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+ + + In Nomine Jesu + + +
Please join me in prayer: May the words of my mouth and the meditations of our hearts be pleasing in your sight, O Lord, our Rock and our Redeemer. Amen.
Dear Brothers and Sisters in Christ,
Grace to you and peace from God our Father and from the Lord Jesus Christ.
“Gay-marriage” advocates have been out in full force this week, as the U‑S Supreme Court heard arguments on two cases related to the matter. One of my former employers, N‑B‑C, which put us all through sensitivity training already 20 years ago, on its news website yesterday even flaunted the story that two of its female reporters are partners and expecting a baby girl. With the latest polls suggesting that the majority of Americans is now in favor of gay marriage, there is a huge temptation for us to just give up on the matter, to keep our mouths shut, and thereby to avoid those, who are prejudiced against Christianity, calling us bigots for our not approving this affront to God’s creation and institution. In the Sixth Petition of the Lord’s Prayer we pray God to “Lead us not into [such] temptation”. And tonight, on this Maundy Thursday, we consider that Petition, as we continue our special‑services Lenten sermon‑series on the Lord’s Prayer in light of the words and deeds of our Lord’s life and ministry, especially those of His Passion and Resurrection. I generally dislike and avoid Lenten sermon series that take away from the observance of other days during Lent, but our reflecting on our praying Our Father in heaven to “Lead us not into temptation” fits well with Maundy Thursday, a day when Jesus spoke about temptation and was Himself tempted.
You may recall that we talked about temptation on the First Sunday in Lent, saying for example, just as there is a difference between a bird’s flying overhead and a bird’s making a nest in one’s hair, so there is a difference between feeling temptation and consenting to temptation. In the divinely‑inspired Gospel accounts of both St. Matthew and St. Luke, the model prayer our Lord gives us to pray to our Father in heaven includes this Petition to “Lead us not into [such] temptation”. Why do we pray God to not lead us into temptation? Would God tempt us to evil? St. James writes well that God tempts no one (James 1:13)! But, God does test our faith to bring us closer to Him, and God does allow our spiritual enemies to attempt to lure us away from God and His ways. We might think first of general temptations to sin, but worse are particular temptations to deny our Lord by keeping silent about gay marriage or in any other way. For example, our Lord Jesus Christ, on the night when He was betrayed, after He had taken the bread and the cup, told Simon Peter that Satan had demanded to have him to sift him as wheat, but Jesus told Simon Peter that He had prayed for him that his faith might not fail (Luke 22:31). Whether called “Satan”, “the Devil” (Matthew 4:1), or “the Tempter” (1 Thessalonians 3:5), he is chief among our spiritual enemies, but, as we also talked about that First Sunday in Lent, we are also tempted by the world and our sinful nature.
Regardless of who or what tempts us, however, we give into temptation too often: when a particular affliction lasts long and deliverance is slow in coming; when the misery seems too great and too strange; when the reason seems right to try something very dangerous or beyond our strength or vocation; when vice tries to pass under guise of virtue (cruelty called justice, pride called bravery, ignorance called simplicity, waste called liberality, and so forth); and when peace, quietness, and rest lull us into a feeling of false security. Too often we fall down under temptation; we are overcome by temptation; we consent to or otherwise completely give into temptation; we are tantalized with the idea of some sin; and we are carried into it. In short, we are not just tempted, but we actually sin!
Apart from faith in Jesus Christ, every sin we commit, every temptation we give into, makes us liable for judgment, but certain condemnation awaits those who lack or fall away from the faith. As St. Luke records Jesus explaining the Parable of the Sower, the ones on the rocky soil are those who, when they hear the word, receive it with joy and believe for a time but, having no root, fall away in a time of testing or tempting (Luke 8:13), at a time of tribulation or persecution on account of the Word (Matthew 13:21; Mark 4:17). Only when we repent of our sin and believe in Jesus Christ are we forgiven of our sin, the temptations we give into. When we so turn in sorrow from our sin, trust God to forgive our sin for Jesus’s sake, and want to do better, then God forgives our sin, whatever our sin might be.
