Deliver Us From Evil

How does God deliver us from evil? Does God remove it from our lives? Sometimes. Does God help us to escape it? Sometimes. And sometimes, God delivers us from evil by helping us to go right through it. That's what this sermon considers.

Tonight begins the most terrifying 24 hours of the Christian year. Tonight, evil begins its reign of darkness. Those folks who think that Halloween is frightening have never really taken a good look at what Jesus experienced on Maundy Thursday and on Good Friday. The darkness began to creep in earlier this week when Judas went to the chief priests of the Temple and offered to hand Jesus over to them for thirty pieces of silver – the price of a slave. It lurked in the background when, during the meal in the upper room, Jesus calmly told his disciples that one of them would betray him. But when the meal was finished and the twelve accompanied Jesus to Gethsemane, then that evil burst out in all its terrifying power, determined to get the upper hand over Jesus once and for all.

Jesus knew what was in store for him. Matthew paints a vivid picture of his prayer in the darkness of Gethsemane. Taking three of his trusted disciples to accompany him, he leaves them to watch and goes off by himself to pour out his soul to God. In the darkness, he falls on his face and begs, “My Father, if it is possible, may this cup be taken from me. Yet not as I will, but as you will.”

“May this cup be taken from me.” Jesus didn’t want to come face to face with evil; and his prayer reflects it. And during the next 24 hours, he would experience every weapon that evil had in its arsenal. His friends would run away when he needed them most. One of them would claim that he never even knew Jesus. He would be arrested by people who didn’t give a rap about justice, tried by a kangaroo court, and convicted on evidence given by liars. He would be dragged back and forth all night among those who held the political power of the empire: the High Priest, Herod, and Pilate. He would be tortured for the amusement of soldiers: whipped, flogged, and spat upon. Finally, he would be nailed to a cross and left to die, gasping out his last breaths alone in the hot sun.

No, Jesus didn’t want to go through that; and neither do we. We pray every Sunday that the cup of evil might be taken from us, too. Oh, we use different words, but we’re asking the same thing. Near the conclusion of the Lord’s Prayer, we pray, “Deliver us from evil.” None of us wants to endure all the experiences that evil can inflict on us. No one wants to suffer physical or mental or emotional pain. But sometimes, the only way for God to deliver us from evil is to take us right through it. Sometimes, we can’t run away from evil. Sometimes, evil catches us in a situation in which running away might actually be the coward’s way out!

Here’s an example of what I mean. Dietrich Bonhoeffer was a brilliant scholar and gifted pastor who lived in Germany before the Second World War. He saw clearly the effect that Nazism would have in the loss of personal freedom and in the loss of human life. So, when he was offered a position at Union Theological Seminary in New York City, he accepted it. When he came to the United States in 1939, he was undoubtedly grateful that God had delivered him from evil. He was, after all, finally living safely in a country where the Nazis couldn’t touch him. But he stayed in New York fewer than two years. He felt guilty, he said, for not having the courage to practice what he preached. He wrote later, “Silence in the face of evil is itself evil. God will not hold us guiltless. Not to speak is to speak. Not to act is to act.” Bonhoeffer decided to return to Germany. He became a leader in the German resistance movement. He was continually harassed by the Nazi authorities. He was even a part of an unsuccessful plot to assassinate Hitler. In April of 1943 he was finally arrested, imprisoned, and eventually sent to the Flossenburg concentration camp. He was hanged there in 1945, three weeks before the camp was liberated by the Allied army.

Did God deliver Dietrich Bonhoeffer from evil? It sure doesn’t look like it. But if we read what Bonhoeffer wrote during his time in prison, we might draw a different conclusion. One of his last messages from prison was written early in 1945, just a few months before his death.

It was a poem that read, in part:

“While all the powers of Good aid and attend us,

boldly we’ll face the future, be it what may.

At even, and at morn, God will befriend us,

and oh, most surely, on each New Year’s Day.”

God delivered Dietrich Bonhoeffer from evil not by helping him to run away from it, but by giving him the courage to face it. God delivered Dietrich Bonhoeffer from evil by giving him the certainty that while evil might kill his body, it could do nothing to his immortal soul. His last words as he was taken to the gallows were, “This is the end – for me the beginning of life.”

Can God do that for us, too? Can God deliver us from evil even when we are forced to come face to face with it? Absolutely! And the sacrament of Holy Communion reminds of that reality! The table at which we dine is not just a table that helps us to remember a meal in an upper room almost 2,000 years ago. It is also a table that looks forward to a great banquet at the end of time, when God will have eliminated evil once and for all; when God will have wiped away all tears and pain and sorrow; and when all people will live together in harmony and peace. The certainty of God’s ultimate victory over evil, and the sustaining grace that this table offers us has the power to deliver us from evil – even when we have to walk right through the middle of it.

“Deliver us from evil.” Yes, Lord, deliver us from evil. Take away the cup of suffering from us.

But if that cup is one that we must drink, deliver us from the evil of cowardice and despair. Walk with us through the worst that evil can do to us; and help us to glimpse, far off on the horizon, the first light of Easter morning.