“For Kings and All in High Positions”
1 Timothy 2:1-7

Rev. Everett L. Miller

I once did some work for a little church that was having terrible difficulties; the members were divided from one another. Many people quit attending because they didn’t want to get caught up in the battle. One side would call a secret meeting without informing the other side. I’d be invited out for dinner thinking that I was going to get to know some of the parishioners but instead I was used as a sounding board for their hatred of the other side. It was, more than anything, a power struggle. Both sides knew they were right. Neither side would agree to sit down with the other like adults ought to, not to mention Christians.

One Sunday, while all this was going on but before I knew how ugly it could get, one of the elders volunteered to offer the prayer after the sermon. For the next five minutes she prayed, aloud and in front of everyone, that God would make the rest of the congregation stop mistreating her family and that they would come to realize that it was her side who was speaking the truth.

I’m not sure that I have ever felt that awkward during a prayer. I think everyone in the room knew that she wasn’t just praying to God; she was using the prayer as an opportunity to scold her opposition when they could not respond. I don’t think she is any worse than most of the others, though. I could just as easily see them doing the same thing; the division was ugly. I’d seen people get along better in a boxing ring than these people did in worship.

As I told you last week, 1 Timothy is a letter from the Apostle Paul to a young pastor in the city of Ephesus. After Paul has warned Timothy of false teachers and encouraged him through Paul’s own story of God’s grace and the strength which it gives, Paul begins to remind Timothy of what the community should be doing when they gather together. Interestingly enough he does not begin with a command to eat donuts and drink coffee, although I wish he did; that is much easier to do. No, he starts with prayer. At least when the congregation in Ephesus, who was having terrible difficulties at the time, met together the most important action they needed to be taking was to pray. He didn’t bother to go into too much detail of whether they should stand, sit, or kneel, eyes closed or eyes opened, out loud or to themselves. Those things may be important, but they are not the most important. The most important thing for the Ephesian Christians to be doing was to pray, however they did it.

That is why it is so important to stress Paul’s words, “I urge that supplications, prayers, intercessions, and thanksgivings be made for everyone.” Paul goes on to support this command by saying that God wants all to be saved and that Christ died as a ransom for all. If we truly believe these statements of God’s love and care, then the way we pray for others must be transformed from our selfish motives into legitimate love and concern for the other person, whether that person is your precious grandson or Osama Bin Laden.

Now if God cares enough about everyone that God wants them to be saved and if Christ cared enough about them that he died on the cross not just for you and me but for all, then what does that say about how we should think of other people, and consequently how we should pray for them? Of course, we all know that elder who prayed on that Sunday morning was wrong. But how often do we lift up other people in prayer, entreating God to change their hearts and minds so they will agree with us, not necessarily so they will follow God’s plan for their lives or so that God’s Kingdom might reign with their participation.

The prayers you pray will change you more than they will change anyone. Why do you think Jesus said, “Love your enemies and pray for them”? I would be wrong to think I am supposed to pray that my enemies would come around and adopt my point of view. Who says I’m right? I am to pray that they adopt Christ’s point of view, not Everett’s. I believe Jesus said this because he knew that it is much harder to keep someone as an enemy if you are lifting them up in prayer on a daily basis. The great church father John Chrysostom once wrote, “no one can feel hatred towards those for whom he prays.” It is with this quote and Paul’s instruction to pray “for kings and all who are in high positions” in mind that I turn our attention to the already tiresome Presidential election of 2008.

It may be a little early in the scheme of things to preach this sermon but as it seems South Carolina and Iowa and New Hampshire keep trying to draw this thing out, I figure today’s lectionary passage from 1 Timothy gives me the opportunity to inject God’s Word into the upcoming presidential election before it gets totally out of hand.

I made a decision when I first decided to become a pastor that I wasn’t going to align myself with either side, but instead I was going to do my best to vote on the basis of what I believe to be God’s platform of grace, love, peace, justice, equality, and dignity, which I most certainly interpret differently than many other people and that’s okay; this is America after all.
During the presidential campaign of 1932, Will Rogers wrote:

There should be a moratorium called on candidates’ speeches. They have both called each other everything in the world they can think of. From now on they are just talking themselves out of votes. The high office of President of the United States has degenerated into two ordinarily fine men being goaded on by their political leeches into saying things that if they were in their right minds they wouldn’t think of saying…. This country has gotten where it is in spite of politics, not by the aid of it.

