Welcome to this week’s episode, a special rerun from our Speaking of Life archive. We hope you find its timeless message as meaningful today as it was when it was first shared.
Watch video on YouTube: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=C7GR_R_Edrc
Program Transcript
Speaking of Life 4043 | Where is the Balm?
Greg Williams
Where is God when it hurts? It’s a question most of us have asked at least once as we’ve watched others struggle through unbearable pain or trial. For many believers, the hurt results in genuine cries of pain and frustration. Sometimes this is followed by a nagging guilt over our own doubts and uncertainties – as if asking the question is wrong, or going through pain makes us less than… It might reassure you to know that the scriptures describe many people who cry out to God as they seek to understand where God is in times of suffering.
The prophet Jeremiah is a good example. In his response to the cries of distress from the people of Judah and Jerusalem, he famously declared:
“Is there no balm in Gilead?
Is there no physician there?
Why then has the health of the daughter of my people not been restored?”
Jeremiah 8:22 (ESV)
For anyone who has experienced the feel of cool aloe vera on a nasty sunburn, you will know what a balm is supposed to feel like. It is both a source of healing and of comfort. Jeremiah is asking, where is the comforter? Where is the one who will heal the people and the land? Where is the redeemer?
In a world full of conflict and geopolitical instability, it is natural that we ask ourselves such questions. They are not a sign of faithlessness, and they should not move us to feelings of guilt or inadequacy. Pain, violence, and inequality are all consequences of a broken world in need of healing.
When someone collapses in the middle of a street, those who intervene might cry out for a doctor — that doesn’t imply an absence of help, rather it is a declaration of need.
Throughout this passage in Jeremiah, the language is intentionally vague as to who the speaker is. Is it Jeremiah or God speaking? The “daughter of my people” is a term best used by God. God himself is declaring the helplessness of the world that is broken and in desperate need of healing – is there one who can bring it the comfort and restoration that is needed?
When we cry out in frustration at the state of the world, we witness to the faithfulness of the Father and to his compassion that he feels as he looks upon everyone caught up in pain and suffering. He cries out with the prophet, “Is there one who can bring the comfort and restoration that is needed?”
In Jesus, we hear a resounding “yes” to that question. He has come as a physician to heal the sick and he has sent his Spirit who is a balm to fill, soothe and restore the cracks that permeate our broken world.
The next time you or someone you know calls out in despair, rest in the truth that we have God’s answer in Jesus. There is a balm in Gilead, there is a physician here. He has answered the call of a broken world. He has wept alongside it, suffered for it, and healed it with his wounds.
I’m Greg Williams, Speaking of Life.
Program Transcript
Speaking of Life 4043 | Where is the Balm?
Greg Williams
Where is God when it hurts? It’s a question most of us have asked at least once as we’ve watched others struggle through unbearable pain or trial. For many believers, the hurt results in genuine cries of pain and frustration. Sometimes this is followed by a nagging guilt over our own doubts and uncertainties – as if asking the question is wrong, or going through pain makes us less than… It might reassure you to know that the scriptures describe many people who cry out to God as they seek to understand where God is in times of suffering.
The prophet Jeremiah is a good example. In his response to the cries of distress from the people of Judah and Jerusalem, he famously declared:
“Is there no balm in Gilead?
Is there no physician there?
Why then has the health of the daughter of my people not been restored?”
Jeremiah 8:22 (ESV)
For anyone who has experienced the feel of cool aloe vera on a nasty sunburn, you will know what a balm is supposed to feel like. It is both a source of healing and of comfort. Jeremiah is asking, where is the comforter? Where is the one who will heal the people and the land? Where is the redeemer?
In a world full of conflict and geopolitical instability, it is natural that we ask ourselves such questions. They are not a sign of faithlessness, and they should not move us to feelings of guilt or inadequacy. Pain, violence, and inequality are all consequences of a broken world in need of healing.
When someone collapses in the middle of a street, those who intervene might cry out for a doctor — that doesn’t imply an absence of help, rather it is a declaration of need.
Throughout this passage in Jeremiah, the language is intentionally vague as to who the speaker is. Is it Jeremiah or God speaking? The “daughter of my people” is a term best used by God. God himself is declaring the helplessness of the world that is broken and in desperate need of healing – is there one who can bring it the comfort and restoration that is needed?
When we cry out in frustration at the state of the world, we witness to the faithfulness of the Father and to his compassion that he feels as he looks upon everyone caught up in pain and suffering. He cries out with the prophet, “Is there one who can bring the comfort and restoration that is needed?”
In Jesus, we hear a resounding “yes” to that question. He has come as a physician to heal the sick and he has sent his Spirit who is a balm to fill, soothe and restore the cracks that permeate our broken world.
The next time you or someone you know calls out in despair, rest in the truth that we have God’s answer in Jesus. There is a balm in Gilead, there is a physician here. He has answered the call of a broken world. He has wept alongside it, suffered for it, and healed it with his wounds.
I’m Greg Williams, Speaking of Life.
