Save Us from the Time of Trial. Matthew 6:13; Luke 22:39-46

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1 Save Us from the Time of Trial Matthew 6:13; Luke 22:39-46 Palm Sunday April 1, 2012 The Rev. Dr. Gary W. Klingsporn First Congregational Church in Nantucket, MA When we pray the Lord s Prayer we pray, Lead us not into temptation. What are we saying when we pray those words? I love Oreo cookies. I have always loved Oreos. After all, they are milk s favorite cookie. But right now I have an issue with Oreos. I m eating more of them than I want or need. Sometimes we have Oreos in our house and sometimes we don t. But at the moment we happen to have three packages: a package of Golden Oreos with the vanilla cookie, a package of chocolate Spring Oreos with yellow icing, and a package of the new Peanut Butter Fudge Oreo Creams. Because I m eating more Oreos than I want or need, I sat down the other day and read the package. Three Oreos have a total of 170 calories, including 7 grams of fat (saturated fat, polyunsaturated fat, and monounsaturated fat 11% of the daily recommended dietary fat value). By the way, while I was looking at the package I was reminded that Oreos turned 100 years old this year. Their current marketing slogan is Celebrate the Kid Inside. The package reads, There s a kid inside of each and every one of us who deserves to be set free every now and then.it s time to play. It s time to twist, lick and dunk your way to that carefree feeling of childhood. That s all well and good. I m just feeling that the kid inside me has been way too free lately when it comes to Oreos! I mention those Oreos because of the Lord s Prayer. When we pray the words, Lead us not into temptation, it sounds like God leads us into temptation, and we re asking God not to do that. But God did not put those Oreos in our pantry. God did not take them off the grocery shelf and put them in my basket. And God did not make me eat them. I did that. So what does it mean when we pray, Lead us not into temptation? Dr. Joseph Sittler was a distinguished theologian who taught at the University of Chicago Divinity School. One of my favorite stories he tells is about a white vending truck that parked at noon each day in front of the administration building at the University of Chicago. Every day students and faculty lined up in front of the truck to buy a variety of lunch items. The main item of attraction on the menu was the Polish sausage sandwich rich, juicy, greasy, garlic-laden, garnished with chopped onions, mustard, pickle relish, and green peppers. Sittler says: I too often used to be in that line. One day my fellow [parishioner] at Augustana Church was just in front of me. I was astonished to see him there and said so: Dr. Platz, what are you doing here? You are a pathologist; you know very well that you ought not to eat one of these violent things! They are, to be sure, among the most succulent of foods. Now I am only a theologian and don t know any better. But you are a doctor indeed, a 1

2 pathologist at that and you have professionally examined the catastrophic effect upon the stomach of the explosive, corrosive, tissue-eroding sausages! Those fiery peppers, to mention but one component of this symphony, are enough to make the white cells cry out in anguish! Charles Platz fixed me with a cool gaze. Yes, he said, you are quite right. But these things are very good, aren t they! So Charles and I went on doing what we knew we shouldn t. 1 Then Sittler says, There you have it, as the Apostle Paul says in Romans, I do not understand my own actions. I can will what is right, but I cannot do it. I do not do the good I want.but the evil I do not want is what I do (Romans 7:15-19). Paul was describing the struggle within the human will between good and evil, between good and bad choices. Paul and the Bible in general call it our struggle with sin a struggle manifest outwardly in our actions. So what do we mean when we pray, Lead us not into temptation? Does it imply that God leads us into temptation? Surely not, the church has said over the centuries. If God is good, then God doesn t tempt us. That would make God complicit with evil. In fact, the New Testament Letter of James declares, No one, when tempted, should say, I am being tempted by God ; for God cannot be tempted by evil and God himself tempts no one. But one is tempted by one s own desire (James 1:13-14). The translation of Jesus words in Matthew 6:13, Lead us not into temptation, comes from the old King James Version of But if you look at more recent translations such as our NRSV pew Bible, Jesus saying reads this way, Do not bring us to the time of trial. It can also be translated, Save us from the time of trial. The reason for this is that, depending on the context, the Greek word peirasmos here can be translated temptation, trial, or testing. Many scholars believe that trial or testing is the better translation for the Lord s Prayer: Save us from the time of trial. In fact, that translation is now increasingly used in many churches, worship liturgies, hymnbooks, and prayer books. If trial is a better translation, what did Jesus mean by the time of trial or testing? Scholars believe Jesus use of the phrase has both present and future meanings. The future (or eschatalogical ) meaning is: Save us from the severe trials and testing of persecution and tribulation at the end of time just before God s final victory and the full coming of God s kingdom in its glory. The present meaning is: Save us now from the ordinary testing and trials of everyday life temptations and testing that come not only from outside us, but also from inside us from our human weaknesses. Save us from evil that is real, subtle, and pervasive all around us in the world. And save us from our own human will and desires that are so easily focused selfishly upon ourselves. Jesus goes on to say, and deliver us from evil or from the Evil One, 2 When we pray this prayer, we re asking that God protect us from evil in the world. We re asking that God give us wisdom and strength to make good choices that reflect the will and the way of God as taught by Jesus and found in the Scriptures. 2