In this article he addressed the candidates, Republican Herbert Hoover and Democrat Franklin Roosevelt, “Both of you claim you like to fish, now instead of calling each other names till next Tuesday, why you can do everybody a big favor by going fishing, and you will be surprised but the old U.S. will keep right on running while you boys are sitting on the bank.”

Will Rogers wrote that article the week before the election. We’re not even in the year of the election yet and I already agree with his comments. I’m not going to get into who I think God wants to be the next president because I haven’t the slightest clue who that is. But I do think that 1 Timothy 2:1-4 has something to say about how we, as Christians, act during this whole election 2008 process which seems to have started sometime just after God said “Let there be light.”

I know this next statement may get me in trouble with some of you but so be it. Here it goes: political parties weren’t God’s idea, they were our idea so there is nothing more holy about being a Republican or a Democrat than there is in preferring Pepsi over Coke or vice versa. God’s Word is God’s Word independent of human institutions. One party may be able to say, “We are the party of Abraham Lincoln” while the other can say, “We are the party of FDR,” but neither can say, “We are the party of Jesus.” Heck, neither one can even say they are the party of George Washington, because he used his final address while in office to oppose the formation of any political parties at all.

So what might Paul’s words to Timothy and his congregation have to say about how we behave over the next 14 months? What am I getting at? Well we may not have kings anymore but we do have people who are in high positions and I would count anyone who has millions of supporters and who has the ability to influence their lives and who could possibly be President of the United States someday as someone in a high position. So we must pray for them, not just the ones we like but all of them, by name preferably. We do well to remember that Paul is saying this in a time when those in authority were most certainly not Christians and more than likely viewed Christians as atheists and traitors to the empire because of their refusal to participate in Roman civil religion. So he certainly does not mean praying for only those leaders with whom we agree.

The reason that Paul gives in making these prayers is “so that we may lead a quiet and peaceable life in all godliness and dignity.” The first word, translated “quiet” has connotations of inward peace, the second, “peaceable,” of outward peace. “Godliness” can also be rendered as piety. It has to do with living the good Christian life, a life of faith and devotion to God. “Dignity” can also be given as proper conduct or respectability or respectfulness. There is a connection between our prayers for everyone, and even more specifically for those in positions of authority, and the state of our own lives.

There are two ways one contributes to the other. First, if we are people who truly lift up others, especially those in authority, whether we like them or not, then our prayer lives will lead to lives of inward and outward peace, of proper reverence for God, of respectability and respectfulness, and will finally be pleasing to God. Secondly, if we pray that those in authority would lead both their campaigns and eventually their potential office with wisdom, civility, cooperation, peace, integrity, and godliness then our government will be run better, people’s rights will be protected, and ultimately you and I, and hopefully everyone else, can lead a quiet and peaceable life in all godliness and dignity.

To truly pray for someone is to declare that person your equal before God. It is to assert that they, just like you and me, were created in the image of God. It is to celebrate the fact that God knew them before they were in the womb and that they were fearfully and wonderfully made. It is to remember what Paul said, that God wants all to be saved and Christ died for all. It is to strip away the titles of presidential candidate, of Republican, of Democrat, of Senator, of Governor, of Mayor and to lift them up to God as a fellow human being, as a creation of God’s own love and imagination. Then Hillary Clinton becomes my sister and Rudy Giuliani, John McCain, John Edwards, Mitt Romney, Fred Thompson, Mike Huckabee, and Barak Obama are all my brothers. And this goes for our current President as well, whether you like him or not. And who knows, maybe it will open our minds so that we can actually listen to what they have to say instead of simply dismissing them because of what we think we know about them.

Please do not misinterpret what I am saying. I am not advocating the abandoning of political parties. I am simply trying to remind all members of political parties that it is they who are the members, not Jesus and not his Church. So over the next 14 months or so, remember what has been said this morning and every now and then pick up the remote and turn off CNN or MSNBC or CSPAN or Fox News and lift these people up before God’s throne of grace. Stand, sit, or kneel, open or close your eyes, say it out loud or in your own head, I don’t care but remember that before you are a Republican or a Democrat and even before you are an American you are a member of the human race and a disciple of Jesus Christ who died and rose just as much for Rudy Giuliani as he did for Hillary Clinton as he did for you and me. And then may supplications, prayers, intercessions, and thanksgivings be made for everyone, for kings and all who are in high positions, so that we may lead a quiet and peaceable life in all godliness and dignity. This is right and is acceptable in the sight of God our Savior, who desires everyone to be saved and to come to the knowledge of the truth.

In the name of the Father, the Son, and the Holy Spirit. Amen.