First Presbyterian Church                           March 21, 2010

         Christ ends the prayer He taught us with a plea, “Lead us not into temptation, but deliver us from evil.”  It was a plea I think He knew well because He had prayed it so often. 

         Christ knew what it was to be tempted.  He constantly fought with the desire to turn God’s mission into something just a little bit easier, a little more pleasing to the crowds, a little less dangerous for Himself. 

         He began His ministry by being tempted, not once but three times, and He ended it with temptation.  We hear His struggle in the prayers of Gethsemane.  “Take this cup away from Me.”  Even then, He could have changed His mind.  The temptation was there.  According to Matthew, three times He prayed.  Three times He was tempted to find another way, until finally the decision was made:  “Not My will but Thine be done.”

         Christ knew the power of being tested, and so He told us to pray, pray that we would never know such a test.  Yet Christians have been tested time and again, and we have not always resisted the evil of an easier path.  We have closed our eyes to the wrong around us and justified our own betrayals of God.

         The first, the most infamous betrayal, of course, came from one of Christ’s chosen twelve, one of His closest friends, as Judas Iscariot sold His Lord for thirty pieces of silver.  But betrayal did not stop then.  Ut continued through the ages.

         There were the Inquisitors of Spain, who tortured people on the rack, with whips and chains.  Evil done in the name of faith.  There were Christians who worshipped and prayed during Sunday services within the very sight and stench of crematoriums and concentration camps throughout the Second World War.  There were Christians who closed their eyes to the evil they did not want to see and chose not to fight.

         The temptations to do the same are still there, all around us.  We are tempted not to get involved, not to see, to justify our own acts of betrayal.

         Perhaps our greatest temptation as a church may be simply to not take our faith seriously enough, to play down the cost of being a disciple, to ignore the fact that to be a Christian should and must make an impact on the way we live our lives.  As a church though, we are advised to be more business-like, to market ourselves by making our services more appealing --- to jazz them up, to water them down.

         This is the new church movement --- to become the McChurch, the McDonald’s of fast food faith.  There’s even a drive-through service in California where you can punch up the parts of the worship you want to hear. 

         Too busy for prayers of confession or concern?  Just delete them from the menu.  More and more churches offer church lite --- only instead of half the calories, you get half the substance.  Church gurus tell us that’s all the people are willing to take and we have to appeal to their taste if we want to “survive.”  We have to make it easier for members to fit worship into their busy social calendars rather than have their lives molded by their worship.

         You need to make it easy.  You need to make it fun.  You need to appeal to the masses.  You need to grow or you will die --- and that’s our temptation, to be unwilling to even die for the sake of Christ.  Does this mean I’m against churches growing?  That I’m against finding ways to reach out to the unchurched in ways they can understand and appreciate?  No.  But I am afraid that too often we want to remain a church even if it can be called Christian no longer ---  even if it has become nothing more than a comfortable country club.  We are often too willing to forget the call of Christ, to forget even the words of Christ.  The Message translates it like this:

         “Do not look for shortcuts to God.  The market is flooded with surefire, easy going formulas for a successful life that can be practiced in your spare time.  Don’t fall for that stuff, even though crowds of people do.  The way to life – to God – is vigorous and requires total attention.”

         Christ knew the road of life.  He knew that at times it might lead to Jerusalem, might lead to a cross, and so He asks us if we will be willing to follow Him even there.

         But where do we find the courage, the strength, and the willingness to do that?  To deliberately choose the more difficult way?  To go against society’s trends and pressures --- to choose a cross? 

         The answer is in the Lord’s Prayer.  We must ask God for help, to deliver us from evil, so we can choose rightly and resist the temptations of our world through the power of the Spirit of God who lives within us, and through whom we pray:  “Lead us not into temptation but deliver us from evil, for God’s is the kingdom and the power and the glory forever.  Amen.