I heard a story once of a man who loved sweets, but he decided to give them up for Lent one year. In order to avoid temptation, he changed his route to work so he wouldn’t pass by his favorite bakery. He was doing really well until one day he arrived at work with a delicious looking coffee cake. His co-workers scolded him, but he seemed very happy. “This is a special coffee cake,” he explained. “On the way to work, I accidentally took my regular route past the bakery. And there in the window was this delicious looking coffee cake. I felt like it was meant to be, but I decided to ask God to tell me if I should stop and buy it. So, I prayed, ‘God, if you want me to have this delicious coffee cake, let a parking spot open up right in front of the bakery.’ And sure enough, on the eighth time around the block, there it was.”

When we pray the line, “Lead us not into temptation, but deliver us from evil,” I would wager that many of us would think of scenarios similar to this one. There is another story of a boy who really wants to buy himself a new bike. And so he decides to save every penny he has until he has enough for the bike. And every night he prays to God for help in saving enough money. And this is his prayer, “Dear Lord, please help me save my money for a new bike, and please, Lord, don’t let the ice cream man come down the street again tomorrow.” Sounds a bit like “Lead us not into temptation,” doesn’t it? Lord, don’t let temptation come into our path. That is how we have often interpreted this line. But I don’t think that is actually what Jesus had in mind. And there are a couple reasons why I think that interpretation is not quite right.

First, we have another issue with commas. Remember a few weeks ago when we talked about “Thy will be done on earth (comma) as it is in heaven?” Well, this week we have something similar. We need to add a comma after “Lead Us.” “Lead us (comma) not into temptation, but deliver us from evil.” Now, you may be asking yourself what difference that makes. Here is what I think the difference is. The difference is in where the focus of the sentence is. Are we focusing on not being tempted? Or are we focusing on being led by God? Without the comma, I would argue that the focus is on not being tempted, while with the comma keeps us centered on the first part of the phrase, “Lead us.” If we focus on the temptation, then we might be prone to read this phrase as asking for God not to tempt us. But James offers a clear cut response to that idea.

James writes, “No one, when tempted, should say, ‘I am being tempted by God’; for God cannot be tempted by evil and he himself tempts no one.” God does not tempt us to sin. We tempt ourselves. James adds, “But one is tempted by one’s own desire, being lured and enticed by it; then, when that desire has conceived, it gives birth to sin, and that sin, when it is fully grown, gives birth to death.” It is our own human desires that lead us to sin. The Apostle Paul was a righteous, God-fearing man, yet we see in his life how his own desires tempted him toward sin. Paul, in his letter to the Romans, writes about his very complex understanding of how sin and temptation work. He says, “I do not understand my own actions. For I do not do what I want, but I do the very thing I hate. Now if I do what I do not want, I agree that the law is good. But in fact it is no longer I that do it, but sin that dwells within me. For I know that nothing good dwells within me, that is, in my flesh. I can will what is right, but I cannot do it. For I do not do the good I want, but the evil I do not want is what I do. Now if I do what I do not want, it is no longer I that do it, but sin that dwells within me.”

If you are not at least a little confused by that, you are smarter than I am. Paul was a deep-thinking expert of Jewish law. And this is a prime example of that. But what I believe Paul is getting at here is that, even though we want to be followers of God and do what God calls us to do through God’s law, our human desires tempt us away from God into sin. And oftentimes we don’t even understand how it happened. One minute we are doing everything right and then suddenly it all falls off the rails and we end up back in the comfort of our sins. When we pray “Lead us, not into temptation, but deliver us from evil. We are asking for God’s guidance in turning in a different direction than where our human desires want us to go. We are asking God to lead us away from those tempting thoughts that sit on the edge of our minds, waiting for the right time to strike, a time when we are at our weakest and are most unable to resist. Lead us, God, away from temptation, and deliver us from evil.