Psalm 79:1–9 · Jeremiah 8:18–9:1 · 1 Timothy 2:1–7 · Luke 16:1–13
Our readings for this fifteenth Sunday after Pentecost portray the wide range of human experience, and our theme, surprised by redemption, offers insight into the way God’s capacity for grace often astonishes us. Our call to worship, found in Psalm 79, is a lament, where the psalmist gives voice to his pain that the temple has been “profaned.” Lament is something many people struggle with, and reading the rawness of emotions conveyed in Psalm 79 can help us understand that God does not require us to “cheer up” our thoughts, emotions, or prayers before we express them. In fact, God also conveys feeling brokenhearted in Jeremiah 8. The prophet writes from God’s perspective, lamenting the way Israel turned toward idols. “My joy is gone, grief is upon me,” God cries, and from this, we can hear God’s deep desire for a relationship of reciprocity, even though God remains loyal and steadfast regardless. Luke 16:1–13 offers a confusing parable (sometimes called the Parable of the Dishonest Manager), one where it seems that the ends justify the less-than-honest means. A self-serving manager shrewdly decides to be charitable so that his debtors will provide for him when he is fired from his job. This story, told by Jesus, gives us an example of expectations-based grace versus the unlimited grace God provides. In this world with its human-made systems, “quid pro quo” or “I’ll scratch your back if you scratch mine” seems to be the best we (or the dishonest manager) could hope for. Jesus points out the limitations of thinking any generosity must be paid back. We can never pay God back for the grace and goodness we’ve been shown. God never expects that from us. Our sermon text comes from 1 Timothy 2:1–7. In this passage, we’re encouraged to pray even when we don’t want to. We can be surprised by God’s grace and willingness to connect with us.
Reminder: This introductory paragraph is intended to show how the four RCL selections for this week are connected and to assist the preacher prepare the sermon. It is not intended to be included in the Sunday sermon.
How to use this sermon resource.
The Peace Connection
1 Timothy 2:1–7 NRSVUE
It can be humorous and enlightening to listen to the prayers of children. Here are a few examples:
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- Dear God, when my mom makes leftovers, do I have to pray for the food again?
- Dear God, I want to be just like my daddy when I grow up but without so much hair all over.
- Dear God, thank you for the baby brother, but what I prayed for was a puppy.
- Dear God, it must be super hard to love all the people in the world, especially my brother. I don’t know how you do it.
Prayer is a spiritual discipline, and some of you may be familiar with prayer as a practice. In fact, some might be thinking something like this: “Yeah, I’ve heard everything about prayer. I’ve done the prayer cards, the prayer notebook, the prayer groups, the prayer meetings – I know about prayer.”
Our sermon text tackles an aspect of prayer that we’d like to skip: praying for difficult people. Like the last kid’s prayer about loving a difficult brother, we’d rather not pray for some people if we’re honest. We’re going to explore this topic as we consider our sermon passage in 1 Timothy 2:1–7. Let’s read it together.
Context of 1 Timothy 2:1–7
While Paul isn’t clearly confirmed to be the author of the pastoral epistles, the letters addressed to Timothy and Titus offer helpful advice to the local churches regarding what they were dealing with at the time. The pastoral letters talk about the role of a pastor, offering encouragement about leading a local church. Theologian N.T. Wright notes two main concerns that appear in these letters: “everyone who professes Christian faith should allow the gospel to transform the whole of their lives so that the outward signs of the faith express a living reality that comes from the deepest parts of the personality [and]…every teacher of the faith should know how to build up the community in mutual love and support” (p. 5).
Organizationally, 1 Timothy 2 begins addressing the world’s hierarchical power structure at the time (1 Timothy 2:1–7) before moving into the hierarchy of power in the home (1 Timothy 2:8–15). Though our sermon text doesn’t include it, 1 Timothy 2:8–15 poses that men are the people who should pray, and women are to be silent (while dressed modestly, of course) because of Eve (1 Timothy 2:13–14). However, Paul points out in Roman’s 5:12–21 that it was Adam’s sin, not Eve’s, which placed us in need of reconciliation. Further, the book of Acts (specifically, Acts 2:17, 18:26, and 21:9) affirms women’s position in ministry. Certain church practices advised in this pastoral epistle are not upheld in other parts of Scripture. This stresses the importance of considering the entire witness of the Bible.
This passage of 1 Timothy has sometimes been titled “Prayer for the World.” In its historical context, the Jewish Christians, under Roman rule, were required to pray for the emperor. Wright continues, “The Romans made all their subject people pray to the emperor, invoking him as lord and saviour. But they realized that this wouldn’t work with the Jews, who believed that there was only one God; so, they allowed them to pray to their own God on behalf of the emperor” (p. 19). This provision was referred to as the “Jewish exemption.”
