Against Hucksters and Hornswogglers--July 30, 2025

Against Hucksters and Hornswogglers--July 30, 2025

[Jesus taught his disciples to pray:] "...And do not bring us into trial." (Luke 11:4b)

I grew up, like many church folks, reciting the words, "And lead us not into temptation, but deliver us from evil," as part of weekly worship. Those words come from Matthew's parallel version of what we call "The Lord's Prayer," and you get a similar sense here in Luke's way of telling it.  We heard these words again in worship this past Sunday, and yet I have a sneaking suspicion that many of us aren't really quite sure what it is we are asking God to do... or perhaps what we are asking God not to do.

At first blush, this might sound like a desperate plea to the Almighty not to trick us, trap us, or lure us into some kind of snare.  Whether you have phrased as "Lead us not into temptation," or "Do not bring us to the time of trial" or "Do not lead us to a situation of testing," it can sound like we are trying to persuade God not to be a jerk and cause us to go astray, or pleading with God not to spring a pop quiz with eternal stakes on us.  And I suppose those would be plausible ways of hearing the text if we truly pictured God (as the Greeks and Romans pictured Zeus or Jupiter) sitting up on a throne in the sky brandishing a lightning bolt and just itching to lob it at us the moment one of us steps a toe out of line.  If we picture God as a celestial Highway Patrol officer hiding behind some trees and waiting to catch us in a speed trap and zap us with lights and sirens blaring, then yes, it might make sense to pray, "Please don't give me a ticket, Officer!"

But part of being Jesus' disciples means letting him redefine our understanding of who God really is, even if it requires us to let go of our old assumptions and definitions.  And Jesus does not give us the impression at all--like, EVER--that God is a trigger-happy bully sitting on a cloud and just waiting for us to mess up enough as to give an excuse to smite us or send us to our doom.  The old Puritan preacher Jonathan Edwards may have pictured the Almighty holding us over the fires of hell like a spider dangling by a thread, but that's really not how Jesus pictures the living God.  Jesus doesn't think we have to plead with God not to entrap us with some kind of temptation that then gives this bloodthirsty deity an excuse to punish us or damn us.  And that's because Jesus doesn't think God is looking for reasons to destroy us; rather, God is look for ways we can be led more fully into life, even when we have a track record of being our own worst enemies.

In that light, the prayer, "Do not bring us into trial or testing," lands less like a last-ditch plea to avoid entrapment and more like an honest self-assessment that we would fall for a con-man or an idol if we were left to our own devices.  Knowing that God is looking for ways to save and rescue us, and that God has been willing over and over again in the past to seek us out when we were the lost sheep caught in the thicket or fallen into a ditch, these words from Jesus feel more like a confession of our fallibility than a fear that God will beguile us.  This prayer is more like saying, "God, I know myself well enough to admit that I have been taken for a ride before by hucksters and hornswogglers.  I've been fooled before by people who did not have my best interest at heart, and I let them take advantage. Don't let me fall for it again."  And in that regard, this is both one of the most honest and hopeful prayers we can utter.

Carl Sagan once said, "One of the saddest lessons of history is this: If we’ve been bamboozled long enough, we tend to reject any evidence of the bamboozle. We’re no longer interested in finding out the truth. The bamboozle has captured us. It’s simply too painful to acknowledge, even to ourselves, that we’ve been taken. Once you give a charlatan power over you, you almost never get it back.”  Of course, the astronomer was right, and most of the time we don't want to admit that we have been duped.  A prayer like this is a helpful reminder to each of us that when we aren't listening for God's voice, we are far more likely to be conned into going after whoever is loudest. And because Jesus shows us who and what God is really like, he teaches us to pray that God would keep us from falling for the deceivers and demagogues who are vying for our allegiance to underwrite their agendas. If you have ever been brought to the point that you see you have been misled before, you know what it's like to need help in discerning which voices to listen to, and which to ignore.  Jesus gives us these words, not to dissuade God from tricking us, but to help us to resist those who would lead us astray for their own ends.  It is a prayer against the hucksters and hornswogglers, a prayer that we would be wise enough not to listen to their sales pitches, and brave enough not to go along with the crowd fawning over the emperor's new clothes.

And knowing how often we Respectable Religious Folks have given tacit approval to an awful lot of rotten things--sometimes with Bible verses to back up the rottenness--it is clear that we really do need God's guidance to keep us from being fooled by snake-oil salesmen and spin doctors.  From congregations whose preachers taught them God endorsed slavery to German congregations that quietly allowed the Reich to make their neighbors disappear to all the ways we still confuse the loudest voices with the Lord's voice, we keep needing God to lead us away from the dead-ends and back onto a way that leads to life.  Jesus knows that need--that's why he has given us such an honest prayer.

We need it every day--so we keep praying.

Lord God, do not bring us into trial or testing--help us to hear your voice clearly above all the pretenders.