1 Corinthians 13:1-13
Psalm 100 1:1-58
Luke 18:31-43

"Lord Jesus, Son of God,
Have Mercy on Me"

"Thou Son of [Royal] David, have mercy on me!"

In the Name of the Father and of the Son and of the Holy Ghost. Amen.

"Lord, have mercy on me!" Is this not our most ancient liturgical petition? Kyrie, eleison! The one prayer in the Western Mass that comes to us in its Greek form:

Kyrie, eleison! Christe, eleison! Kyrie, eleison!
The prayer rings so loudly in our ears, resonates so deeply to our inmost soul, that we might have said, "It echoes throughout the Gospels!" But it does not. In fact, during Jesus' earthly ministry, according to the Gospels, it occurs only twice. We are moved to say with Jesus — as when the solitary leper returns to render thanks for His mercy — "Were there not ten cleansed? But where are the [other] nine?" (Lu 17:11). In only two scenes in all the New Testament do we hear this most appropriate human prayer.

It is, of course, the Jesus Prayer — the prayer that staggers the mind if only in the sheer abundance of its offering from human lips, or hearts, to Heaven. Trillions of recitations and much more! A major radio frequency from Earth to Heaven!

Lord Jesus, Son of God, have mercy on me!

The only two Gospel instances of this great prayer form the subject of our meditation this morning. A blind man in Jericho is told that Jesus of Nazareth is coming through. He springs up, walking in the direction of the footsteps that he hears. "O Son of David," he cries, "have mercy on me!" He addresses Jesus as "Son of David," a royal title, for He is Lord of all. How odd, we may say to ourselves, that no one seems to know this except a barely-tolerated blind beggar. We heard in our Psalm reading this morning, "Know ye that the Lord He is God. It is He that hath made us and not we ourselves!"

The only other scene where the prayer is offered is spoken by a Canaanite woman, petitioning Jesus to exorcise her daughter. "Kyrie eleison," she says. And these very likely were her literal words in this Greek-language lifeworld: "Lord, have mercy."

In this speaking, we hear for the first time this most cherished prayer. For the first time it is spoken anywhere on the earth. Our "prayer without ceasing" (1 Thess 5:187), our own echoing song as we progress toward Heaven and union with God. It is spoken by an outcast, a pagan Canaanite woman. What can be lower than this?! Even the thought of her is unacceptable to the Disciples. The sound of bells on her clothing and her strong perfumes precede her. The clinking amulets on her wrist and ankles announce her presence (as none would dare to look upon her immodestly attired form). Perhaps she wears the "Little Dog," which had magical properties in the minds of "the people of the land." And she is speaking to the Master! If she draws any closer, the Disciples fear, they will be tarred by the brush of indecency, perhaps even ritual uncleanness! To share the same air with her?! The same spoken breath with her?!

How striking, then, that in all the New Testament, this prayer of supplication should be offered by two of the least esteemed people on the Jewish earth: the detested Canaanite woman and the marginalized, blind beggar, whom the crowd shushes .... but who will not be silenced.

Where exactly are we amidst all this commotion? We are in Jericho, the City of Palms, the well-watered and lushly-planted oasis, where only the wealthiest and most influential people built their personal retreats and compounds. We might say it is the Beverly Hills of Judah, or better yet, the Malibu, where only the rich and famous build their summer homes. In the days of the Judges, this where Eglon, King of Moab, built his summer mansion (Judges 3). It is where King David sends his elite troops for rest and refreshment following a difficult encounter with the Ammonites (2 Samuel 10). And closer to Jesus time, it is where Herod the Great has built his summer palace. Well might the beggars of the earth crowd into Jericho, for here they have best hope of receiving princely alms.

Certainly, a contrast is drawn as the King of the Universe, accounted to be no one, makes His royal progress past costly homes and sprawling estates, past the kings of this world. But this world is, relatively speaking, a brief illusion. And in the afterlife, a rich man now suffering in flames cries out,

Father Abraham, have mercy on me, and send Lazarus, that he may dip the tip of his finger in water, and cool my tongue (Lu 16:24).
The hated Canaanite woman, a despised and beggared blind man, and a wretched man damned in the unquenchable fires of perdition. In all the New Testament, these are the only three who offer this most basic prayer of human salvation: "Lord, have mercy on me!"

What is going on here? After all, is not the petition, "Lord, have mercy," a mainstay of the Psalter? Should we not expect to hear it offered to Emmanuel? To God-with-us? Not even His Disciples will address Him with anything approaching this prayer most appropriate to their station and place.

Let us back up several yards from the place where we encounter the blind beggar. The Lord has led His Disciples into Jericho from the north on their way to Jerusalem, which is now only sixteen miles to the southwest. What is the thematic context for this little drama in the City of Palms? Jesus is on His royal progress to Jerusalem. He is on His most purple journey: the King of the Universe will ascend to a Cross, and His Royal Blood will cover the world ... for all time.