Prayer for rulers and those in authority, even pagan rulers, would benefit Christians with peace and social stability. It also was a challenge to believers to think about God’s love for the entire world, not just the faithful, bringing God’s kingdom to earth rather than blessings for the church only. Wright suggests that prayer for difficult people, including rulers, can have a transformative effect on those who pray: “Try praying for your rulers…and watch not only what God will do in your society but also how your own attitudes will grow, change, and mature” (p. 20). Both the powerful and the average person are caught up in God’s loving embrace.
Interestingly, our sermon text begins with a “First of all,” but then there are no second or third points. According to University of Houston Professor of Religious Studies Christian Eberhart, “first of all” could be better translated “above all” or “the most important thing is that…” as it encourages believers to continue in prayer. Eberhart also notes that the author of 1 Timothy asks for all types of prayer for everyone: “The author employs four partially equivalent Greek words for prayer, each of which conveys a different nuance.” One term indicates an appeal for a particular need; another is a general word for prayer that frequently occurs in petitions. Two more terms mean an urgent and bold request and an expression of gratitude.
As we consider 1 Timothy 2:1–7 with its admonition to pray for everyone, let’s think about praying for difficult people, whether they are “rulers” or somebody who rubs us the wrong way. What can we learn about ourselves and God from engaging in this type of prayer?
Lament is a natural beginning, and grief may be part of what we must bring before God.
As we consider our call to worship reading, Psalm 79, we can see that we can come before God with our concerns without editing them. When dealing with difficult people or unjust rulers and authorities, lamenting their mistreatment of us and others may be the best place to start. God does not expect us to praise and adore those who hurt other people. Acknowledging the truth of our wounds is a necessary first step. If you have ever read through Psalms, you may have noticed that some of them are quite violent (see Psalm 137:9). These writings make us uncomfortable, not only because of their violence but because we can relate to those feelings of wanting vengeance. Yet these songs or prayers have been collected for us, perhaps in an effort to show us how to lament.
Lament may begin with anger. After all, “Our anger is a reasonable, legitimate response to something which is also angering to God,” writes author Sarah Bessey in her Field Notes newsletter. She continues, “Our anger is an invitation to pray, to advocate, to learn, to become educated, to support, to protest, to push back the principalities and powers of this world our own selves instead of waiting for someone else to do something.” As we witness the vulnerable and marginalized deprived of their human rights and due process, we should be angry.
Grief is another component we must bring to God. As shown in our reading from Jeremiah 8, God freely expresses his disappointment and hurt due to Israel’s lack of reciprocity in the covenant relationship. In her book A Hole in the World: Finding Hope in Rituals of Grief and Healing, author Amanda Held Opelt writes that Christians are not taught how to grieve: “I learned to serve, to pray, to worship, to study, and to love… [but] I never learned how to grieve. The ability to grieve deeply is a survival skill, one we’ve come close to losing as a society” (p. 11).
Knowing grief and kindness are inextricably linked; you can’t have one without the other. The poem “Kindness” by Naomi Shihab Nye connects our ability to recognize kindness and be kind to others with knowing deep sorrow first:
Before you know kindness as the deepest thing inside,
you must know sorrow as the other deepest thing.
You must wake up with sorrow.
You must speak to it till your voice
catches the thread of all sorrows
and you see the size of the cloth.
As we pray for difficult people and rulers who may be unjust and causing harm, we must first connect with lament for ourselves and others who have been hurt (i.e., catching the thread of all sorrows and seeing the size of the cloth) and then offer our anger and grief to the God who hears all prayers and comforts us in our affliction. Beginning here keeps our prayers authentic and true, and if we’re willing to stick with it, God creates a shift that prepares us to pray for others, especially those with whom we disagree.
There is one God, and Jesus Christ died to bring all people into relationship with the triune God.
We read in 1 Timothy 2:5–6 that there is one God and that Jesus brought all humanity into the divine relationship, even the most difficult or downright evil people. As followers of Christ, we’re called to pray for everyone. This hearkens back to v. 4 to remind us God “… desires everyone to be saved and to come to the knowledge of the truth” (1 Timothy 2:4 NRSVUE).
This extravagant grace is highlighted in another of this week’s RCL readings, the parable of the dishonest manager as told by Jesus in Luke 16:1–13. In this story, we are challenged by a God who takes our expectations and our desire for fairness and justice (except when we’re at fault) and turns them upside down. Jesus ends up praising the manager’s less than honest behavior, and we have to wonder if our desire for fairness and justice might be missing the mark of what’s important. Jesus suggests that if someone like this manager can come up with a clever solution to fix a situation he created through dishonesty, how much more could believers do with God’s grace behind them?
Grace is something that continues to surprise us. God’s generosity and love surpasses what seems logical and fair in our limited perspective. God is always good, so stories like this one upend what we see as safe, responsible behavior. They help to widen our perspective about what love looks like. We struggle to love each other when our flaws and mishaps constantly scrape and scratch, despite our best efforts to look like we have it all together. Jesus says he sees through our best efforts to look good, and he still loves us. We are forgiven for being human and challenged to forgive ourselves and each other. Additionally, we’re expected to share grace with others, loving them and seeking justice for everybody. In this way, we are re-oriented to God’s values and standards.
