It's been 22 years since I emigrated, and in that time something has happened to the way the British speak. Now, the British have always enjoyed friendly competition over their accents. There are around 40 different dialects in the UK, which is a lot for a small group of islands. In fact, accents can vary clearly from town to town.
So much so that a person with a good ear can tell within 10 miles where a Brit comes from just by listening to them. And we, Brits just can't help ourselves. Maybe it's our class ridden history, but we are like dogs. Whenever we meet another member of the species, the UK species, we have to check each other out and pass judgment.
Not in the same way that dogs do, but we place their accent and then we can judge whether they are good or evil, middle class or working class. Even their hobbies, politics, family shape, their, the type of music they listen to, the kind of food they like. We know it all just from their accent. I do this compulsively, uh, ghi Glen and I will be on vacation in Europe and I'll hear a British accent and I'll instinctively pronounced, instinctively pronounce judgements like Yorkshire--don't talk to her. Liverpool--mind your wallet. Devon--talk very slowly because they're not very smart. Northern Irish--don't mention Catholics or Protestants or the king or anything, you really don't want to upset this guy.
There's one accent that used to dominate, it's called received pronunciation. It's a bland, generic southern accent that could be called BBC English, but things have changed. I need subtitles for the BBC news because the BBC accent is no longer the BBC accent. Maybe it was Brexit. Maybe it was the failed referendum on Scottish Independence.
But somewhere in the last 22 years, someone thought it might be fun to hear someone from Newcastle or Heaven help us whale read the news. I feel like Henry Higgins from my Fair Lady. Paul has something to say about accents in today's reading from one Timothy, he has one language in mind, but it's spoken in different ways by different people. The language is prayer. It's a common language that unites all Christians. It's the language of heaven with it. We talk to God through it. We gather our collective urges and desires and present them to the one who hears and who acts.
But the language of prayer says, Paul comes in different dialects. I urge you that supplications, prayers, intercessions, and thanksgiving be made for everyone. There's the accent of supplication, the one of intercession that of Thanksgiving. The language of prayer is incomplete without gratitude requests and standing in the gap, empathizing with the suffering of the world.
That's what intercession means--to stand in the gap between two parties. And then there's the vital question of who should we pray for? And Paul decisively and ever so shockingly tells us straight, I urge that supplications, prayers, intercessions, and thanksgiving be made for everyone, for kings and all who are in high positions.
Pray for everyone in general, but one group of people in particular, people in authority, the government and for other people who have influence. Why? Well, Paul says so that we might live peaceful and quiet lives at St. John's. We have always tried to be obedient to this part of scripture. Every Sunday we pray in public and by name, the president of the republic, the governor of the state, and the mayor of the city, whether we like them or not, whether we agree with their policies or not, we pray for them because let's just understand, when Paul was writing this, it was during the reign of the Emperor Nero.
I suspect that Paul was not a great fan of Nero's policy of feeding Christians to lions. Just a hunch I have. But that didn't stop him urging people to pray for the king. In fact, Nero's policy of murdering Christians was for Paul, probably a good reason to pray for him rather than a reason not to. After all, a man with such a violent hatred of Christ and such a twisted disregard for human beings deserves more prayer than anyone.
And then he says, pray for those with authority. We might say all those with influence. So not just elected leaders, but everyone who has the power to touch lives. The people who shape our culture through tv, music, cinema, podcasts, literature, Facebook, TikTok, and the owners of all those media. I suspect that these are the people rather than our elected politicians who really hold most influence upon our lives.
Now, this is hard, isn't it? I can pretty much guarantee that at some point in the last 20 years, each person here has found it difficult to pray for the US government. Sometimes we feel good about our leaders, but other times we may have deeply unpleasant feelings towards our president, our governor, our mayor, our boss at work, our bishop, or anyone in any sort of authority.
So here's the Bible saying I should pray for these people, but what should I pray? I can't stand fill in the blank with whose ever name you can't stand. How can I pray for them? I faced that question many years ago while I was still living in the uk, but I won't mention who the Prime Minister was at that time.
But there was a Prime Minister that I really struggled with. I won't give you the year because I don't want you to know if it was Blair or Thatcher or Major or Brown or any other of the PMs I've lived under. So I began to deal with my problem by asking what does God want for this person? And the answer was not that they'd give up their disastrous policies and do what I wanted them to do.
No, it was things like a happy family life safety. A strong faith in Christ, loving and supportive friendships, a sense of peace and joy, a good conscience, you know, all the things that God wants for everyone. And so I was then like, can I pray these things for this leader? And I tried and something amazing happened.
The Prime Minister did not change their policies. Uh, they were as annoying, pigheaded, and wrong as they always were. But something did change. And that thing was me. I don't know how I can't understand it, but as I prayed for the pm, God invited me into their shoes. I saw their humanness. I saw their vulnerabilities, their fears, their pitiful humanity.
I think that's called empathy, and it is the holy work of God. And it changed me.
Henri Nouwen said, praying is no easy matter. It demands a relationship in which you allow someone other than yourself to enter into the very center of your person to see their what. You would rather leave in the darkness and to touch what you would rather leave untouched.
One night a man had a dream, a rare dream, a challenging dream, a dream from God, a dream to swell his heart and ignite his imagination. God had a job for him some years earlier. He had bought his house despite the presence of a two ton ornamental boulder in the front yard. It was not a feature he admired, but he really liked the house, and so he settled for the boulder also, and that boulder was the topic of his dream push.
It said, God, use all the strength I've given you, all the determination I've bestowed on you, all the smarts I've poured on you, and push the boulder. The next day, he rose early, full of hope and eagerly set to work. He leaned against the rock and pushed and pushed, and he carried on pushing until he stopped for lunch.
Then he went back out and continue to push until evening. The next day he pushed some more and the next and the next days turned into weeks and weeks into months. He toiled from dawn till dusk, pushing with all his strength that God had given him. Each night he went indoors, aching, and exhausted feeling that he had failed God.
Finally, he'd had enough. Lord, he prayed. I have labored long and hard, obeying you, killing myself, doing what you have commanded. Yet after all these months, I have not moved that rock, half a millimeter and God replied, my child, I'm proud of you. Thank you. I told you to push the rock with all your strength.
You have been faithful and obedient. I did not ask you to move it. Your task was just to push. And now you come to me with your strength gone thinking that you have failed. But go to the mirror, look at yourself. Your arms are strong and muscle. Your chest and back are ripped. Your hands and legs as firm as mountains.
You are ready for great things that I have planned for you.
What if the point of prayer is not so much to change other people and hard situations, but it's to change us? Paul says, we pray so that we might live peaceful and quiet lives. That peaceful and quiet life may mean that governments, leaders, influencers, work fruitfully to create a society that is peaceful and quiet.
It might, and at this moment in our national life, let it be, oh Lord, let it be that we do turn a corner soon and somehow that through whatever channels God chooses, we enter a more peaceful and quiet time for our nation. Everyone is saying things have to change and it's the others who have to do the changing.
But what if it starts with you and me? What if the only thing that changes in response to your prayers is you? That everything around you stays the same or even gets worse, but you, by the grace of God, become more peaceful and quiet. Wouldn't that be enough? And what if praying for the people you think are causing the problems is the way that God decides to change you, to bring you peace and quiet?
And then what if you and I and each of us become the way in which God brings about the peaceful and quiet life to our neighborhoods and our city, what if we the beacon, St. John's in the heart of Montgomery, be the place of peace and quiet? May we become fluent in the language of prayer, and may our accent be soothing and serene.