You recall the circumstances. Time and again, He has attempted to teach His followers that He is the King far above all Kings. He had taken them on the long pilgrimage to the far north, to Banias, the holiest center of pagan worship (which the Romans called Caesarea-Philippi). He sat near the headwaters of the Jordan and bade them sit before Him looking upon the shrine of Pan, to lesser deities (placed in booths outside), and to the great Temple honoring Augustus Caesar (whom Romans called the man-gods). And He asked them, once and for all,

Who do you say that I AM?
invoking the Divine Name, I AM. Next, He brought them to a high mountain summit revealing His Divine Identity — shining bright as the sun, greeted by Moses and Elijah, approved by the Father Who enjoins these stubborn men,
This is my beloved Son! ... Listen to Him!
But they will not. They will not listen. For when He reveals His identity to the five thousand — taking them to a wilderness place and feeding them with manna — they fail to perceive that they are alone with God, with Providence, the One Who feeds them the bread of heaven. Most disturbingly, they respond by attempting to crown God a petty king ... following own their ulterior motives and hidden agendas. On the way from the Mount of Loaves, the Lord flashes His rage at the self-absorbed Disciples:
Do ye not yet understand, neither remember the five loaves of the five thousand, and how many baskets ye took up?
Neither the seven loaves of the four thousand, and how many baskets ye took up?
How is it that ye do not understand? (Mt 16:9-11)
It is from here that He turns His face to Jerusalem and to Golgotha. It is from here that He will throw His body to the ground at Gethsemane in despair, realizing that it is over. Nothing He can do or say will avail. God's people simply will not listen, will not understand the great gift that has been set before them. His earthly ministry now draws to a close and with it a path through human history that is now not to be: the Kingdom of Heaven (a term never before heard), offered here on earth .... and rejected, and rejected in the most abject terms:
Behold, we go up to Jerusalem, and all things that are written by the prophets concerning the Son of man shall be accomplished.
For He shall be delivered unto the Gentiles, and shall be mocked, and spitefully entreated, and spitted on:
And they shall scourge Him, and put Him to death ....
These are the words Jesus places before His Disciples and other followers as they pass through luxurious and kingly Jericho. From the sumptuous worship spaces in Banias to the sumptuous lifestyles of Jericho, the Disciples are taken on a tour past worldly glories as they approach .... a blind man laying in the dust. Jesus has told His followers that they have ears and do not hear, have eyes yet do not perceive. And now approaching them is one who perceives but who has no faculty of eyesight.

And we are reminded of something we heard earlier in Jesus' ministry: Others have said,

"This is the Christ." But some said, "Shall Christ come out of Galilee?"
Hath not the scripture said, That Christ cometh of the seed of David, and out of the town of Bethlehem, where David was?" (Jn 7:41-42)
And the rejection of God is to play out through this critical misperception. And is this not the most human of all traits? .... when we say, "No! This does not square with what I believe!" or "This is not what I know to be true!" No. No one ever stops to ask, "Exactly, where did this man Jesus come from?" They prefer the alpha-dog mentality, you see, of one-ups-man-ship, a hallmark of the broken: "He is from Galilee! He is not a Jew!" "He is called 'Son of Mary,' not 'Jesus bar Joseph' and cannot even claim a father! ... this bastard among the Gentiles!"

"Who then is This?" And now we hear the question of the ages. He, of course, has already revealed Who He Is, as God did once in the wilderness of Midian but to one Who believed, to a stuttering shepherd (and what man in the ancient world could be lower than this?!). And God has asked the great question:

Who do you say I AM?
Peter ventures an answer but then has misgivings the following day. Indeed, he has misgivings the next moment: "Get thee behind me, Satan. You are a stumbling block.

Only two people in the history of humankind step forward confidently to offer these words to Jesus: "Lord, have mercy on me." The first is a detested woman who pushes past violent men who insult her and very probably spitted upon her. Jesus ensures that this encounter is rendered in high drama. This encounter will be no passing moment but rather a set-piece in the Gospels:

Shall the little dogs (κυναριος) eat the children's bread, He asks.
In contrast to the proud men around her, she replies,
Yes, Lord: yet the little dogs under the table eat of the children's crumbs (Mk 7:28).
And to this humility and nearly unique reverence, Jesus, on a stage He has carefully prepared, turns God's face unto the nations. It would begin with the worship of three kings from the East and it would be completed here. "Lord, have mercy." And the hand of God lights on to a little pagan girl who is instantly healed.

In Jericho, a man who should have been respected for his age and cared for in his infirmity instead lies in abject dust. He stirs to His feet, defying the haughty men around him, and utters the prayer that the Chief Priests cannot manage to say:

"O Son of Royal David, have mercy on me!"

