Most mornings, I try to start my day with prayers of gratitude. As I lay in bed and stretch, I look out the window and give thanks: the sky, clouds, the trees, birds, new buds on the trees – and these days the branches that are visible again as the leaves begin to fall. My gratitude list includes Eric, my children and family members, and you, my church family and the worship and work we do together. Then, I feel compelled to find out what happened overnight. I turn on the radio or read the news. It is then that a whole other kind of praying begins: Oh dear God, how can this be? Help us, Jesus. Keep my neighbors safe. Save the earth.

In this time, when many of us feel that things are off kilter and unpredictable, when we wonder what the future may hold, perhaps it is reassuring to hear again from the biblical tradition, that we are not alone in our experience of a world that feels out of control. Jeremiah’s lament lets us know that, as Qoheleth says in Ecclesiastes, there is nothing new under the sun, including our tears and fears of the unknown. (read Jeremiah 8:18-9:1)

Hearing this ancient complaint, that has been declared part of sacred scripture, gives some space (and permission if that’s what need) to bring our own prayers of protest to God. Jeremiah normalizes and allows us, even as wealthy and accomplished as we are, to bring our grief, our worry and despair to God. We too can be honest in our prayers.

As we read Jeremiah, we might wonder: is this Jeremiah lamenting? Is it God who is speaking? Is it the people who are crying out? Is this my voice? In ancient Hebrew there is no punctuation (or vowels for that matter) – and this part of Jeremiah is poetry – so we read carefully – or perhaps expansively – as we seek to understand. Is God lamenting (“Why have they provoked me to anger with their images, with their foreign idols?”) or is it Jeremiah who is disappointed in the people? For the brokenness of the daughter of my people I am broken, I mourn, and horror has seized me. There are layers of prayer here, in voices that we might wonder at – and even so, we can understand the heart of the complaint.

For much of my growing up, I imagined there was a right way to pray. One formula that I learned somewhere along the line was the ACTS prayer – A for adoration, C for confession, T for thanksgiving, S for supplication. Must we work our way through the whole acronym? Jeremiah goes right to C – for complaining.

Jeremiah’s prayer is not sanitized; it is not made perfect and orderly for God’s approval. Jeremiah does not pretend that he is happy with how things are – and his honesty does not drive The Holy away. The Holy does not demand a series of false niceties in order to be present. The Holy One just is here. Like Jeremiah, we are “allowed” to admit our anger, disappointment, brokenness, that we are heartsick. These real feelings will not – and cannot – separate us from the Spirit, for indeed the Spirit is within us with every breath.

Our laments and disappointments, fears and failures can be, should be, included in our prayers. In being honest with ourselves and with God, we are more prepared to be honest with our family, our friends, our neighbors. Our own hearts may even be strengthened when we are honest about the pain that we feel. And in that strength, we have more capacity to reach out to others who are also in pain. It is a paradoxical truth, the honesty about our own shortcomings humbles us – and yet we are strengthened for the next hard thing.
SING – You do not carry this all alone. (2x) This is way too big, for you to carry this all on your own. You do not carry this all alone.

Around seven hundred years after Jeremiah, the writer of I Timothy gives explicit instruction on prayer.

I have never preached on this passage from I Timothy, probably because the verses that follow this passage are so objectionable, even (or especially?) 1800 years later and half a world away. The subsequent passage starts by saying that men should pray everywhere by lifting up hands that are holy without anger or argument. (How very interesting after what we just heard from angry, argumentative Jeremiah.) And then we get the verses that tell women to dress modestly, tell men to keep their women in line – because after all, Adam came first and the woman tempted him and women will find their salvation through bearing children. Whew. No wonder I Timothy is often relegated to the sidelines in our time. This passage has a lot of cultural context to unpack. Is it even worth it? (It’s on page 1453 of you Anabaptist Community Bible in case you want to look it up.)

Let’s take a short detour from prayer to try and understand the context for I Timothy – which was probably written after II Timothy (don’t ask me.) Timothy and his community are the recipients of this letter, purportedly written by Paul but probably written later by one of Paul’s followers. Timothy’s congregation is located in Ephesus, a large city which was the home of the followers of the goddess Diana. As followers of Diana, women had a lot of agency and were not afraid to raise their voices – and hands, loudly, in worship. And they dressed to the nines.