Prayer signifies our relationship with the triune God through Jesus the Christ. Relationships require communication, and prayer is the way we connect with God and allow ourselves to be transformed and healed. When we nurture peace in our own hearts through prayer, we naturally wish for the same peace and goodwill for others. We’re invited to consider our role as people who pray, inviting the God who loves all creation to transform us into peaceful connections in this world, forerunners of God’s kingdom on earth.
Call to Action: Consider lament as a way to pray, perhaps using the psalms for support. Acknowledge your anger and grief if present and ask for God’s healing. Offer prayers for difficult people in your life or unjust rulers and authorities, remembering their status as part of the created world and our interconnectedness.
For Reference:
Bessey, Sarah. Field Notes, 17 Mar. 2025, https://sarahbessey.substack.com/p/your-anger.
Opelt, Amanda Held. A Hole in the World: Finding Hope in Rituals of Grief and Healing. Worthy Books, 2023.
Nye, Naomi Shihab. “Kindness.” Poets.org, https://poets.org/poem/kindness?gad_source=1&gclid=Cj0KCQjw7dm-BhCoARIsALFk4v9Ky3VXHZHI7o1nbZtZby2byeShY5feZdePNUFHY938ufcAn9c8P_caAq5lEALw_wcB.
Wright, N.T. Paul for Everyone: The Pastoral Letters, 1 and 2 Timothy and Titus. Westminster John Knox Press, 2003.
Rev. Dr. Jared Michelson—Year C Proper 20
Listen to audio: https://cloud.gci.org/dl/GReverb/GR067-Michelson-YearC-Proper20.mp3
September 21, 2025 — Proper 20 in Ordinary Time
1 Timothy 2:1-7 NRSVUE
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Program Transcript
Rev. Dr. Jared Michelson—Year C Proper 20
Anthony: Our next text for the month is 1 Timothy 2:1-7. It is a Revised Common Lectionary passage for Proper 20 in Ordinary Time, which is September 21.
First of all, then, I urge that supplications, prayers, intercessions, and thanksgivings be made for everyone, 2 for kings and all who are in high positions, so that we may lead a quiet and peaceable life in all godliness and dignity. 3 This is right and acceptable before God our Savior, 4 who desires everyone to be saved and to come to the knowledge of the truth. 5 For there is one God; there is also one mediator between God and humankind, Christ Jesus, himself human, 6 who gave himself a ransom for all—this was attested at the right time. 7 For this I was appointed a herald and an apostle (I am telling the truth; I am not lying), a teacher of the gentiles in faith and truth.
This is a brief but powerfully rich theological text. God desires everyone to be saved, verse 4. Jared, what does this declaration tell us about God, the church, and anthropology, human worth?
Jared: Yeah. I really like that last bit of the question. What does it tell us about anthropology and human worth? Because I think it tells us quite a lot. Verse 5 has this proclamation of monotheism: “for there is one God, and there is only one mediator between God and humankind, Jesus Christ.” This is actually profoundly significant for developing ideas of human dignity, human rights.
When you look at the ancient world, Christian monotheism was not just about how many gods there are. In fact, it wasn’t really about how many Gods there are or not, because at times Paul seems to say there’s lots of false gods. There might actually be some malevolent powers that are kind of God-like in a bad way.
It was more about the character of the one God and the one God that is revealed in Jesus Christ. Paganism had this way of relating to God, and you see the prophets particularly in what’s called the post-exilic text, particularly in the bits of the Old Testament that are when Israel is trying to reckon with the exile, they are constantly critiquing the pagan deities.
And the critique is less about how many gods there are. The critique is that your gods are needy — paganism in this way. And they had a vision of God that was based on exchange. If you want your crops to grow, if you want your nation to be protected, if you want to have a large nation, then the key is treating the god rightly. If you give the god the proper sacrifice, then he will make your crops grow. If you sacrifice just a little bit of something that is valuable to you, then he will give you something even more valuable. If you sacrifice a few of your crops, he’ll make your crops grow. If you sacrifice an animal, he’ll protect your nation. And on and on it goes.
And the kind of terrible dialectic of idolatry is that out of desire, out of seeking something that you think will make you happy, whether it is flourishing or protection or a large family, you end up giving more and more to the god. The gods are needy, they’re demanding, and eventually you end up giving the thing that is most precious to you for the sake of your own happiness, because of course, the horrible conclusion of idolatry. This idolatrous dynamic that the prophets critique is child sacrifice. You give literally the most precious thing in the world to you for the sake of your own desire.
And the prophets constantly have this exalted, transformed, monotheistic vision of God, which just cuts off that logic of exchange right from the beginning. In the Psalms, God will say, “I have the cattle on a thousand hills. If I needed anything, I wouldn’t have asked you. In other words, there’s no exchange needed here. My goodness doesn’t need to be bought. It doesn’t need to be bargained with. And the reason is actually because I am so full of life, I’m the Creator of all things. I’m not one small pagan tribal deity that you can bargain with that’s just for your nation and not others. I’m the God who made all things, and therefore I’m so endlessly rich that the needs of bargaining couldn’t even enter into the equation to begin with.”
