St. Michael Russian Orthodox Church

December 27, 2009

And lead us not into temptation.

The words publicly spoken by Our Lord and Saviour Jesus Christ during his three year ministry on earth are well documented by the Evangelists. And the seventy or so words that are the best known of all seventy or so words in all of Western thought---the Lord’s Prayer— are described by two of those writers as being said by Christ at different times. In the sixth chapter of the Gospel of St. Matthew, the chronicler of Christ’s most famous public speech—the Sermon on the Mount—we hear Christ give the people who gathered on the Mount of Olives the “Our Father” prayer in the same moment that He gave the people, among other things, the Beatitudes and the Golden Rule. On the other hand, St. Luke recounts Christ’s recitation of the Beatitudes and Golden Rule in his Chapter 6, when Our Lord “stood on a level place.” This speech by Jesus is called His Sermon on the Plain, but according to St. Luke, when standing on that level place, Jesus did not recite the Lord’s Prayer. Instead, in the 11th chapter of St. Luke, Jesus is engaged in His own private prayers, when He is petitioned by an unidentified disciple by referring to John the Baptist: “Lord teach us to pray, as John also taught his disciples.” In response, Jesus recites those “seventy or so words” that each of us has permanently etched into our souls.

But whether in stadium like atmosphere of the Mt. of Olives, or in the private place, the Lord’s Prayer is perfect, and Our Lord was very explicit about how to use this perfect prayer. First, He warned us about being hypocritical, about praying solely in public, so that people will get a gander of just how pious we think we are. So in the Sermon on the Mount Christ told us to go into our rooms, shut our doors, and pray to God who Himself is in secret. But Christ also endorsed corporate prayer, that means public prayer, just as we do every Sunday and every Holy Day in the public setting of the Divine Liturgy. But when partaking in public prayer, Christ warned against vain repetition, and after that He bestowed upon mankind the perfection that is the Lord’s Prayer.

While every Orthodox Christian knows those perfect “seventy or so words” by heart, I have been asked more than once what Jesus meant when He said “And lead us not into temptation, but deliver us from evil.” How can it be that a good and merciful God would lead us astray? For a clear explanation of these words, consult St. Paul in his first letter to the Christians at Corinth, the narrow isthmus in Greece, when Paul says: “No temptation has overtaken you except as is common to man; but God is faithful, who will not allow you to be tempted beyond what you are able, but with the temptation will also make the way of escape, that you may be able to bear it.” In other, but poorer, words, Christ teaches that we continually ask God to protect us from any task too difficult for each of us individually to bear. What a remarkable and perfect understanding of human nature! There is a lot of simple minded talk today about diversity, but Christ recognized and gave us the tool to help each of us with the important diversity in human nature two thousand years ago. What temptations an octogenarian monk who’s been out in the desert for fifty years might be well suited to handle, are probably too heavy, irresistible, for a callow youth in today’s America. This is not merely moral relativism, but the inspired recognition that we are each one of us an individual responsible for his or her own salvation.

St. John Chrysostom says it this way: “God suffers the demon to rage against you that you may learn by the trial of the force of your strength. As when a very good trainer of the gymnasium accepts some weak and wretched athlete, and when he has massaged him, taught him, and strengthened his body, he does not allow him to remain idle, but bids him to enter the contests so that he can learn from experience what strength he has acquired. So has Christ done. He could have removed the enemy from our midst but that you may learn the superiority of His grace, the greatness of the spiritual strength you received in baptism, he allows him to attack you, giving you at the same time the opportunity to gain for yourself many victories.”

That is the perfection of the Lord’s Prayer, and that perfection underscores the necessity, during every Divine Liturgy, for an introduction to the Lord’s Prayer. The choir just doesn’t start singing Our Father on its own, as it does the Beatitudes or even the Cherubimic Hymn. The Lord’s Prayer is always prefaced by these words spoken by the priest that sum up just how important this next public prayer is: “And make us worthy O Master that with boldness and without condemnation we may dare to call on Thee the heavenly God as Father and to say:”

Brothers and Sisters, reciting the Lord’s Prayer is a privilege for Christians. Reciting verbatim the perfect prayer composed by the Son of Man during his short time on this earth requires worthiness, and concentration, not merely the rote mouthing of the words. That’s why we Orthodox sing the Lord’s Prayer—and treasure the beautiful versions by great composers like Rimsky-Korsakov and Kedrov—because we want to put as much beauty as man is capable of devising into the perfection given us by Christ Himself. Just as we need to cleanse ourselves by confession before we receive Holy communion, we need to cleanse ourselves every time we recite these precious words, words so precious as to be placed just before the time of communion in the liturgy. We can be worthy to recite these words because as Orthodox we have received the Holy Spirit at baptism and had Him sealed forever within us at our chrismation. Christ gave us the perfect gift of the Lord’s Prayer in just “seventy or so words.” It’s up to us to insure our worthiness continually so that we can rightly call upon our heavenly God and to say: “Our Father.”