NOT SO TEMPTING

Oscar Wilde said “I can resist anything except temptation.”

In composing the universal prayer he would later teach his disciples, Yeshua had dealt with forgiveness; now he came to closure. Should he let the prayer trail away with just one more petition, reinforcing a downward movement from the grandeur of the Name? Or should he let it climb to a final and different height, a second peak? The daily bread petition was about trust; the forgiveness petition created a parallel of responsibility. Where now? What was the line?

He decided not to pursue the “as we forgive” implication but to continue the theme of trust and need. The opening grandly affirms God’s power; the petitions show our corresponding weakness and our dependence on the gifts of his love. We need, and trust him to provide from day to day, the basics of our life; we need forgiveness, as well as the capacity to forgive. What else do we need?

And suddenly, Abraham swam into his mind. Not the one who welcomed angels; not the Friend of God; the Abraham who was told to cut his only son’s throat and obeyed, up to the very end. Yeshua shivered, as always when he thought of that trial. And look at Job: there the Father himself had allowed Shaitan, the eternal Adversary, by way of a test of faith to have his way with a favoured human almost beyond bearing. There were giants in those days, he thought.

Looking at his brothers, at Ya’akov, Yosef, Yehuda and young Shimon, he knew that they could not stand up to such commands; and the next petition wrote itself. “Do not,” he prayed with great intensity, “force us – little ones, no patriarchs or Jobs -- into [such a] trial”, and almost automatically there followed, “but deliver us from the Adversary”. For ever since Job, it had been he, the fallen angel, who subjects men to the unbearable; he it had been who crows and rejoices when they fall, and receives them gleefully with outstretched claws. His dream of revenge is never-ending; his understanding is cosmic and his wiles devastating. Merely obeying God’s commandments and praying does not put men beyond his reach: only the Father himself, by an active intervention, can deliver the wretched human race from that vile intelligence.

Image: Laurent de la Hyre, "Abraham Sacrificing Isaac" (1650)

ANYTHING BUT TEMPTATION

 

In November of last year, I wrote about the expression in the Lord's Prayer that had always worried me, and that clearly worries the committees who keep updating the translations: "Lead us not into temptation". The thought of the Father leading us deliberately into temptation, then punishing us for having given in, is repellent; so the modern French version has "Do not let us enter into temptation." But taking a look at the Greek helps. To put it a little colloquially, "Do not put us to the test, but deliver us from bad stuff" is essentially what Jesus said when he taught the disciples to pray. The link of the "but" makes most sense when one stresses "deliver". Peirasmos is a trial, une épreuve as the French say, as in "the times that try men's souls". The implication, as I said back then, seems to be that we ask not to be put to the really hairy tests, like Abraham with Isaac, or Job, or Jacob who wrestled all night long with an angel. We aren't up to that sort of thing. We pray to the Father to deliver us from the ponèron, bad things, the real horror, the evil: that is not something we can do for ourselves.

It is a kindness in Jesus to propose this sentence in the exemplary Prayer: he recognises that we are ordinary folk, and that perhaps the Father may need to be reminded of this before, as in Job, giving in to the provocation of Shaitan, the Adversary.

It is in any case worth while to forget "temptation", a word that, encouraged by Oscar Wilde, needs a long rest. This is serious stuff: it is not the "temptation" of chocolate, or even of perfumed silks, of the "temptress" or the péché mignon: it is the knife at Isaac's throat, it is Exodus 4:24 "in a lodging-place by the way, the Lord met Moses and sought to kill him", it is the Lord wagering with Lucifer that Job will stand the test. Ouch. Do not, Father, make us go there. Save us from the Horror. Phew. By the skin of our teeth.

 

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