The other reason I think our typical interpretation of this line in the Lord’s prayer is not accurate is that it may not even be talking about the temptation to sin. It may be talking about God saving us from the sort of pain and suffering that Jesus endured. You see, the word translated as temptation could also mean ‘trail’ or ‘the time of trial.’ This line could be a plea for God to save us from torture and pain and suffering. How different the Lord’s Prayer as a whole would look if this line were interpreted in that way. The line right before this, “Forgive our debts as we forgive our debtors,” takes a slightly different shape with this alternative interpretation. If we see this prayer as Jesus telling us to pray that we will not have to endure trials and testing, then we must wrestle with the fact that Jesus prayed this prayer, yet we know what eventually happens to him.

Praying for God to lead us away from trials and suffering does not guarantee that we won’t suffer. Sometimes, as we see in Jesus’ case, the answer to that prayer is ‘NO.’ That’s a hard pill to swallow. We don’t like to think that God would choose NOT to help us. Yet Jesus prayed to be spared from his sufferings but he was not. And we see this happening over and over in our lives. We see trials coming: a bad medical diagnosis, a dying loved one, the repeating of abuse and violence, the horrors of war. We want to believe that our prayers will stop those things from happening. If we have enough faith, we can end wars, cure disease, resurrect our loved ones, and protect ourselves and others from violence. But that doesn’t always happen. I prayed for my mom to be miraculously cured of her ALS, but it didn’t happen. I pray every day for the violent shootings in our nation to end, yet we see them continue to happen. We can pray for God to deliver us from evil, but it doesn’t always happen.

So, what do we do with that? Why pray the prayer if it’s not getting us what we want? I would argue that all of our prayers are that way. Does God give daily bread to everyone who prays for it? If we ask God for his will to be done on earth, as it is in heaven, does that mean we can expect earth to look more and more like heaven every day? The answer to that is NO. So, why pray for it? We pray for it because, ultimately, we are a people of hope and faith. We believe that God loves us and desires the best for us. And we have hope that God will do all that God has promised us. So we pray for those lofty things because we have hope that someday those prayers WILL be answered. And we pray those prayers as a reminder to ourselves to keep working toward those ideals. When we pray for God’s will to be done on earth, as it is in heaven, we are reminding ourselves that we are to be working to make that a reality in our lives and in the world however we can.

It seems in some ways a little contradictory to talk about this line from the Lord’s Prayer on Palm Sunday. On Palm Sunday, Jesus entered Jerusalem for the final time in his earthly life. He was guided into the place that would ultimately bring pain and death upon him. He was greeted with cheers by those who would eventually betray him. Rather than being delivered from evil, he was being directed right into the eye of the storm. We spend a lot of time on this Sunday of the year talking about the people crying out to Jesus to save them. Yet they do nothing to try to save him when he is betrayed and arrested and tortured and killed. They were led, not by the justice and goodness of God, but by their own desires for power and safety. And Jesus paid the penalty for that. Jesus suffered and died because we ignored our own part in enacting the words of the Lord’s Prayer in our lives. We wanted our own will to be done on earth instead of seeking to do God’s will.

That is truly the tale as old as time. We can go back to our story from Genesis to see this reality at work even then. Adam and Eve lived in a place that truly did reflect the will of God on earth as it is in heaven. Yet a choice presented itself that allowed them to reject the will of God and choose to follow their own will instead. And that was the route they chose because they believed that it would lead to more power and control for them. The snake (which may have been an actual snake or may have been a representation of our own slithering and venomous desires. God tried to lead them away from their own desires, but they were overcome by their own evil desires. And pain and suffering followed, for all of humanity.

When we pray, “Lead us, not into temptation, but deliver us from evil,” we must realize that the temptations are coming from our own sinful hearts. And when we give into those temptations, we wreak havoc all around us. Then, those who are trying to do God’s will and make earth a better reflection of heaven, end up, as Jesus did, suffering for their faith. The Lord’s Prayer is such an important prayer for us. We have recognized that and that is why it has become a standard part of many churches’ worship. But the Lord’s Prayer is also perhaps the strongest call to action that God gives to us through Jesus. It may be simple to memorize, but it is much more difficult to live out. May God lead us away from our own desires and toward God’s own desires. And may we eventually experience the fullness of salvation from the evil within ourselves and our world that has come through Jesus Christ.