"I walk in danger all the way,
The thought shall never leave me,
That Satan, who has marked his prey,
Is plotting to deceive me.
This foe with hidden snares,
May seize me unawares.
If e'er I fail to watch and pray;
I walk in danger all the way."

The message of the Epistle of Peter and this hymn is clear: there is no safe place in this world, no safe place or person. The only safe place Christians know is God in Jesus Christ. I say this as an unsafe person; I am a sinner but I am saved by grace. I am a sinner well acquainted with my own failure to obey the Ten Commandments: I don't always believe in God above all things; I carelessly use the name of our Lord in vain; sometimes I would rather sleep in and watch television even, than gladly hear the word on Sunday; I am one whose failure to always honor those in authority over me are many; my thoughts even may be filled frequently with murder; and my concupiscence, even in my declining years, continues to surprise me, as do those temptations to take what is not mine; or carelessly ruin, with my tongue, a reputation; and whose covetousness, yes my very own covetousness, burns greener and greener as I grow older, and ironically, closer to that day when my hand will no longer be able to grasp for anything in this world.

I confess these faults, these failures to follow the Ten Commandments, as the confession of sin puts it, "my own grievous faults," in order to speak honestly about the situation. There is no safe place or person this side of heaven! There isn't even a safe place at a Lutheran seminary, where I work. Each one of us, even the most pious, has within us the power to do indescribable hurt to each other. The biblical record is clear: not one of us is righteous, no not one. The battle between God and the evil one in us is so fierce. "Do not relent," Peter says, "in the face of evil! Stand firm!"

The lesson we have read knows all that. In fact, just ahead of where we began reading, it warns that we should be "sober and vigilant", which indicates that the writer was keenly aware that even shepherds, those called to serve the sheep, were sinful and needed to be admonished to keep to their calling. Advice like that is not given out of the blue; it is given because the writer knows of shepherds who have been more interested in their own gain than in the sheep; shepherds who may have even disguised themselves as sheep, not out in the open like roaring lions. Ah, this one, this father of lies, is above all wily. He is seeking to devour us without giving any sense that we are in danger. In fact, it may be when we are doing our most religious tasks that we may be in most danger because we may have let down our guard. As Martin Luther said long ago, "Where Christ builds a church, the devil builds a chapel." And sometimes it will feel better to go into the devil's chapel than into our Lord's temple.

The evil one, after all, accepts us as we are and isn't the least bit interested in changing us. He just affirms us in our walk down the broad and evil way and lets us be.

Some time ago, a sheriff in St. Cloud, Minnesota, noted that juvenile delinquents in his county often worshiped the great deceiver because he accepted them the way they were. Of course, the devil likes us the way we are and does not want to change us. He knows us, what we are made of, and is slyly seeking our destruction. The best way to do that, some have said, has been to convince us he doesn't exist. There's recent book, The Death of Satan: How Americans Have Lost the Sense of Evil. Its author, Andrew Delbanco, says it was written to show that "if evil, with all its insidious complexity, escapes the reach of our imagination, it will have established dominion over us all." Here we are at the end of the ugliest, most violent century on record, and we have almost no way to speak of evil or the evil one, except by speaking of bad parents, or malign socioeconomic forces. In the face of the most appalling offenses, we deny the existence of evil. Even though wanton destruction comes in its wake, we don't see it until it's too late, and we are weeping with regret.

Any of us can fall, so "be sober, be vigilant," Peter says. Many preachers have preached on this text and they take the daily struggle with the evil one to be serious; this struggle is at the heart of the Christian life, even today, especially today when as Alan Jones, the rector of Grace Cathedral in San Francisco, writes: "everything is permitted, nothing forgiven."

Our lesson teaches us how difficult it is to be truly Christian. The hand to hand nature of the battle with evil grows fiercer and more perilous. On one hand, the evil one, on the other, Christ.

That battle, and the paradox of it, is what keeps us worried and anxious. For not only does this evil lurk out there, it is also inexplicably woven into our own lives, in us. Who of us has not lain awake at night thinking of who has trespassed against us, and yes, all of the people we have, might have without knowing, trespassed against ourselves? I know my sins are forgiven, but the regrets, they are there, and no absolution can erase them from the record of my life, even though I am assured that God in Jesus Christ forgives them, ultimately.

Some years ago, a woman of my generation wrote a piece in a national news magazine indicating that she, after a profligate life, realized that for her the past had a rather grim future. She couldn't burn all of her bridges. What she needed for living when she was young -- the ordinary rules of a traditional life -- had not spoken to her then and now she was reaping a bitter harvest. Christians believe that just such a time of regret and repentance allows Christ Jesus to give new life and thus freedom, not from the consequences of one's sins, but freedom from their having the last word. Christ gives us hope to go on because he is with us now and, Peter says, waiting for us in eternal glory.