3 This prayer is for ordinary people like you and me, who know what it s like every day to make bad or unhealthy choices despite our best intentions. This is a prayer that God will give us the strength, protection, and resources we need to resist evil, to act on our convictions, and to pursue fairness, justice, or peace. Save us from or in the time of trial is a prayer for God s guidance and the strength to endure, because on our own, we cannot resist temptation or evil and do what is right and good. But this prayer is also about bad things that happen to us the crises that happen in our lives and world. It s a prayer that God will give us what we need to face crises when they come, when things get really difficult, and our faith is tested. It s a prayer to pray when life is threatened by disease, natural disaster, or by violence and evil inflicted upon us or upon those we love. It s a prayer to pray when we suffer, or we experience the fear and anxiety of living in a violent and evil world. So the question this morning is this: What are your Oreos? What are your Polish sausages? What are the places of trial and testing in your life where you need God s help and the help of people around you? What seemingly small things, or large things, cause you fear, anxiety, or guilt, or threaten to undo you? Where do you need God s help to cope with life or to be more healthy? This may seem trivial to think of the Lord s Prayer in terms of Oreos and Polish sausages. But the simplest things in life are often the most helpful in understanding those things that are deep and complex. Today is Palm Sunday, the day we remember Jesus entry into Jerusalem the final week of his life. As Jesus entered the holy city that day he was himself facing a great time of trial. People greeted him with festive shouts of joy because they believed he was the long-awaited Jewish Messiah. But death awaited him at the hands of those who opposed him. Jesus knew they wanted to kill him. He entered the city to shouts of Hosanna, of welcome and victory and celebration. But five days later there were others who shouted, Crucify him! Crucify him! By the end of the week he died violently on a cross. Save us from the time of trial, and deliver us from evil is a prayer Jesus prayed the night before he died. He also told his disciples to pray this prayer. After their last meal together Jesus and his disciples went out to the Mount of Olives to pray. Jesus said to his disciples, Pray that you may not come into the time of trial that it may not overwhelm you (Luke 22:40). Then he left them and went away to pray saying Father, if you are willing, remove this cup from me; yet not my will but yours be done. In other words, God help me; save me from this time of trial. Remove this cup of death from me; deliver me from this evil; yet not my will but yours be done. Jesus was facing his great time of trial and testing. When he finished praying, Jesus went back to where his disciples were. They were not praying as he had asked; they were sleeping. Jesus said to them, Why are you sleeping? Then a second time he said to them, Get up and pray that you may not come into the time of trial (Luke 22:46). In other words, Pray that God save you, keep you, from evil and a failure of faith in this dark hour. Jesus knew that on their own, his disciples were 3

