1 Timothy 2:1-8

Pentecost +17 - Year C

1 Timothy 2:1-8

Pray for everyone. Paul goes on to specifically include praying for people in high places, people who otherwise might not get prayed for. This might be considered to be a prayer for an enemy, someone whose dishonest wealth has led to a dishonest spirituality and a keeping of the one who is praying poorer and poorer.

The emphasis upon "people in high places" is an appropriate reminder that the prayer behind the prayer is revolutionary. It is hard to live a quiet and peaceable life in all godliness and dignity with all division and inequality of resources that is required to keep people in high places. The lifestyle they have grown accustomed to and want more of requires some to be physically, psychologically, or socially enslaved, hardly a quiet and peaceable life.

G*D does desire everyone to be saved and to come to the "knowledge of truth" which is that we are called to pray without a prayer behind the prayer of overt argument or passive-aggressive anger at the divisions between us.

While traditionally read as leaders are more sons of God than anyone else and so support them with prayer and praise just like you would a God, we can still hear echoes of a more radical call from G*D and Jesus to break down the dishonesty, the hypocrisy of wealth, and all that supports it.