Ah, the evil one! The one who devours us, who keeps whispering as he did at the beginning to our first mother, Eve, and continues whispering until our very last day, questions about whether indeed God's Word is true. "Is it true?" he said, and he says. Thanks be to God, our lesson has a great word to fling in the face of the evil one: "Cast all your cares upon Christ who careth for you." And here is the real trick, hardest to learn, oh so hard for those of us modern day rationalists who want to explain evil away: cling to Christ, for He is bigger, His word can conquer the evil one, can stand against him. You need Christ for life. True life. Suffer we will, our sufferings may grow greater because of our faith, and we are promised not much else in this life.

Christians follow one who died on a cross. Our only reward comes afterwards, Peter says, when we receive the crown that will not fade away. The rewards of faith, for example, in the life of the hymnwriter Hans Adolf Brorson were not at all apparent; an orphan himself, a young wife perishing in childbirth, many of his own children died young, but he knew and wrote that we walk by faith, not sight. The Christian's only hope, only safety, is to cling to Christ for life. "I walk with Jesus all the way," he continues.

I had a student who had a very difficult life, he told me once. His wife was going through great depression and suffering, was suicidal, and every night as he came home to his young children, he wondered what would be there, what would meet him. The only way that he could make it through the rest of the day and the next day, was for him to go out into the starry fields next to the home where he lived at the edge of the city, and sing a hymn:

"O God, our help in ages past,
Our hope for years to come,
Still be our help while troubles last,
And our eternal home."

Every evening as I was growing up, and now in my later years when I have been at home with my aging parents, I have always been moved to hear, as the evening closes in and the darkness settles over the earth, their prayers whisper through the quiet house, especially the Lord's Prayer, and their own special version, "Deliver us from the Evil One." They believe he is out there raging, but they also believe our Lord Jesus is stronger. And then they sleep sweetly in that hope and promise. Which is why, as I grow older, and my walk grows more fraught with danger, I want to walk close beside them in their prayer to the one in whom they believe, the only safe place we have in this life or the next, and with whom they walk each day, the God of all grace, who has called them -- and you -- to his eternal glory in Christ. May He indeed restore, establish and strengthen you as you walk with Him daily. And may your walk with Him grow closer each day. To Him be glory for ever and ever. Amen.

Bud Knoedler: Gracia, I was fascinated by your message. It's one that we don't hear often. You know, when we speak of evil today it's usually in terms of cultural or environmental pressures, and sometimes we blame it on genes. Sometimes we deal with it in very flip ways, like, "The devil made me do it." But you today spoke of the personification of evil -- the devil as a real, active personality. What kind of reaction do you get to this kind of issue when you present evil in this way?

Gracia Grindal: People just can't relate to it. They think, as you said, "The devil made me do it," or it was a troll, or it was something that was caused by the way I was raised, or it was something that happened because of the way the stones were arranged or something. They simply cannot deal with the fact that there's a malign force out there -- both in themselves and out there -- who wants to create chaos.

Knoedler: And yet there seems to be a fascination with the underworld. You see it in fiction and you see it in the movies, dealing with the netherworld. Is that an effort to deal with reality in that way, do you think, or what?

Grindal: Well, I think that's part of it. We've lost the understanding of it and now it's coming back in entertainment. Almost as though it needs to be dealt with in some way or another. And certainly the Biblical record deals with it, I think of course, most successfully, by speaking of the devil.

Knoedler: As a person?

Grindal: Yes.

Knoedler: As an individual.

Grindal: Yes.

Knoedler: I'm also interested in your background. In hymnody, in writing of hymns, interested in hymn-writers through the years. To me it's fascinating. From the earliest days of the church the singing of hymns has been a very important part of Christian worship. I, frankly, found it interesting to know something of the background of hymn-writers to better understand why and under what circumstances they wrote their hymns. Do you have a favorite hymn? And is there a story behind how it was written?

Grindal: I have many favorite hymns. My current favorite hymn is a wonderful German hymn by a woman named Julia von Hausmann. She was a missionary, or was going to be a missionary and she was from Latvia. She went to East Africa to be a missionary and meet her fiance there. When she got there, she discovered that her fiance had died, and she had to return. On her way home she wrote the hymn "O Take My Hand, Dear Father And Lead Thou Me." And when you sing those hymns you know they've been tested by someone who really has had to hold tightly to the hand of God.

Knoedler: Great motivation. I was fascinated by the story of John Newton who wrote his hymn "Amazing Grace" in 1775, something like that, and he came out of a background of being a slave trader himself and then, as a result of his coming to faith he wrote that amazing hymn, "Amazing Grace".

Grindal: It's a deep one in the heart of Americans, particularly.

Knoedler: It really is.

Grindal: People don't like sometimes when he says, "a wretch like me," but if you know John Newton's story, you know that he understood himself to be a wretch.

Knoedler: Yes. Well, coming from a background of a slave trader and dealing in the flesh literally of African-Americans - or Africans, I should say - during those days that was quite a transformation for him.

Grindal: Yes, it was.

Knoedler: And quite a testimony. Well we are delighted with having you back on the program, Gracia. And thank you very much for your participation with us again.