In light of this week, what could I say, we say, that will not enrage by its triviality?
We are staggered by the events of this week Perhaps prayer - - stumbling, searching, beseeching prayer - - is our best response. I planned this sermon on the final two petitions of the Lord’s Prayer on Monday. On Tuesday, they took on a deeper, more urgent tone:
I
Traditionally we pray: "Lead us not into temptation." The phrasing has troubled some people for two-thousand years. Does this suggest that sometimes God does lead us into temptation? The phrase was confusing enough that before the New Testament was even finished James felt it important to say, perhaps with this issue in mind:
Later Latin manuscripts tried to help out by translating the petition: "Do not permit us to be led into temptation."
I prefer the translation of the Iona Worship Book, which has solid scholarly backing:
Save us in the time of trial.
Most scholars agree that the word we have translated "temptation" - peirasmon - is better translated "test" or "trial."
In times of testing or trial we are called upon to prove our true identity and character, who we are and whose we are. Sometimes the temptation comes in the form of sin; other times it comes as a time of great difficulty or suffering; other times it is a life-changing moment of choice, choice between two paths, good and evil, or between the good and the best. Will we in this moment of trial be true to God? To our best self?
A Jewish evening prayer of Jesus’ day may help us understand better this petition:
As in the Lord’s Prayer we have this Hebrew idiom "lead me not" or "bring me not" into temptation; it really means "do not let me be overcome" by temptation or sin. So we pray,
Save us in the time of trial.
The evening prayer also emphasizes that in any time of trial or testing we have a choice between the good impulse and the bad impulse. We are essentially good, but we can be pulled in either direction. So we pray to stay true to God’s way, for the best self to prevail over the false self:
Save us in the time of trial.
This prayer takes on an eerie resonance in light of this week’s terrorist attacks on our nation. To use the language of Abraham Lincoln in his First Inaugural Address, we pray for "the better angels of our nature" to prevail.
If we are human we will face temptation, trial, tests. It goes with the territory. So we pray:
Save us in the time of trial.
II
Let’s look back at the temptations Jesus faced in the wilderness. They were a test of who he was and what he was called to be and do in this world.
The first temptation by the devil was for Jesus to turn stones into bread. Here is the temptation to make the material world the final realm. Physical hunger is important to God, but for us there is a deeper hunger. So Jesus answers by quoting the word of God: "Humankind does not live by bread alone, but by every word that proceeds from the mouth of God" (Matt. 4:4).
The material is not the ultimate realm. Andy Warhol, pop culture icon, said that if he were to come back in another life he’d like to return as a ring on Elizabeth Taylor’s finger. (Is there a hint of materialism here?!) The terrorist attack on the World Trade Towers was an attack on the economic structure of our nation and the community of nations. But as important as economic structures are to the well-being of the world and therefore to God, who cares about our physical well-being, there is another even more crucial realm, the realm of the Spirit. We do not live by bread alone.
The second temptation was to power. The devil showed Jesus all the nations of the world and said, "They are yours if you but fall down and worship me." Jesus again quoted scripture:
The second temptation asks, What will you trade for power and its perquisites of fame and fortune? If you do have power, fame, fortune, influence, how will you use these? In service of good or evil?
The third temptation was more subtle. The devil led Jesus to the pinnacle of the Temple. He invited him to jump off and quoted scripture to Jesus about God’s angels who would parachute him safely to the ground. Evil quotes scripture too.
Jesus said, relying again on God’s word, "You shall not put the Lord your God to the test" (Matt.4:7).
The final temptation is to magical thinking: You say, "I am special; the normal laws and rules of life do not apply to me." We believe reality applies to others, not to us. But if you jump off a bridge, gravity works 100% of the time.
We are not immune to suffering or to death. Sometimes to run from suffering and death is to run from life and what we are called to do.
Luke’s temptation scene ends with these words:
The devil is an equal - opportunity seducer, and evil an opportunistic disease which waits until the right moment of vulnerability to attack. So we should pray every day: Save us in the time of trial.
The tests, trials, temptations will come, some by way of the evil one, some by way of our own stumbling --but God is with us there too, even in our stumbling -- some as part and parcel of the human condition. These are soul-making moments: times of spiritual formation and re-formation. We therefore pray:
Save us in the time of trial.
III
This week we have looked evil in the face. We have seen the human "heart of darkness." We have experienced what other people around our globe have experienced before. So this phrase takes on an anguished urgency:
Deliver us from evil.
Or as some manuscripts have it, "from the evil one."
Here is a jolt of realism from Jesus at the end of the prayer. Jesus recognized a malevolent power at work in the world, and he knew that apart from the power of God we could be overwhelmed by this evil.
Sometimes the evil is within us; other times it comes from without. We pray to be delivered from the evil we would do and from what evil can do to us.
