September 19, 2010 (25th Sunday in Ordinary Time)
Rev. Brett Hendrickson
1. You may have noticed in the past few years, even the past few decades, that politics and religion in this country have gotten mixed up. Presidents, congresspeople, governors, even Supreme Court justices, call upon God for help and ask for God’s blessing. Something called “family values” has become shorthand for a conservative Christian social agenda. Cases come to trial about removing “In God We Trust” from our money. And in the last three years, Illinois has required a daily “moment of silence” in classrooms across the state and then repealed that requirement as being covertly religious. Everyone knows that we enjoy “separation between Church and State” in this country, but we aren’t sure what that means, and most of us only want that separation when it is convenient for us. Sometimes people say that they just wish politics and religion could remain separate. They especially say to me, as a pastor, that the church should not get involved in specific political issues—that we should just preach the Golden Rule and stay out of particular debates.
Even if we thought that course of action were preferable, the Bible again and again shows that all of human life, including political leaders and political structures, must be met through the person of Jesus Christ.
It’s no surprise really. Both politics and religion are focused, at least in part, in how we ought to live together. Naturally, we Christians must find ways to live in the world. It’s an old concern. The advice we heard from 1 Timothy this morning admonishes us to pray for “kings and all who are in high positions, so that we may lead a quiet and peaceable life in all godliness and dignity.” That kind of advice made especial sense for early Christians who were trying to live peaceably in an empire that was openly persecuting them. But perhaps it makes sense for us now as well. How must we live to be Christians in the world? And to make the question a little more focused for this morning’s sermon: how must we pray to live as Christians in a world that is ruled by powerful people and political systems?
2. Fortunately we Presbyterians have a leg up on this question. Our Presbyterian form of government with representative bodies of elders, presbyters, and delegates to General Assembly is not dissimilar to many western democracies. You can’t be a Presbyterian for too long before being introduced to the Book of Order, the governmental part of our church’s constitution, which is full of theology as well as rules and regulations about how we are to work together as a church. One of our favorite catchphrases, which comes from Paul’s first letter to the Corinthians, is that we like to do things “decently and in order.” Indeed, part of my seminary education was to become familiar with Robert’s Rules of Order! The reading we heard this morning from 1 Timothy is a bit like an ancient Book of Order. The writer of the letter, ostensibly Paul, is instructing Timothy on how to run a church and be a good Christian leader. The passage we read this morning focuses on how important it is to pray for everyone. Special emphasis is placed, as I mentioned, on praying for muckety-mucks, head honchos, grand poohbas, and other politicians and rulers. It seems that it has long been our responsibility to make intercessions with God for our earthly leaders. In other words, our religion is supposed to play a role in politics.
3. So for whom should we be praying? Well, there’s President Barack Obama. Then of course, there’s the congress. Our senators are Dick Durbin and Roland Burris—we should certainly pray for them. And depending on where you live, your congressperson is either Jerry Costello or John Shimkus—both need our prayers. The mayor of Alton is Tom Hoescht and the mayor of Godfrey is Michael McCormick. But we need not limit ourselves to the United States. We can pray for the leaders of other nations: for President Hamid Karzai of Afghanistan, Prime Minister Nouri al-Maliki of Iraq. We should pray for our military generals and for Ban-ki Moon, secretary general of the United Nations. We should pray for the leaders of our enemies: for Mahmoud Admadinejad of Iran, Kim Jong Il of North Korea, the leaders of Al-Qaeda, and for the leaders of Mexican drug gangs. The letter to Timothy makes it clear that we Christians must pray for all these leaders—the good, the bad, and the ugly—because Jesus Christ gave himself as a ransom for all people, everywhere. It is not our job to distinguish who deserves our prayer. We are to pray for peace, for godliness, for dignity and leave the rest to our Lord. 4. Naturally, we must not pray only for leaders and rulers. We must pray for all people. We don’t believe that prayer is some sort of vending machine, where we put in the prayer and God must dispense the result. Instead, we believe that we have been taught to pray by Jesus’ own example. We believe that prayer reorients our lives and reminds us that we all rely on God. We believe that prayer brings healing to individuals and to communities. So we are called to pray for everyone. One incredible website I found while preparing this sermon is http://www.prayer4every1.com/. Anyone can go to this website and enter a prayer request and it is immediately posted so that all visitors to the site can lift up other people in prayer. A few recent entries included a little girl who has been having seizures, for a woman named Janice, for the ministries of a church in Florida, and for all married people.
We pray for all these people because we believe with the writer of 1 Timothy that: “there is one God; there is also one mediator between God and humankind, Christ Jesus, himself human, who gave himself as a ransom for all.” This good news is not meant to exclude those who don’t believe in Jesus but rather to include all in the merciful salvation won for us in Christ.
5. But more than the good news of this universal salvation given to all people, there is also the good news that when we pray in the name of Jesus Christ, we reorient ourselves and our society. I was recently reading through some instructions for prayer in the introduction to a Lutheran daily devotional book. The writer suggested that each of us, upon waking in the morning, sit up in bed, cross ourselves and say, “In the name of the Father, the Son, and the Holy Spirit.” Likewise, when we go to bed at night, we should say our prayers, making intercessions for all people, and asking for a godly rest through the night. In this way, you live your whole day with prayer bookends around your actions, your thoughts, and your encounters.
And when those prayers are made in the name of Jesus Christ, the one who perfectly reveals God’s love and goodness to us, we begin to see the world, see other people, see our leaders, and see ourselves in a new way.
In the Wednesday morning study group, we have been studying the apostle Paul. Do you remember what happened to him on the road to Damascus? In the experience of conversion, he was blinded by the light of Christ. Later, when he joined fellow Christians, who prayed for him, something like scales fell from his eyes and his vision was restored. Something similar happens to us when we approach the world in prayer through the mediation of Jesus Christ. We see new things. Indeed, we see basic human dignity where before we saw strangers and enemies. We see the need for justice and peace where before we saw the seduction of national or economic interests. We see brothers and sisters who live by the same mercy and grace that we live by when before we saw no one at all. This is the power, the gift, and the necessity of prayer for all people.
Let us pray:
Great God of the whole world, we pray for our rulers and leaders, that they may guide the nations of your world with compassion and justice that all people may live in all godliness and dignity. Send your Spirit to continue to teach us to pray so that, in you O Christ, all human beings may find the truth of your love. In your holy name we pray. Amen.
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