In the aftermath of September 11, 2001 there was much discussion on the subject of evil. While most people agreed that it exists, there was a strong opposing voice, especially from the world of academia. However, in the light of the recent killings conducted by ISIS (or ISIL) as well as the kidnapping of teenage girls in Nigeria and other atrocities committed by Boko Haran, most of us agree that evil does exist.
DOES EVIL EXIST?
When we turn to the Bible we learn that evil not only exists but that it originates in a personal force described by Isaiah as the Day Star, son of Dawn (Isaiah 14:12). This doesn’t mean that God created evil. Rather, it tells us that there was and is the potential within God’s good work for evil to arise. At the outset of Jesus’ ministry, he was tempted and supremely tested by this Day Star, Satan, who attempted to use all his deceitful craft to break the relationship between Jesus, the unique Son of God, and God, by getting him to disobey God.
The temptations of Jesus show us that we live in a world where two kingdoms are in conflict – the rule of God and the attempted rule of Satan. Indeed Satan (which means accuser) keeps a record of all our failures before God. And because we have failed to keep God’s commands – to love God and to love one another – he insists the penalty must be paid.
CS Lewis brilliantly portrays this idea in The Lion, The Witch and the Wardrobe. Edmund had betrayed Peter, Susan and Lucy, and Aslan too. The witch demanded Edmunds’s life. “He has broken the laws of the deep,” she insisted. “He is mine. His life is forfeit.”
And, in his justice, God cannot refuse Satan’s demands for human life.
DELIVER US FROM EVIL
However, the good news for us is that Jesus not only demonstrated his greater power over the forces of evil, but he found a way to address Satan’s prosecution. In Colossians 2:15, Paul says that when Jesus was crucified, he disarmed the rulers and authorities and put them to open shame, by triumphing over them… Augustine, the Bishop of the North African port of Hippo spoke of the cross as the devil’s mousetrap. Through his death Jesus has provided the just means of our forgiveness. God’s righteousness has been perfectly satisfied once and for all.
When we pray, But deliver us from evil we see that there are at least two levels of meaning. We are praying that God might deliver us from the temptations of the evil powers – for Satan prowls around us like a lion (1 Peter 5:8). We also are asking for God’s protection against the evils of this world. But there is something else we tend to overlook: we are asking God to deliver us from the prosecution that Satan will attempt to bring against us on the final day.
The more I have thought about these themes the more I consider that Thomas Cranmer had this in mind in the prayer for God’s forgiveness that we find in the Communion Service:
Almighty God,… have mercy upon you; pardon and deliver you from all your sins…(BCP).
Yes, we need God’s forgiveness. But we also need to be delivered from all the charges that stand against us.
‘Christ has died; Christ has risen; Christ will come again’ forms part of many a liturgy. But how many of us really believe that there will be an end time when Jesus Christ returns? And, if we do believe it, how many of us live as if it is a reality?
Last Sunday, November 30, was the first Sunday in Advent, the season that calls us to focus not on the first coming of the Christ, but on his second.
It seems strange, even ironic, that we think about Christ’s return in the lead up to the celebration of his birth. However, we need to think about this. In our busy lives we tend to forget God’s great and ultimate purposes. Indeed in our western culture it is all too easy to focus on the festivity of Christmas and lose sight of the fact that it is just Part One of the Jesus narrative.
By focusing on the return of Christ before the celebration of his first coming, his incarnation, we are reminded that there is to be a final, awesome instalment to life with his return in all his majestic power and glory. And the truth of what is yet to come is grounded in what has already occurred. The birth of Jesus Christ, his life, death and resurrection all point to the authenticity of his words when he spoke of his second coming.
Thoughts about the return of Jesus Christ bring us back to the Prayer he gave his disciples. The Lord’s Prayer is a simple but profound prayer around two important petitions. The first is addressed to God as Father – asking for the honoring of his name and the triumph of his kingdom in great glory. The second includes God’s giving us now some of the benefits of the world to come – including provision for our daily needs. Further, in asking God’s forgiveness of our sins (as we in turn forgive those who sin against us) we are reckoning on our need to be prepared for the final day of judgement – setting our affairs in order with God and those around us, while there is time.
LEAD US NOT INTO TEMPTATION
Which brings us to a further ‘we’ petition: And lead us not into temptation…
We must be careful to read these words in the wider context of the Bible. So, in James 1:13 we read:
Let no one say when he is tempted, “I am tempted by God”; for God cannot be tempted with evil and he himself tempts no one.
As Joachim Jeremias, The Prayers of Jesus (p.105) points out, the meaning is, ‘Do not permit that I fall into the hands of sin, iniquity, temptation, and anything shameful.’ Jesus’ words can be translated, ‘Let us not succumb to temptation’. It is not a plea to be preserved from temptation but a preservation in the course of temptation. All of us are tempted – as was Jesus. What we need is God’s mercy, discernment and strength to overcome the temptation.