We who live today might well ask, "Which prayer among all prayers has been said tens, even hundreds, of millions of times in the space of individual lifetimes? Many a novice monk has offered this prayer 6,000 times a day, more than two million times in a year. Finally, the number exceeds our grasp as it becomes the silent and ceaseless prayer of the heart. Said with each drawing of breath to the steady beat of the heart. It is, the ancient Fathers believed, the path to wholeness, to enlightenment, and thence to salvation.

Whence has this gift come? How has it been brought into the human lifeworld? As we have seen this morning, its origin is the heart of an outcast. Somehow, the prayer renders them immune against the surrounding world's toxins. Through a dog-pack mentality (found even in the minds of Jesus' Disciples), they manage to push through with one prayer on their heart. It is this one prayer which saves them. It is the prayer that takes them to a transcendent place, above the grasping world, where they meet with Jesus.

In the case of the blind man, he does indeed receive his sight, but not from anything Jesus has done (the Lord assures him). After all, we know what that restoration of sight looks like. The Eternal Word takes clay, mixes it with His own spittle to form new eyesight (Jn 9:6). No, Jesus says, it was the blind man's belief: "Thy faith hath saved thee." What is this man's name? Bar-timaeus. He is the son of Timaeus, whose name derives from the Greek word τιμαο, (timao), which means "to fear, to honor." Bar-timaeus is the one who fears God, who possesses the beginning of knowledge (Proverbs 1:7), and who by this fact is saved.

♱


Do you know the spiritual classic, The Way of a Pilgrim? written by an anonymous Russian peasant during the nineteenth century? A Sister of our Community found it in tatters in a trash can during her novitiate at a Franciscan convent in 1962. Hers was a cloistered, religious world, where you might bump into books like this. The rest of us in the U.S. discovered it first in the New Yorker magazine, when a short story entitled "Franny" by J. D. Salinger was printed in 1955. Later, published as part of a book called Franny and Zooey, millions of people were attracted to The Way of the Pilgrim, which Franny kept hidden in her purse. She would excuse herself when the world began to suffocate her and sought out a private place where she might read a page or two, then kiss the book, clutch it close to her breast, and then conceal it again.

Readers of this story experienced the book's quiet power. They saw that embracing it equated to immunity against the noxious and dangerous world. Through this Russian classic, one descends into the Jesus Prayer as a holy pilgrimage in itself. In Chapter 5, the Pilgrim meets with a monk from Mt. Athos, who teaches him that in the first part of the Jesus Prayer, we are led "into the history of the life of Jesus, or as the Fathers explain, .... the short form of the Gospel." The second part of the prayer, "Have mercy on me," goes to the essence of our human condition. "Other petitions would not be as comprehensive and all-inclusive," the monk says. It is these few words that sum up in a fearful elegance the entire human condition.

Broken humanity pleading directly and urgently, "Have mercy on me!" squarely set before our God, "Lord Jesus, Son of God." Indeed, the short form of the Gospel and the essence of the human condition.

♱


Today, my sisters and brothers, we continue our nine week journey to the door of His tomb? Two weeks are now behind us? It is the most important journey of our lives. With His Disciples, we have been granted the holy opportunity to examine ourselves, our own condition, and to meditate on what we believe. St. Paul meditated for three years in Arabia trying to square his life and beliefs to something he had not expected: an encounter with the Lord, Jesus.

He confronts today with His blinding light. His radiance will be to the capacity of our faith to receive it, and He will illumine, if we will only let Him, every corner of our lives unto the last doubt and resistance and flaw. We say we journey to the door of tomb, but just prior to that tomb will be the greatest scandal in human history:

"He shall be delivered unto the Gentiles, and shall be mocked, and spitefully entreated, and spitted on."
And we are at the bottom of this scandal. For the name Judas, a variant of Judah, means everyman, in our early first-century tradition. If you doubt this, then consider that his replacement among the Twelve is Mattityahu in Hebrew, or Mattias in Greek, which is close enough to the Greek mathetes to make the point. For mathetes simply means disciple, any disciple. After all, does not Jesus say that the one will betray Him is the one who has dipped his bread into the dish? (Jn 13:26). And did they not all dip their bread? Do we not know how the story ends? How they all would betray Him?

This is our tradition, so this is our scandal: God's people have killed their God. Who do we say that He is, today and in the space of our individual lives? And one more thing: will we square our lives, every part of our lives, to this great truth? Will we own our part in the ongoing scandal of God's rejection: how He is spitted on today, in our neighborhood, in our town, across this island, and all over the world?

In the words of the Roman-Catholic-become-Anglo-Catholic, John Donne,

Who was the guilty? Who brought this upon thee?
Alas, my treason, Jesus, hath undone thee!
'Twas I, Lord Jesus, I it was denied thee;
I crucified thee.
O Thou Son of Royal David, have mercy on me!



In the Name of the Father and of the Son and of the Holy Ghost. Amen.