But the other implication of this is that when you have a pagan god, when you say, we’re the Babylonians and we have Marduk and he’s our god, and we’re some Canaanite tribe and we have Baal and he is our god, your gods are for you and not for anyone else. They work for you if you pay them off, and they’re opposed to the other. And so, when you look at the ancient world, they don’t have our modern idea that all humans have shared dignity and value just because they are human.
When you read Aristotle, he has a very different view. He says, some people were born to be slaves and other people were born to rule. He said, some people were born Greeks or Romans, and some people were born barbarians. And they’re almost as if these are different sorts of species, as if to be a Roman and to have our gods makes us of a fundamentally different kind than these other sorts of beings.
And so, part of the revolution of monotheism and particularly Christian monotheism is saying, if there’s one God overall, then he operates with us out of his goodness, not by bargaining, but two, he is the God for all people, not just for us. As I said before, there’s no slave nor free. There’s no Greek nor barbarian.
And that’s why Paul on Act 17, when he comes to speak to the Greek thinkers, he says, this God is not far from any one of us. In him, you live and move and have our being. He’s the Father of all and he’s basically been reaching out to all of humanity from the beginning.
So, this vision of one God is actually profoundly significant. It is, I would argue — and there’s a lot of intellectual histories that have made this point — it is the roots of our modern idea that every single human person, no matter where they’re from, no matter what race they are, no matter even what religion they are, every one of them is worthy of dignity and value. And this is actually rooted in the idea that there was one Creator and Lover and good God over all. So yeah, that last question, I think this is absolutely essential to recovering a vision of the human worth and dignity of every person.
Anthony: And for me, this is why it’s so important to point to this one God as triune Father, Son, and Spirit. Because if you have a unitarian God in isolation, he would have created out of need. And so, everything does become about neediness.
But within the triune nature of God, there was joy, overflowing harmony. There was no need. But out of the overflow of love, creation came to be. And therefore, all created beings, all of our human beings made in his image and likeness, not out of need, but because of desire of relationship, of wholeness. And as you said earlier, for the flourishing of all mankind. It’s so important to see the triune-ness of God, the Trinity.
Jared: I think that is absolutely right. And sometimes I say things like this, and people will think that this is some sort of revisionary version of God. This is not true at all. You can find arguments like this all throughout the medieval, the idea that if goodness, if generosity is a divine perfection, if it’s part of what made God perfect, then if God was just a monad, then who could God have been generous to without creating?
So, what that would mean then is in order to be generous — and remember we said generous was, generosity is part of what makes God perfect — so, in other words, in order to be perfect, in order to be God, he would’ve needed to create, and in that case, God wasn’t creating the world in order to give. He was paradoxically creating the world for himself so he can become perfect, so he can become generous, so he can become the generous God that characterizes perfection. Instead, as you said, if God is Father, Son, and Holy Spirit, if he is perfectly giving within his one essence from all eternity, then this world is, and I love this word, even though it’s a big word, is gratuitous. God didn’t need it for the sake of God.
Anthony: Yes.
Jared: God literally loved it into being out of that fullness and joy within God’s perfect triune perfection. He spilled out into the world. And again, sorry, I know I’m rambling here, but this does transform the way we think about quote unquote conditions, to go back to our earlier view. Because we oftentimes have actually that kind of an implicit pagan view of God that I was talking about before. We think God has saved us or God has promised us salvation. God has done all of these good things for us. And, therefore, he just asks a bit from us in return.
He wants us to do some good things, either to pay him back for what he has done or because this is owed in some way because of all of the good things he promises to give to us. But if God is this infinite triune God, that can’t be the case because God doesn’t need anything we have to give. So, anything he asks us to do can ultimately in some deep sense only be for us, not for him. It can only be to give grace upon grace, gift upon gift, to lead us into more humanity and more flourishing and more wholeness, not to take something from us that he was lacking.
Anthony: Yeah, that’s so insightful because, and not to get into another subject, but that really does inform missiology. Like when we participate in mission with God, it’s out of the overflow. It’s the spilling out of his love, not just another box to check, but this is who God is and this is what he does by his Spirit. And, oh, there’s just so much to get into there.
Let’s continue on with this thought. When we look at verses 5 and 6, we see that there’s one mediator between God and humanity, and you’re in St. Andrews. So, I think of TF Torrance in his work, the Mediation of Christ. What are the implications of Christ Jesus, the man being the mediator between God and humanity? Is that just high theology or is there something very practical about this?
Jared: Yeah, I think there’s a huge amount that is practical here and there’s so many ways you could get into it.
It is high theology. One of my favorite modern theologians is George Hunsinger, and he talks about how the view of the atonement that you have, the view of what you think Jesus needs to do to redeem us is almost inseparably and inevitably connected with who you think Jesus is. So, in theological terms, the atonement and Christology, what you think Jesus does and who you think he is are inseparable. And the bigger job you think Jesus has to do to restore us and to redeem us, the more exalted you need to think about him.