Consider the three temptations Jesus endured at the outset of his ministry (Luke 4:1-13). On each occasion Satan used Scripture to tempt him. Each time Jesus’ response rested on his knowledge of the Law (he quoted Deuteronomy) and the Writings (he discerned the devil’s misuse of Psalm 91). In each instance Luke makes it clear that Jesus had recourse to two sources of strength – God’s Spirit and God’s word. In 4:1 Luke tells us that Jesus was full of the Holy Spirit. Thus, Jesus, filled with the Spirit, was equally dependent upon using his mind and understanding of God’s word to counter the devil’s temptations.
GOD’S PROMISE AND GOSPEL HOPE
We find a sobering but encouraging promise in 1 Corinthians 10:13
No testing has overtaken you that is not common to everyone. God is faithful, and he will not let you be tested beyond your strength, but with the testing he will also provide the way out so that you may be able to endure it. Let it be our prayer in this Advent Season that God’s Spirit and God’s Word working within us will enable us to find our way out of the mire of temptation.
The American ‘Thanksgiving’ is a holiday Judy and I have especially come to appreciate, for it resonates with the theme of thankfulness that we find in the Bible. Indeed, as our first Thanksgiving followed the events of 9/11, it was a particularly meaningful day for us.
While much has been written in recent times about the psychological and relational benefits that spring from thanksgiving and gratitude, philosophers of the ancient world also saw the importance of being thankful. The Roman philosopher, Cicero, wrote: Being and appearing grateful is not only the greatest of virtues, but also the parent of all others.
THANKSGIVING
It has a rich meaning within Christianity. So, Paul writing in his Letter to the Colossians says, Whatever you do, in word or deed, do everything in the name of the Lord Jesus, giving thanks to God the Father through him (Colossians 3:17).
But having a thankful heart does not come naturally to us. For as Paul pointedly states in Romans 1:19-23:
Ever since the creation of the world his (God’s) eternal power and divine nature, invisible though they are, have been understood and seen through the things he has made. So they are without excuse; for though they knew God, they did not honor him as God or give thanks to him.
All of us have within us this bias against God: we don’t want to thank him or honor him in our lives. This is the essence of what the Bible refers to as sin – ingratitude. Created in the image of God, we are the glory of God; but having turned our back on him, we are now the shame of his creation. We see evidence of this wherever human beings are dehumanized by political oppression or violence, by poverty, hunger or injustice.
In our secularized society most people tend not to have a mind of their own, being seduced by pop-culture and political correctness, the loudest voices and the latest trends. Choosing to live without God, we are held in captivity to self.
The wonderful news is, as Paul develops in his Letters, that God in Jesus Christ has come in person to rescue us and to restore us to God as his unique image-bearers. In Ephesians 1:19f, Paul says that in raising and exalting Jesus, God demonstrated the immeasurable greatness of his power. Then, in Ephesians 2:6f, he tells us that, in raising and exalting us to new life, God has displayed the immeasurable riches of his grace in Jesus Christ.
Here is the root of Christian thanksgiving – a heartfelt gratitude for God’s extraordinary grace. Thanksgiving, by its very nature does not have its origin within us, it is a spontaneous, joyful response that imposes itself upon us from outside us. It is our heartfelt response to the awesome God who in his love claims us. As Karl Barth put it: Grace evokes gratitude like the voice of an echo. Gratitude follows grace like thunder lightning.
A GENERAL ANGLICAN THANKSGIVING COLLECT
Almighty God, Father of all mercies, we your unworthy servants give humble and hearty thanks for all your goodness and loving kindness to us and to all people. We bless you for our creation, preservation, and all the blessings of this life. But above all for your amazing love in the redemption of the world by our Lord Jesus Christ; for the means of grace, and for the hope of glory.
And we pray, give us that due sense of all your mercies, that our hearts may be truly thankful and that we may declare your praise not only with our lips, but in our lives, by giving ourselves to your service, and by walking before you in holiness and righteousness all our days; through Jesus Christ our Lord, to whom, with you and the Holy Spirit, be all honor and glory, now and for ever. Amen. (AAPB, 1978)
Forgive us our trespasses…(Matthew 6:12). How necessary this is! Daily, even hourly, we need to come to God with a deep repentance for those thoughts, words and actions that dishonour his name. Like Isaiah (in chapter 6), we feel our unworthiness before his utter purity.
‘Woe is me,’ is our heart-felt cry – so well expressed in the general confession in the Book of Common Prayer:
Almighty and most merciful Father, we have strayed from your ways like lost sheep. We have left undone what we ought to have done, and we have done what we ought not to have done. We have followed too much the devices and desires of our own hearts. We have broken your holy laws. ..
