Sermon: Healing Divides, One Prayer at a Time

Church of the Nativity - Fayetteville, GA

September 21, 2025

15th Sunday After Pentecost

1 Timothy 2:1-7

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Sometimes it feels like the world is on edge. Tensions simmer beneath the surface, and even small disagreements can feel like fault lines. We notice how easily people are divided into camps. Communities are split, neighbors eye each other with suspicion, and families fracture over loyalties. Every choice, every word, feels like it is being scrutinized.

Sounds familiar, doesn’t it? Like something out of our own news feeds or in our neighborhoods. But I’m not describing today. I’m describing the Roman Empire when Timothy received Paul’s letter. This was the world the early church lived in: a society riddled with suspicion, factionalism, and conflict, even among people who shared the same faith.

And as we read today in 1 Timothy, it is into a divided world and church that Paul gives a directive that would seem almost too simple, and yet radical: pray. Pray for all.

To understand why his instruction is so striking, we have to remember what was happening in Ephesus. Paul had left Timothy there to guide a young church struggling with deep divisions and disagreements over teaching. Some members were being misled by false teachers. Others were quarreling, gossiping, and forming factions. 

This tension wasn’t just internal; it affected how the church appeared in the broader community, putting the congregation’s reputation at risk. Some members were Jewish, some were pagan—different backgrounds, different perspectives—but all were part of the same fledgling community of faith.

And Paul’s prescription? It isn’t a new policy or a series of rules. It isn’t a public call-out of the group you disagree with. The first step toward healing the church and restoring unity is prayer.

Paul urges Timothy to offer “supplications, prayers, intercessions, and thanksgivings…for everyone.” And then he adds: “for kings and all who are in high positions.” At first glance, that might seem strange. Why emphasize rulers?

Paul writes to Timothy at a time when the church is a small, vulnerable community under the watchful eyes of the Roman authorities. By the late first century CE, the Roman Emperor Cult had gradually become a unifying, politically stabilizing force across the Empire. Emperors were celebrated and even worshiped as divine figures. Public prayers were often directed to the Caesars themselves. Some in the Ephesian church may have been participating in such prayers, perhaps out of social pressure or because they had come from a pagan background and still clung to this practice.

In this context, Paul’s instruction to pray for kings instead of to them is a corrective. He is saying: rulers are not divine. They, like all of us, depend on God’s guidance and mercy. 

Yet, to others, the instruction to pray for rulers was a stark command to pray for the very people who were threatening them. The early church was a minority movement, and followers of Christ could face suspicion, social ostracism, or pressure from local authorities for not participating in the imperial cult. Refusal to honor the emperor or the gods could be seen as unpatriotic or even seditious.

In this one simple command, we see two human tendencies we still struggle with today. 

The first is to idolize. Just like those praying to Caesar, we can elevate certain people—rulers, celebrities, or public figures—to a status that borders on worship. Their words, actions, and decisions can feel larger than life, shaping our emotions, priorities, and even our sense of security.

The second tendency is the opposite: to dehumanize. When we are angry, fearful, or frustrated, it is easy to dismiss others, treating them as less than fully human. We label, stereotype, divide, and write people off as unworthy of our time, empathy, or even our prayers.

Notice what comes next: “There is one God, and one mediator between God and humankind, Christ Jesus, himself human, who gave himself as a ransom for all.”

Paul’s instruction to pray for everyone addresses both tendencies and the divides they create among us. It’s not hard to imagine that in their context, which isn’t so different from our own, the differences over different people saw the rules or the land were creating divisions in the church. The prayers for rulers were both a recognition of potential threats and a radical stance of seeing them as human and under God’s mercy. 

Do you notice how the “alls” find commonality under “the one?” Pointing to Christ and his redemptive work, Paul reminds us that there is one God and in Jesus we are all equal. We’re all in need of Christ and we’re all made new in Christ. If we can remember that, divisions cease to matter. The knowledge that Christ entered fully into our human condition means there is no ‘us and them,’ only a shared humanity redeemed by his love. 

Paul’s reason for this radical inclusivity? “So that we may lead a quiet and peaceable life in all godliness and dignity.” A quiet and peaceable life is not the absence of conflict or the illusion of safety. It is the outward expression of a life formed by prayer. Prayer reorients our hearts, shaping the way we see the world and those around us. When we pray sincerely, we begin to see others not as threats or obstacles, but as humans, created and loved by God. Gossip softens. Fear loosens. Anger finds a path toward understanding. 

The Collect puts it beautifully: “Grant us, Lord, not to be anxious about earthly things, but to love things heavenly; and even now, while we are placed among things that are passing away, to hold fast to those that shall endure; through Jesus Christ our Lord…” 

Prayer is God’s antidote to anxiety. It shifts our focus from people as threats to people as beloved. It allows us to live with dignity, navigate disagreements with patience, and witness to the godliness that flows from the Spirit.

When we pray for the “everyone” in our lives—the neighbor who irritates us, the coworker we misunderstand, the family member with whom we clash—we are practicing the very antidote Paul recommends: a quiet, peaceable life shaped by sincere faith.

Then, Paul returns to the bigger picture: God desires everyone to be saved and to come to the knowledge of the truth. Prayer is not merely a practice for our own peace. It aligns our hearts with God’s mission. By praying for all, we participate in the extension of God’s mercy and love. We resist the human tendency to separate, to divide, to form elite or exclusionary groups.

Christ’s humanity connects us all to God. Through him, all are included. To pray for everyone—both those we idolize and those we might feel are unworthy—is to embody the gospel in the most radical, practical way. We’re all human, in all our mess-making and mistakes.

Even though Paul was writing to a church in Ephesus, his words still speak to us. In the first century, the call to pray for all would have sounded radical. In our own time, we can hear a similar call. We too live in a world where it’s all too easy to dehumanize those with whom we disagree—neighbors, coworkers, public figures, even family members. It happens on social media, in our offices, and around the dinner table. Prayer reminds us that even those we find frustrating, even those whose decisions we cannot control, are human and beloved by God.

Praying for those we disagree with is not about endorsing their choices. It’s about remembering our shared humanity. It’s about cultivating lives of quiet and peaceable dignity, as Paul says, where we are not consumed by anger, gossip, or suspicion. It aligns our hearts with God’s desire that everyone be drawn into the knowledge of the truth. Prayer becomes a practice that shapes the one who prays, softening the impulses that divide us, opening our eyes to the common humanity of those we might otherwise write off.

In short, when we pray for all, we participate in the work of God’s kingdom. We are reminded that there is one God, one Savior, one mediator, and that our task is not to control the world but to cultivate hearts that reflect God’s mercy, patience, and love.

Prayer will not change everything overnight, but it will begin to change you. And that is the point. This week, can we begin where Paul begins: praying for all? Start with one person or a group of people you would rather not pray for. Let God form in you a heart that remembers the humanity of everyone. Let God cultivate a quiet, peaceable life marked by godliness and dignity in you.

As we pray for everyone, we participate in God’s work of reconciliation. Prayer is not passive; it forms us to live differently, to act differently, and to see the world through God’s eyes. Amid the things that are passing away, prayer fixes our eyes on what endures. It teaches us to love the heavenly, to honor the humanity in everyone—even those we struggle to understand—and to live with the quiet dignity that God desires for all.

May you and I be different than the world around us this week. May we be people of prayer, reflecting the unifying love of Christ in a world too quick to divide. Amen.