From the Sunday Note, with additional thoughts:
Beloved:
First of all, I ask that supplications, prayers,
petitions, and thanksgivings be offered for everyone,
for kings and for all in authority,
that we may lead a quiet and tranquil life
in all devotion and dignity.
This is good and pleasing to God our savior,
who wills everyone to be saved
and to come to knowledge of the truth.
For there is one God.
There is also one mediator between God and men,
the man Christ Jesus,
who gave himself as ransom for all.
1 Timothy 2:1-6a from our 2nd Reading
“God our savior…wills everyone to be saved” so Jesus, the “one mediator between God and men” … “gave himself as ransom for all.” [Emphasis added] God wants every one of us—every person who has, is, or will live on this earth—to be saved and given life eternal.
On the other hand, it is pretty evident that not everyone has gotten with the program. Will everyone be saved? Can God’s will be thwarted? A lot of ink has been spilled over this question—I am not qualified to spill any more. On the other hand, what we, as followers of Christ, are supposed to DO is crystal clear: offer “supplications, prayers, petitions, and thanksgivings for everyone.” [Emphasis added] and here Paul is mandating this for “kings and for all in authority.”
What kind of “kings and…all in authority” did Paul live under? Top three: Emperors Caligula (freakishly awful) Claudius (who drove all the “Jews,” likely including Christians, out of Rome) and Nero (who had Peter and Paul himself executed). And what about the emperors’ appointed underlings, ruling various parts of the vast Empire? Just the tangential information we get from the New Testament makes it clear: not a bunch of choir boys and girls.
How different is that from today?
Would Paul include prayers for Vladimir Putin? Do we?
How wide, how real is our desire that everyone be saved? Have we ever struggled with praying for particular members of our own families? Would it be easier to pray for the leader of Russia than for a certain relative who has caused much pain to people we are close to? Are there situations we avoid bringing into our prayers because they are uncomfortable for us to even think about?
I do not have easy answers to all these kinds of questions, but I am sure that Paul is right to put them on our agenda. Let’s spend a little time this week considering whom we need to pray for and what we want for them.
For further reflection:
One good thing that can come out of praying for those difficult to pray for is a bit of self-understanding. Because of our own sins, or our fearfulness, or our emotional responses to various things–you or I might be a person that someone else would have trouble praying for. Coming to awareness of that truth is a big step in taking responsibility for sins we have committed (or committed by omission, that is by not doing something we should have done at the time). That’s one reason we pray “Forgive us our trespasses” daily in the Lord’s Prayer.