What does God offer? He offers full and free pardon when we humbly turn to Jesus Christ. God took into himself the pain we caused when Christ died on the cross.
The Lord’s Prayer does not stop with the petition for our forgiveness, for Jesus continues, …as we forgive those who trespass against us. There is a real sting here, for he is saying that if we expect God to forgive us, we need to hold out forgiveness to those who have hurt us.
And in case we miss this point in the prayer notice what Jesus goes on to say in Matthew 6:14: ‘For if you forgive others their trespasses, your heavenly Father will also forgive you; But if you do not forgive others, neither will your Father forgive you your trespasses.’
These words are sobering!Think of it: if we expect to receive God’s gracious pardon, we need to cease nursing grievances towards others. God cannot, and will not, pardon the unrepentant heart. Paul echoes this theme in Colossians 3:13: “Bear with each other and forgive whatever grievances you may have against one another. Forgive as the Lord forgives you.”
On Sunday, July 25, 1993, a year before Nelson Mandela became president of South Africa, a man with an AK-47 and another with grenades embedded with nails, entered evening worship at St James’ Anglican Church, Cape Town. Eleven people were killed in church that night and fifty-eight wounded. When TV reporters turned their cameras on the man whose wife had been the first to die, they asked, ‘What is your response?’ Looking squarely into the cameras, he said that he forgave the attackers. Throughout the church the response was the same.
The world was stunned. Some cynically responded that if there is a God, he would have protected his people. But countless others, in Cape Town and around the world started asking questions. Bishop Frank Retief recalls that a thousand people turned up at church the following Sunday night. Many over the coming months came to know Jesus Christ. It all began with the spirit of forgiveness that church members held out to their attackers.
Pause, and consider those whom you feel have wronged you – those whom you resent. ‘Pray about your attitude,’ says Paul in Colossians 3:13f. Can you forgive them? Remember Jesus’ words: Forgive us our trespasses as we forgive those who trespass against us…
Yet, good Lord, have mercy on us; restore those who are penitent, according to your promises declared to mankind in Jesus Christ our Lord. Grant, merciful Father, for his sake, that we may live a godly and obedient life, to the glory of your holy name. Amen. (BCP)
Give us this day our daily bread. With this petition in the Lord’s Prayer we see that God is fully aware of our daily need for physical food to sustain our bodies. Jesus reminds us that we are ultimately dependent on God for this ongoing provision. Psalm 104 speaks of the whole of the animate creation looking to God for food in due season (104:27). Jesus echoes this theme, when he later says that God, our Father, knows our physical needs (Luke 12:30). (1)
As a side-note, this is the reason God’s people have made a practice of saying ‘thank you’ to God before a meal. It is something we can do even when we invite for a meal people who may not be believers. A simple comment that this is our practice often opens provides an opportunity for conversation about the gospel.
To pray for daily bread is also asking for spiritual foodfor our soul. All of us need the ongoing sustenance of God’s Word in our lives. Without it, our relationship with God dries up and we follow our own devices and desires (as the confession in the Book of Common Prayer puts it).
Prayer. All this brings us to a question about prayer: ‘Can God, whom we call Father, be trusted to hear our prayers?’ Jesus, anticipating this, responded with a parable known as ‘The Friend at Midnight’ (Luke 11:5-8).
The parable captures village life in Jesus’ world where hospitality was an unwritten law. It compelled a man to get out of bed, no matter the hour, to assist a neighbor in need. If he did not provide aid, he would be shamed, bringing dishonor to the whole community. ‘Can you imagine,’ Jesus was asking, ‘anyone saying to a neighbor in need, even at midnight, ‘Don’t disturb me, get lost’? His listeners’ unspoken answer would have been, “No!”
The honor of God’s name. Another key to understanding this parable is found in the words usually translated, “his persistence” (11:8). In using these words, English translations are following one that dates back to the twelfth century. Recent commentators have pointed out the original word is better translated, sense of shame, for the word has the idea of avoidance of shame. If we follow the flow of the personal pronouns, his, in the parable, we see that the focus of the parable is not on the man knocking at the door, but the sleeper in bed.
This is not a parable about persistence. Rather it is a parable about God and the honor of his name. It takes up the words in the Lord’s Prayer, “Hallowed be Thy name” (Luke 11:2). Jesus is telling us that because of his very nature, God does listen to our prayers, no matter how great or small, no matter the time of day or night.
If God ignored our prayers, his name would be shamed. It is a matter of his honor and integrity that he hears and answers them. He will no more ignore the prayers of his people than a good mother will ignore her crying baby.
God, ‘The Friend at Midnight’ can be trusted to hear and answer our prayer for our daily bread.