And I think that’s exactly what we’re getting here, that Jesus is the one mediator because he alone, as verse 6 says, gives himself as the ransom. And I think that’s a really powerful word. Look, I’m not a biblical scholar. They could get into all the details, but at a basic level it just means a means of release.
And that to me gets to the heart of salvation. The reason that we — salvation is a big job and it needs God himself, the one mediator Jesus Christ — is because the most difficult parts of sin are things that we feel powerless before. Again, we can be very judgmental and legalistic and think that if people just wanted to stop sinning, then they could.
And I don’t think that’s a very helpful way of thinking. I think we need to be released from something that stands over against us. I don’t know about you, but when I think of my most kind of intractable character flaws, for me to be completely honest, one of them is just people pleasing. I care so much about what people are thinking about me, I think they’re thinking about me much more than they are. And I usually think that they’re thinking much worse thoughts about me than they actually are. And I can just be consumed in thinking about what people think. And can I tell you if I could stop that, I would. I have wanted to be released from that kind of obsession with being worried about what people are thinking about so many times.
I think that might sound like a mundane, safe thing to share, but I think most of our biggest struggles in life are things that we feel helpless before. I think of my friends that have gone through AA and one of the foundational tenets is that you need a higher power because you cannot solve this yourself.
And that’s what that idea of ransom is about, that we need someone to release us from a power that threatens to hold us captive, and that to some degree makes us helpless, or at least makes us feel helpless. But if I could say one other thing about that idea, then, of the one mediator — what this does mean then is that in, in some profound fundamental sense, our relationship with God is direct. It is in a sense individualistic. It is straight through. There’s no one that needs to stand in the way, that God himself, in the person of Jesus has done what is required to release us from sin. And therefore, by relating to him we have union with God.
And yet what that one mediator doesn’t do is it doesn’t eliminate the fact that God still uses means. Paul talks about how Jesus is the one reconciler, and yet he’s given to us the ministry of reconciliation, that other people can be the means, the vehicle, the space at which we encounter the one mediator that is Jesus Christ. And if we had time, I could tell loads of stories about that. But that is what you talked before about mission.
Mission is not us going off on our own and through our own ingenuity or smarts or argumentative rigor or whatever it may be, winning people to Christ. It’s maybe being in the right place at the right time, where the one mediator, Jesus uses us as an instrument to show people Jesus. And oftentimes that’s not through our strength, it’s through our weakness. Oftentimes it’s not through our capacity. It’s through our own need for Christ ourselves, which allows us to be that vehicle through which other people meet the one mediator that is Jesus.
Anthony: So much could be said there, and I’m grateful for what you did say, because it’s a lot — that we have direct relationship with the Father. Jesus is not so much a middleman as it were.
Sometimes I think people can get that idea that he’s protecting us from the Father. That’s not what’s at play here at all, because guess what? The Father’s like Jesus and has always been like Jesus. We didn’t always know it, but now we do because he is the one mediator. Hallelujah. Praise the Lord.
Program Transcript
Rev. Dr. Jared Michelson—Year C Proper 20
Anthony: Our next text for the month is 1 Timothy 2:1-7. It is a Revised Common Lectionary passage for Proper 20 in Ordinary Time, which is September 21.
First of all, then, I urge that supplications, prayers, intercessions, and thanksgivings be made for everyone, 2 for kings and all who are in high positions, so that we may lead a quiet and peaceable life in all godliness and dignity. 3 This is right and acceptable before God our Savior, 4 who desires everyone to be saved and to come to the knowledge of the truth. 5 For there is one God; there is also one mediator between God and humankind, Christ Jesus, himself human, 6 who gave himself a ransom for all—this was attested at the right time. 7 For this I was appointed a herald and an apostle (I am telling the truth; I am not lying), a teacher of the gentiles in faith and truth.
This is a brief but powerfully rich theological text. God desires everyone to be saved, verse 4. Jared, what does this declaration tell us about God, the church, and anthropology, human worth?
Jared: Yeah. I really like that last bit of the question. What does it tell us about anthropology and human worth? Because I think it tells us quite a lot. Verse 5 has this proclamation of monotheism: “for there is one God, and there is only one mediator between God and humankind, Jesus Christ.” This is actually profoundly significant for developing ideas of human dignity, human rights.
When you look at the ancient world, Christian monotheism was not just about how many gods there are. In fact, it wasn’t really about how many Gods there are or not, because at times Paul seems to say there’s lots of false gods. There might actually be some malevolent powers that are kind of God-like in a bad way.
It was more about the character of the one God and the one God that is revealed in Jesus Christ. Paganism had this way of relating to God, and you see the prophets particularly in what’s called the post-exilic text, particularly in the bits of the Old Testament that are when Israel is trying to reckon with the exile, they are constantly critiquing the pagan deities.