Where, as fallen human beings, we cannot avoid sinning, as true God and man, Jesus Christ could not sin: all the holiness of God penetrated His human nature. He is our Passover Lamb without blemish or spot (1 Peter 1:19). Still, He was truly tempted. We heard on the First Sunday in Lent how the Devil tried to get Jesus after His Baptism to feed His physical life, to inaugurate His reign by a miraculous public display, and to glorify the Messiah through worship of Satan. Jesus was also tempted throughout His life and ministry, most notably in the Garden of Gethsemane on the night when He was betrayed and again while hanging on the cross, when the crowds taunted Jesus to come down from the cross and effectively renounce giving His life for your and my sins. The author of the Book of Hebrews says that “in every respect” Jesus “has been tempted as we are, yet without sin” (Hebrews 4:15). Jesus relied not upon His divine nature but upon God His Father, and He not only overcame all His temptations, but He also redeemed us from our giving into temptations. Jesus suffered when He was tempted, and so now He sympathizes with our weakness (Hebrews 2:18; 4:15); we “with confidence draw near to [His] throne of grace, that we may receive mercy and find grace to help in [our] time of need” (Hebrews 4:16).
Indeed, with all boldness and confidence we pray the Lord’s Prayer so that we may receive mercy and find grace to help in our time of need. God has shown and continues to show us mercy by forgiving our sins through the pure preaching of His Word and the right administration of His Sacraments, Holy Baptism, Individual Absolution, and the Sacrament of the Altar. As we heard in tonight’s Gospel Reading (Luke 22:7-20), Jesus earnestly desired to eat that particular Passover meal with His apostles, for He knew that it was fulfilling all the Passover meals that had come before it. With bread that was His body and wine that was His blood He established the new covenant, as we heard in the Old Testament Reading (Jeremiah 31:31-34), by which God forgives iniquity and remembers sin no more. That same bread and body given for you and that same wine and blood poured out for you tonight give us the forgiveness of our sins and so also life and salvation. As the Epistle Reading describes (Hebrews 10:15-25), we come into God’s presence now and for eternity with our bodies washed with pure baptismal water and our hearts sprinkled clean from an evil conscience by His sacramental blood. We receive mercy and find grace to help us in our time of need. God answers the Lord’s Prayer, including its Sixth Petition, “Lead us not into temptation”, through His means of grace, guarding and keeping us so that we may not be deceived or seduced into misbelief, despair, and other great shame and vice, but, though we may be assailed by temptations, that we may finally overcome them and obtain the victory.
As three of the four Gospel accounts record, on the night when Jesus was betrayed, He told Peter, James, and John to watch and pray with Him that they might not enter into temptation, perhaps thereby even suggesting they pray the Lord’s Prayer (Matthew 26:41; Mark 14:38; Luke 22:40, 46). Two of those three Gospel accounts further record Jesus’s noting that the spirit is willing but the flesh is weak. As far as we know, instead of praying, those three disciples slept, and later they all the disciples left him and fled (Matthew 26:56; Mark 14:50). Yet, as St. Luke alone records, earlier in the evening, Jesus remarkably had described them as they who stood with Him in His temptations (Luke 22:28).
Perhaps Jesus described the disciples that way, the same way as God sees us: in view of faith in Jesus. From God’s perspective, He has answered the Fourth and Fifth Petitions for us with Christ: we are fed and forgiven. Christ’s perfect obedience is ours, though we see our lives as still beset with struggles, so we pray the Sixth Petition, “Lead us not into temptation”. Yet, as St. Paul writes, no temptation has overtaken us that is not common to human beings, and God is faithful, He will not let us be tempted beyond our ability but will enable us to endure (1 Corinthians 10:13). God does not remove or end all His testing or the Devil’s tempting, but He gives us faith by which we both can resist temptation and be forgiven when we fail to resist temptation. We do not pray that we may not be tested or tempted at all, but we pray that we may not be lead into temptation, whether to sin in general or in particular to deny our Lord, as by keeping silent about “gay marriage”. As St. James encourages us, we count such testing and tempting as joy, for they produce steadfastness, which ultimately makes us perfect and complete, lacking in nothing (James 1:2). For, as St. James writes further, we, who in Christ remain steadfast, ultimately receive the crown of life (James 1:12).
Amen.
The peace of God, which passes all understanding, keep your hearts and minds in Christ Jesus. Amen.
+ + + Soli Deo Gloria + + +