Hershey’s kisses in bed?”

After church she says, “Driving home, I tried to hold on to what I’d heard that day: that loving your enemies was nonnegotiable. It meant trying to respect them, it meant identifying with their humanity and weaknesses. It didn’t mean unconditional acceptance of their crazy behavior. They were still accountable for the atrocities they’d perpetrated, as you were accountable for yours. But you worked at doing better, at loving them, for the profoundest spiritual reason: You were trying not to make things worse.” You think the writer of 1st Timothy was thinking the same way?

The next day she finally confesses “did not go nearly as well as I had been hoping. I was fine until I heard the latest bad news from Iraq, and my hostilities flared up again. It continues to be a struggle. I know that God is in the struggle with us. And that trying to love the people in this White House is the single most subversive position I could take” (Anne Lamott, “Loving Your President: Day 2” in Plan B: Further Thoughts on Faith, pp. 217-227.)

Protest, prayer and peace…an odd assortment, and yet, somehow they come together in the in breaking and still coming culture of God. May we be people so steeped in prayer and grounded in God through Jesus Christ that we protest when appropriate, pray always and live into God’s peace, God’s shalom, God’s salvation, God’s wholeness which God desires for all humanity and all creation. Amen.