Readings: Genesis 28:10-17, and Luke 11:1-13

“Lord, teach us to pray.”

Prayer is a desire that flows from the heart; in its simplest form, it is a turning of our attention towards a matter, person, or persons. It is a way that we love others as ourselves; it is a way that we begin our inward transformation to desire the things of heaven, the demonstration of our love for God and our neighbour. What we pray, we are: ‘lex orandi, lex credendi’ translates to ‘the law of prayer is the law of believing’. The Church believes as it prays—what we pray shapes what we believe, because it is who we are and what we hope to be. 

We hope for a better world; we hope for peace; we hope for the rule of love, for love protects the freedom of the other—all shaping the world in the light of friendship and fraternity, for the common good that is for the mutual flourishing and prosperity shared between us as one human family, all together on this tiny planet existing as the miracle of life in the unfathomable vastness of our universe. 

The reading in our gospel today, ‘lead us not into temptation,’ is a faithful translation from the original Greek text. The petition that we are taught to pray takes us back through the journey in the Hebrew Scriptures, to the prophet Samuel, when Israel asks for a king to lead them, such as all the other nations have. And Samuel prayed to the Lord, and the Lord said, “It is not you they have rejected, but they have rejected me as their king.” (1 Samuel 8:7). Yet, throughout these ancient scriptures, we witness the countless failures, and corruption of the earthly kings appointed to rule over a people.

The prophet Daniel, taken from Judah, is offered the royal food and wine from Nebuchadnezzar, the Babylonian king, yet he resolves not to defile himself and asks his guard to ‘test your servants for ten days’ (Daniel 1:12), giving them nothing but ‘vegetables to eat and water to drink.’ ‘At the end of the ten days, they looked healthier and better nourished than any of the young men who ate the royal food.’ (Daniel 1:15). Though it is not, as Jesus said, the food in itself that defiles us, but the inward desire of the heart, and Daniel desired obedience to God. 

The prophet Habakkuk petitions the Lord, at a time when Israel is subject to chaos and oppression, the people scattered and powerless, lacking protection and leadership: “You have made people like the fish in the sea, like the sea creatures that have no ruler.” (1:14). Therefore, by our petition, we are asking for our heavenly king to lead us, not like the earthly kings into temptation—it is a desire of the heart to live on earth as it is in heaven. We desire the king of heaven and earth to lead our souls upon the highway to heaven. 

God’s angels guide us on this way, ascending and descending. God puts His angels to work as spiritual accompaniment. Where it was said ‘all roads lead to Rome,’ unfortunately not every road leads us to heaven, and as with Balaam’s donkey, some frustrations with the things that block our intentions are the angels ahead of us. For God watches over us. 

The angels, though we do not see them, they are with us, as lights, as guides, as messengers, and as divine help, if only we would ask. For all who seek find. “Knock, and the door will be opened”. Jesus is our heavenly king, our ruler to whom we turn the desire of our hearts. In asking our Father not to lead us into temptation, we are trusting that in all that is happening to us, to our community, nation, or world, that what is bad is not a temptation from God for us to imitate; it is trust in the Lord, that He hears us and wherever we are, we have what we need in order to resist, even to the point of death. We believe that God is not tempting us, but the evil one. For whatever we ask, it is done. Whether we are cast into the furnace or the lions’ den, as St. James writes, “When tempted, no one should say, ‘God is tempting me.’ For God cannot be tempted by evil, nor does He tempt anyone.” (1:13). 

St. Augustine wrote of this line: “When, therefore, we say, ‘Lead us not into temptation,’ we do not pray that we may not be tempted, but that we may not be led into it; as if anyone were to be tempted to commit a sin, and should pray not that he should not be tempted at all, but that he should not be overcome by the temptation. For it is not said, ‘Do not tempt us,’ but, ‘Lead us not into temptation’; that is, do not suffer us to be led into it, either by ourselves or by the tempter.” 

We are pilgrims on a journey through life—this sense of walking a path along time’s arrow, always leading us forward from now into the future, and the Lord’s Prayer is our anchor point that keeps us rooted in dependence on God, not the material reality of the world, for we are called to be imitators on earth as He is in heaven. We are to let go of material worldliness, embracing the sheer act of love within us—in our own being and our neighbour’s being as created, human, and loved—which is to be holy. 

St. John Climacus (often called “St. John of the Ladder”), who wrote ‘The Ladder of Divine Ascent’, says in the first step, “Let us love God at least as much as we respect our friends.” For he had often seen “people who had offended God and were not in the least perturbed about it.” Yet, he saw how “the same people provoked their friends in some trifling matter and then employed every artifice, every device, every sacrifice, every apology, both personally and through friends and relatives, not sparing gifts, in order to regain their former love.” 

This challenges us to question our motives: is it for fear of friends or being found out that we do or do not act? Let us remember every thought, every intention of the heart is seen and known by God, who knew us before we were born, who collects our tears, and numbers even the hairs on our heads. There is nothing hidden that is not known. Just as Jacob thought, “Surely the Lord is in this place, and I was not aware of it.” 

Scripture is a landscape, a complex whole that cannot be broken down to one moment in time; it is an event over time—a system that cannot be broken down into parts, that one word or one verse becomes the lightning bolt that brings fire to the earth. Jesus came to cast a fire upon the earth, and how He wished it were already kindled—kindled in our hearts, a fire of love. 

As humans, created in the image of God, loved before we knew we could be, we each have a right to dignity that cannot be taken away, and a fundamental equality under God, that is not a right given by any person that it may be taken away, but the gift of God, that by His grace, our common humanity gives us common purpose and values. ‘Teach me to do your will, for you are my God; may your good Spirit lead me on level ground.’ (Psalm 143:10). 

We are brothers and sisters of one human family, and we need to begin again, recognising that violence, wars, and turning away from the truth are the spirit of evil at work in the world. We ought not to demonise people but recognise the works of evil and choose to do only good, for it is in Jesus, the God who is love, that we are saved.

Amen.