There is a mystery to the presence of evil in the world, a mystery we cannot explain but which enters into our world through the freedom which God has placed in the fabric of the universe, a freedom which allows the terrible and the wonderful to happen. Theologians have described evil in three forms: personal evil, historical evil and natural evil.
Evil is that which destroys life and demeans persons. It creates lies and thrives on falsehood and deceit. Scott Peck says that human evil happens when we project our inner shadow, inner darkness onto others. Such is the importance of what AA calls a "fearless moral inventory." Part of C. S. Lewis’ road to conversion came as the Spirit gave him an honest picture of his own inner darkness:
Unless we are honest about ourselves we can project our inner darkness onto others and do them violence.
Evil can take hold of institutions and groups of people and cause individuals to do what they would never do as individuals, apart from the group. The New Testament calls these supra-personal powers which can be overtaken by evil "principalities and powers."
Jesus was not naive about the power and pressure of evil. He saw the Kingdom of God laying siege to the strongholds of evil, whether that evil was in the human heart and mind, or whether it was imbedded in social systems of oppression and exploitation. No wonder the New Testament says that it was these "powers that be," the "rulers of this age" who put Jesus to death (I Cor. 2:8).
But Jesus’ way of attacking the powers of evil was through a nonviolent resistance to evil. He forswore violence as a way of defeating violence.
IV
This brings us to the agony of this week where we have seen evil overtake a human organization. How can we defeat such evil without becoming evil ourselves? As one has said, "Be careful whom you call enemy, for you will become like them."
One of the marks of evil is the demonization of your enemy. This is what fundamentalist Islamic leaders have done to America. They call America, "The Great Satan." When you call your enemy Satan you are apt to justify any measure you take to defeat them. "Allah wills it," fanatical Muslim terrorists said as they executed Tuesday’s attack. But remember, in 1095 C.E. Pope Urban began the Crusades, a two-hundred year war against Muslims, with the rallying cry, "Deus lo Volt!": "God wills it!"
Jesus refused the way of the Zealots of his day who called Rome "The Great Satan" and opposed it with violent measures.
Here is a distinction important to me. We can call what a person does, or nation does, or group does "evil." But it is dangerous to say that person or nation or group is evil. When we do we are apt to do evil ourselves in order to defeat them.
Monday I chose the phrase of Jesus for the Silent Meditation: "I saw Satan fall like lightning from the sky." The image changed its intended meaning in light of Tuesday’s attack from the skies. We indeed saw evil strike like lightning from the sky.
But I hesitated to use it after Tuesday because I was afraid it would encourage our calling our enemy "Satan", as our enemy indeed calls us "Satan."
What Jesus meant by the phrase was that he saw the Kingdom of God overcoming the kingdom of evil. He saw Satan plummet defeated to the ground.
Having said that, I turn to the military violence which will certainly be our nation’s response to Tuesday’s attack. The bringing to justice of those who do violence and harm is part of the way this world restrains evil and maintains a minimum of order and safety. Theologians have termed the system of justice and community- sanctioned violence to restrain evil "the left-hand of God."
But this is a form of restrained violence. Theologians speak of the rules of "just war." Politicians draw up international accords for the limitation of violence. These guidelines have to do with the protection of civilian life as much as possible, and with the rule of "proportionality." Violence must be proportionate to the goals and the threat. So we pray for our nation to do what is necessary to end the terrorist threat to our nation and other nations, but not more. The nature of this new kind of war will call us to our best reasoning about "just war."
V
Having said that, I must say that Jesus concentrated on the "right-hand of God." He called us to a higher way; he chose not to join the justice and freedom movements of his day which used violence to defeat violence. "Love your enemy." he said, "Do not return evil for evil." How are we to follow such a one in such a time as this? I struggle to know. We will each struggle how to follow this one we call Lord.
I think, however, it begins as we pray Jesus’ prayers after Jesus: the Lord’s Prayer and the three prayers he prayed on the cross. As we go through the agony of our national cross, his prayers can guide ours. Three of them, a prayer for forgiveness, a cry of desolation, a prayer of relinquishment.
The prayer of forgiveness: "Abba, forgive them, for they know not what they do."
The honest cry of abandonment: "Eli, Eli lama sabachthani, My God, my God, why hast thou forsaken me?"
The prayer of relinquishment, "Abba, into your hands I commit my spirit." It is a prayer that relinquishes our lives and the life of the world into the hands of God, trusting in the justice and mercy of God. It "faiths" that though the darkness is as thick as the swirling dust at ground zero when the Trade Center Towers collapsed, light shines in the darkness and the darkness will not put it out.
Save us in the time of trial
And deliver us from evil
we pray; then the prayer issues into the impossible possibility of praise, doxology amid
the ruins:
For thine is the Kingdom
and the power and the glory
forever and ever. Amen.
1. The Writing Life (New York: Harper and Row, 1978), p. 68.
2. C. S. Lewis, Surprised By Joy (New York: Harcourt, Brace, 1955), p. 226.