September 10, 2026

As 9/11 approaches

The Lord’s Prayer is included in every service in the BCP and many of us pray it frequently through our days. Every time we do, we ask God to “Deliver us from evil.” What do we mean as we offer that prayer? The most simplistic meaning is, “Don’t let anything bad happen to us.” That is always a fine thing to pray for, but I don’t think it’s what Jesus had in mind as he taught his disciples to pray. Getting sick is unpleasant, and possibly even tragic, but it is not evil. The same can be said of car crashes, bankruptcies, and floods. There’s a difference between evil and tragedy. There is a difference, too, between individual malicious acts like those of 9/11, and essential evil. Those who fall prey to religious or political extremism are not themselves evil, but rather are victims of it, or sometimes willing participants in it. When we pray, “Deliver us from evil,” we are not merely asking God to protect us from bad actors. 

Our prayer is bigger than that, it is something that only God can accomplish. Evil is not one bad deed but a force that permeates and shapes the systems of the world. The pride, greed, tribalism, and consumption that flow through the world are part and parcel of it. Evil is a force that infects the world, a force that we cannot wholly see or comprehend, let alone take hold of and fight. We struggle not against flesh and blood, but against powers beyond our abilities to fight alone. Evil is a roaring and raging lion, looking for someone to consume. When we individually pray “Deliver us from evil,” we are praying that we ourselves not become evil’s victims, abandoning love and giving in to our own self-serving desires. When we pray, “Deliver us from evil,” we are praying for the world; that the systems evil has built might be overthrown and cast down, that not one more person ever be manipulated, or deceived, or enticed into acts of murder or destruction. “Deliver us from evil” is a prayer that all of humanity turn its attention away from glory, power, and money and toward the least of these, the widows, orphans, and immigrants, the oppressed and dispossessed. 

Until God acts to bring that new world, evil will still have power, and its victims will still cause pain. A friend of mine prayed the Lord’s Prayer using the equally good translation, “Deliver us from the evil one.” He chose the translation to remind himself partly that evil has an emergent and insidious will behind it and is something we cannot face without God. He chose it also to remind himself that, “the evil one” could easily be him without God. And then with that reminder, he reminded himself, as most of us do, that evil is not the only power that is active in the world. Like a little leaven in the dough, love too is relentless, insidious, and powerful beyond imagining. Evil cannot stand against love, and love holds the victims of both evil and tragedy in its strong eternal arms, and the kingdom, the power and the glory are Love’s, now and forever. Amen.