And the critique is less about how many gods there are. The critique is that your gods are needy — paganism in this way. And they had a vision of God that was based on exchange. If you want your crops to grow, if you want your nation to be protected, if you want to have a large nation, then the key is treating the god rightly. If you give the god the proper sacrifice, then he will make your crops grow. If you sacrifice just a little bit of something that is valuable to you, then he will give you something even more valuable. If you sacrifice a few of your crops, he’ll make your crops grow. If you sacrifice an animal, he’ll protect your nation. And on and on it goes.
And the kind of terrible dialectic of idolatry is that out of desire, out of seeking something that you think will make you happy, whether it is flourishing or protection or a large family, you end up giving more and more to the god. The gods are needy, they’re demanding, and eventually you end up giving the thing that is most precious to you for the sake of your own happiness, because of course, the horrible conclusion of idolatry. This idolatrous dynamic that the prophets critique is child sacrifice. You give literally the most precious thing in the world to you for the sake of your own desire.
And the prophets constantly have this exalted, transformed, monotheistic vision of God, which just cuts off that logic of exchange right from the beginning. In the Psalms, God will say, “I have the cattle on a thousand hills. If I needed anything, I wouldn’t have asked you. In other words, there’s no exchange needed here. My goodness doesn’t need to be bought. It doesn’t need to be bargained with. And the reason is actually because I am so full of life, I’m the Creator of all things. I’m not one small pagan tribal deity that you can bargain with that’s just for your nation and not others. I’m the God who made all things, and therefore I’m so endlessly rich that the needs of bargaining couldn’t even enter into the equation to begin with.”
But the other implication of this is that when you have a pagan god, when you say, we’re the Babylonians and we have Marduk and he’s our god, and we’re some Canaanite tribe and we have Baal and he is our god, your gods are for you and not for anyone else. They work for you if you pay them off, and they’re opposed to the other. And so, when you look at the ancient world, they don’t have our modern idea that all humans have shared dignity and value just because they are human.
When you read Aristotle, he has a very different view. He says, some people were born to be slaves and other people were born to rule. He said, some people were born Greeks or Romans, and some people were born barbarians. And they’re almost as if these are different sorts of species, as if to be a Roman and to have our gods makes us of a fundamentally different kind than these other sorts of beings.
And so, part of the revolution of monotheism and particularly Christian monotheism is saying, if there’s one God overall, then he operates with us out of his goodness, not by bargaining, but two, he is the God for all people, not just for us. As I said before, there’s no slave nor free. There’s no Greek nor barbarian.
And that’s why Paul on Act 17, when he comes to speak to the Greek thinkers, he says, this God is not far from any one of us. In him, you live and move and have our being. He’s the Father of all and he’s basically been reaching out to all of humanity from the beginning.
So, this vision of one God is actually profoundly significant. It is, I would argue — and there’s a lot of intellectual histories that have made this point — it is the roots of our modern idea that every single human person, no matter where they’re from, no matter what race they are, no matter even what religion they are, every one of them is worthy of dignity and value. And this is actually rooted in the idea that there was one Creator and Lover and good God over all. So yeah, that last question, I think this is absolutely essential to recovering a vision of the human worth and dignity of every person.
Anthony: And for me, this is why it’s so important to point to this one God as triune Father, Son, and Spirit. Because if you have a unitarian God in isolation, he would have created out of need. And so, everything does become about neediness.
But within the triune nature of God, there was joy, overflowing harmony. There was no need. But out of the overflow of love, creation came to be. And therefore, all created beings, all of our human beings made in his image and likeness, not out of need, but because of desire of relationship, of wholeness. And as you said earlier, for the flourishing of all mankind. It’s so important to see the triune-ness of God, the Trinity.
Jared: I think that is absolutely right. And sometimes I say things like this, and people will think that this is some sort of revisionary version of God. This is not true at all. You can find arguments like this all throughout the medieval, the idea that if goodness, if generosity is a divine perfection, if it’s part of what made God perfect, then if God was just a monad, then who could God have been generous to without creating?
So, what that would mean then is in order to be generous — and remember we said generous was, generosity is part of what makes God perfect — so, in other words, in order to be perfect, in order to be God, he would’ve needed to create, and in that case, God wasn’t creating the world in order to give. He was paradoxically creating the world for himself so he can become perfect, so he can become generous, so he can become the generous God that characterizes perfection. Instead, as you said, if God is Father, Son, and Holy Spirit, if he is perfectly giving within his one essence from all eternity, then this world is, and I love this word, even though it’s a big word, is gratuitous. God didn’t need it for the sake of God.
Anthony: Yes.
Jared: God literally loved it into being out of that fullness and joy within God’s perfect triune perfection. He spilled out into the world. And again, sorry, I know I’m rambling here, but this does transform the way we think about quote unquote conditions, to go back to our earlier view. Because we oftentimes have actually that kind of an implicit pagan view of God that I was talking about before. We think God has saved us or God has promised us salvation. God has done all of these good things for us. And, therefore, he just asks a bit from us in return.