Thus the emerging church community that Timothy gathers in Ephesus is in direct contrast to this “cult” of Diana. The instructions to Timothy invite the men to find their own role, along with their “male god”? Perhaps it is in order to distinguish themselves from the Diana followers, that the Jesus followers receive the instruction for the women to step back and for men to step up – even by raising their hands in prayer -without anger or argument.

I am not saying I agree with the instructions for women to not wear jewelry or elaborate hairstyles. Nor does the instruction for wives to stay quietly submissive to their husbands work well for me. And I do not agree with the theology that Eve was the cause of sin and women are saved through having children. But maybe the writer isn’t being as universal as has too often been taught, since in the next chapter there is acknowledgment, even the assumption, that women are deacons. And II Timothy starts out with affirmation for the faith of Timothy’s mother and grandmother from whom he received his own faith.

Instead of silencing women and prohibiting all jewelry (as Mennonites have been known to do) perhaps what we should take from these verses about “keeping your women in line” is that the writer is trying to put distance between the followers of Diana and the followers of Jesus. It is regrettable (and we might even say sinful) that women around the globe have suffered for generations because of this particular instruction in a letter written to Timothy. I wonder if the author ever imagined that this situational instruction would be used as a commandment for all women everywhere, for centuries. Here is something to lament in honest prayer (with Jeremiah): the story of Jesus that brought freedom for women for a generation or maybe two, developed into a heavy weight of oppression for women for many, many, more years.

But back to the passage we heard Meryt read today. The writer asks that the community pray for the king and other leaders. Initially, this might sound like an instruction stemming from the Christian Nationalism that is so prevalent today. We must pray for our leaders because they are anointed by our Christian God. But the leaders in Timothy’s day were not Christian; they were a threat to this emerging community.

Perhaps then this instruction is a way to protect the followers of Jesus. 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. Pray that the leaders will leave them alone to spread the truth. And the writer of the letter is determined that he will be understood as telling the truth – even though he is a teacher of Gentiles.

Christian Eberhart says this instruction is more than protection, it is a political statement: pray for the king and leaders. Pray for the king, not to the king as the king would have them do. Timothy’s house church is still under the Caesar who demands that Caesar is God. These followers of Jesus are instructed to pray for the king but they will not pray to the king. Even so, there is the hope that they will be left alone, to live in dignity, and follow Jesus who gave up his life, unlike what the Caesar would do for his people. The writer uses the phrase, God, who wants all people to be saved. This has a very concrete meaning here. As a community that is in danger from the government, being “saved” means be able to live, live a life of dignity and truth.

Timothy’s community is navigating between Caesar on the one hand and the “cult” of Diana on the other hand. They are finding their way in a time of many competing gods, being encouraged to live a humbler life than those who follow Diana – and still with as much dignity as is possible with Caesar breathing down their necks. They refuse to bow to Caesar, because they recognize, with the letter writer, that the God of Jesus is “immortal, invisible and the only God.” (1:17)

Commentator David Carr says that this text from I Timothy might be read to understand that those who possess significant amounts of social power and political agency (might) consider that, in some situations, subtle forms of political subversion, rather than more overt acts of protest or rebellion, are necessary to preserve the well-being of the most vulnerable.

Whose safety, whose salvation, are we looking out for? Certainly I hear this from the community organizers in my circles. “Remember that we are centering the most vulnerable. This is not about you as someone with status, someone with white skin. Remember that we are here for those who are most at risk.” As ancient as this text is, this is still true: everyone deserves to lead a quiet and peaceable life in all godliness and dignity.

Jeremiah and I Timothy may seem at odds with each other, coming at us from long ago and far away, and – they both encourage us to pray with honesty in our own situation. Lament is honest prayer. Praying for safety and dignity is honest prayer. And we do not pray alone. We are accompanied by these ancient holy scriptures. We are accompanied by each other – and the Holy accompanies us, always.