The Mediator?

“For there is one God; there is also one mediator between God and humankind, Christ Jesus, himself human” — 1 Timothy 2:3

“Grant these our prayers, O Father, for Jesus Christ’s sake, our only Mediator and Advocate. Amen.” — The Book of Common Prayer, The Holy Eucharist : Rite One

A mediator is a go-between. One who makes intercession, connection, and peace between two or more parties. Jesus Christ is our mediator, in the sense that by his incarnation he has (as the prayer goes) “gathered into one things earthy and heavenly” and has bridged the chasm between humanity, creation, and God.

The phrase at the end of the “Tryptichs,” the intercessory part of the Eucharistic Prayer in Books of Common Prayer since 1552, and then as the Prayers of the People since 1928, refers to Jesus as “our only Mediator and Advocate”.

The Church of the Mediator, Allentown — founded in 1869 — was named after the Church of the Mediator, which had been founded in 1848 as a bastion of low-church — that is evangelical — Anglicanism in the city of Philadelphia.