He wants us to do some good things, either to pay him back for what he has done or because this is owed in some way because of all of the good things he promises to give to us. But if God is this infinite triune God, that can’t be the case because God doesn’t need anything we have to give. So, anything he asks us to do can ultimately in some deep sense only be for us, not for him. It can only be to give grace upon grace, gift upon gift, to lead us into more humanity and more flourishing and more wholeness, not to take something from us that he was lacking.
Anthony: Yeah, that’s so insightful because, and not to get into another subject, but that really does inform missiology. Like when we participate in mission with God, it’s out of the overflow. It’s the spilling out of his love, not just another box to check, but this is who God is and this is what he does by his Spirit. And, oh, there’s just so much to get into there.
Let’s continue on with this thought. When we look at verses 5 and 6, we see that there’s one mediator between God and humanity, and you’re in St. Andrews. So, I think of TF Torrance in his work, the Mediation of Christ. What are the implications of Christ Jesus, the man being the mediator between God and humanity? Is that just high theology or is there something very practical about this?
Jared: Yeah, I think there’s a huge amount that is practical here and there’s so many ways you could get into it.
It is high theology. One of my favorite modern theologians is George Hunsinger, and he talks about how the view of the atonement that you have, the view of what you think Jesus needs to do to redeem us is almost inseparably and inevitably connected with who you think Jesus is. So, in theological terms, the atonement and Christology, what you think Jesus does and who you think he is are inseparable. And the bigger job you think Jesus has to do to restore us and to redeem us, the more exalted you need to think about him.
And I think that’s exactly what we’re getting here, that Jesus is the one mediator because he alone, as verse 6 says, gives himself as the ransom. And I think that’s a really powerful word. Look, I’m not a biblical scholar. They could get into all the details, but at a basic level it just means a means of release.
And that to me gets to the heart of salvation. The reason that we — salvation is a big job and it needs God himself, the one mediator Jesus Christ — is because the most difficult parts of sin are things that we feel powerless before. Again, we can be very judgmental and legalistic and think that if people just wanted to stop sinning, then they could.
And I don’t think that’s a very helpful way of thinking. I think we need to be released from something that stands over against us. I don’t know about you, but when I think of my most kind of intractable character flaws, for me to be completely honest, one of them is just people pleasing. I care so much about what people are thinking about me, I think they’re thinking about me much more than they are. And I usually think that they’re thinking much worse thoughts about me than they actually are. And I can just be consumed in thinking about what people think. And can I tell you if I could stop that, I would. I have wanted to be released from that kind of obsession with being worried about what people are thinking about so many times.
I think that might sound like a mundane, safe thing to share, but I think most of our biggest struggles in life are things that we feel helpless before. I think of my friends that have gone through AA and one of the foundational tenets is that you need a higher power because you cannot solve this yourself.
And that’s what that idea of ransom is about, that we need someone to release us from a power that threatens to hold us captive, and that to some degree makes us helpless, or at least makes us feel helpless. But if I could say one other thing about that idea, then, of the one mediator — what this does mean then is that in, in some profound fundamental sense, our relationship with God is direct. It is in a sense individualistic. It is straight through. There’s no one that needs to stand in the way, that God himself, in the person of Jesus has done what is required to release us from sin. And therefore, by relating to him we have union with God.
And yet what that one mediator doesn’t do is it doesn’t eliminate the fact that God still uses means. Paul talks about how Jesus is the one reconciler, and yet he’s given to us the ministry of reconciliation, that other people can be the means, the vehicle, the space at which we encounter the one mediator that is Jesus Christ. And if we had time, I could tell loads of stories about that. But that is what you talked before about mission.
Mission is not us going off on our own and through our own ingenuity or smarts or argumentative rigor or whatever it may be, winning people to Christ. It’s maybe being in the right place at the right time, where the one mediator, Jesus uses us as an instrument to show people Jesus. And oftentimes that’s not through our strength, it’s through our weakness. Oftentimes it’s not through our capacity. It’s through our own need for Christ ourselves, which allows us to be that vehicle through which other people meet the one mediator that is Jesus.
Anthony: So much could be said there, and I’m grateful for what you did say, because it’s a lot — that we have direct relationship with the Father. Jesus is not so much a middleman as it were.
Sometimes I think people can get that idea that he’s protecting us from the Father. That’s not what’s at play here at all, because guess what? The Father’s like Jesus and has always been like Jesus. We didn’t always know it, but now we do because he is the one mediator. Hallelujah. Praise the Lord.
Small Group Discussion Questions
- What or who do you find it easy to pray for? Why do you think this is?
- What or who do you find it difficult to pray for? Why?
- The sermon suggests that a shift happens once we express our anger and grief to God through lament, and this makes it possible for us to pray for difficult people. What do you think changes in you that makes it possible to pray for God’s grace to be with a difficult person?
- What are some practical ways that we can pray for people or authorities we might find difficult or unjust?
- When we see God’s grace in expansive ways, our perception of love changes. How have you seen this in your own life?