4 not up to this time of trial. They needed help. They could not endure what was to come and remain faithful. The rest of the story proved that to be true. When the violence against Jesus began, they denied him, they fled, they deserted him. In the big crises and the small choices of every day life, Jesus says, pray this way: Save us from the time of trial, and deliver us from evil. We cannot do life on our own. We need help. This isn t about asking God not to lead us into temptation. What we are praying is, God, given the weakness of our human will, and the sin, evil, and temptation that lie within us and around us, save us! God, help us make good choices not unhealthy or destructive choices. Those choices might be about anything: food, exercise, drinking, smoking, sexuality, forgiveness, justice, speaking ill of another person, fudging the truth. This is a prayer for ordinary people like you and me who need God s help every day. What are your Oreos? What are your Polish sausages? What are the places of trial and testing in your life where you need God s help? Once again, as throughout the Lord s Prayer, we hear the plural pronouns. We don t pray save me from the time of trial. We pray save us. Every line of the Lord s Prayer is communal. It s always a prayer in community with other people who face the same trials, temptations, and testing that we face every day. We pray save us because we re all in this together. We need each other, and we pray for each other when we pray this prayer. I am reminded of this need for God and for each other every weekday at noon. Sitting in my office here at church, I look out my window and I see them arriving each day. They greet each other, glad to see each other. They are the noon AA group that meets in our church basement. What brings them together is radical honesty and radical dependence. They know they can t make it through each day without the help of their friends and the help of God. They reach out to God and to each other for help and deliverance from the powers that threaten their lives. Isn t that how they say it? We admitted we were powerless over our addiction that our lives had become unmanageable, and we came to believe that a Power greater than ourselves could restore us to sanity. We made a decision to turn our will and our lives over to the care of God as we understood God. 3 Notice the we and us language. Part of the wisdom and power of the Twelve-step tradition is the us the group in community together. Standing alone as isolated individuals, the tradition says, we are no match for the powers that would undo us. Through the power of community God gives us the strength to endure the times of trial and testing. Each day at the end of their meeting I hear the muffled voices of the AA group downstairs as they prepare to leave each other. I hear the cadences, the rise and fall of their voices, as they say the Lord s Prayer or recite one or more of the twelve steps. That sound of their voices together is to me one of the most beautiful sounds in the world. As they leave, those are the sounds of strength, commitment, and hope until they see each other again. 4

5 The church is also meant to be a place of us together where we are able to be honest about our struggles and share them with each other. A place where we admit that on our own we are powerless to do this thing called life. We need the power of God and we need each other. We need a safe place where we can confess our faults, ask for help, and know that our friends will be there for us. Each Sunday morning, before we leave this room, we turn and sing to each other, God be with you til we meet again; by his counsels, by God s presence and help, may God uphold you; with his sheep may God securely fold you; God be with you til we meet again. Those words we sing each week are words of commitment, strength, and reassurance. Then we go out the door trusting that God is there to help us and uphold us every step of the way. So what are your Oreos, what are your Polish sausages? What are the places of trial, testing, and temptation that threaten to undo you? Jesus said pray this way, Save us from the time of trial, and deliver us from evil. Let us pray this, knowing and trusting with all our hearts that God is good and that God will indeed see us through. Notes 1 Joseph A. Sittler, Grace Notes and Other Fragments, ed. Robert M. Herhold and Linda Marie Delloff (Philadelphia: Fortress Press, 1981), pp Grammatically, the final words of this petition may be translated either from evil or from the Evil One. In praying the Lord s Prayer the church s liturgical tradition has generally used the more impersonal from evil. Some scholars argue for the translation the Evil One as a reference to evil personified. The argument is that in the original usage by Jesus and in Matthew s Gospel the reference was likely to the personal Evil One, Satan, in the eschatalogical context of Jesus coming to defeat Satan. Others argue that the difference between these two renderings is quite small and it is more likely that evil here is to be understood in a very general sense. An early Christian document, the Didache, says, Remember your church, Lord, to deliver it from all evil (10:6). Preference in usage today is often influenced by theological views regarding the question of whether or not evil is to be understood as personified in the concept of Satan. 3 Steps 1, 2, and 3 of The Twelve Steps of Alcoholics Anonymous. 5