The 21st Sunday after Pentecost - Moments of Mercy and Thank-yous

Kyrie eleison; Christe eleison; Kyrie eleison.

Lord, have mercy.  Christ, have mercy.  Lord, have mercy.

As you know, our prayer book offers two patterns to begin regular Sunday Eucharistic worship: Rite One and Rite Two.  The major difference between the two beginnings is what "may be" said or sung and what "is" required to be said or sung.  In Rite One asking for mercy receives greater emphasis than giving glory to God.  Only "when appointed," does the Gloria take precedence over the Kyrie.  In Rite Two the Gloria receives the precedence, coming first in the order of choices for opening worship.  Asking for God's mercy is allotted to "other occasions."  At St. Nicholas' we use the Kyrie instead of the Gloria or other hymn of praise only in Lent.

The relative emphasis between asking for mercy--Luke puts the word eleison in the mouth of the ten people with skin disorders--and giving glory and thanks to God comes through clearly in this passage. The one who turned back to thank Jesus and give glory to God receives Jesus' commendation: "Your faith has made you well."  

Asking for mercy is fine--and clearly appropriate--for those outcasts who were condemned to live in separation from society and those whom they loved.  Can you imagine how it must have felt to never be allowed to come near other people except those with the same very visible skin disorders that you have?  When we despair over some pain in our lives that we feel we must keep hidden in order to avoid being rejected by our friends, our family or our co-workers, we have a sense of how the people with leprosy felt.

The prayer, Lord have mercy, may find itself on our lips frequently. I often quote the writer Anne Lamott who says much prayer can be reduced to these words: Help, help, help!  Step 1 in the 12 Steps that guide Alcoholics Anonymous is: “We admitted we were powerless over alcohol— that our lives had become unmanageable.”  Step 2 says: “Came to believe that a Power greater than ourselves could restore us to sanity.”  These two steps are indeed saying "Help!" and "Have mercy!"  How the AA member defines his or her Higher Power can be specific to that person, but asking for help in controlling the addiction is essential.  

Other situations may lead us to ask for mercy.  We may have lost our job.  We may have found out a friend or loved is gravely ill.  We may have received a diagnosis that scares us.  We may be angry at some unfairness that has blocked us.  So much in life can lead us to ask for help, for mercy, and also rail against the unfairness of fate--and even of God--for allowing such things to happen to us.

Having to ask for mercy means that we admit that we cannot take care of a situation or even of ourselves without help.  That rankles!  And even if we do ask, are we ready to recognize when mercy and compassion come our way?

Although all the leprosy or skin diseases afflicting those ten folks vanished, we have no idea how the nine who did not return to give thanks to Jesus handled things.  Were their lives all sorted out from that moment on?  Probably not.  I think the story seeks to make this point: only one of the people who no longer suffered from leprosy experienced complete healing.  And that person was not even well-regarded by most of those who surrounded Jesus that day.  Luke names him a Samaritan, and Jesus calls him "this foreigner."  Not "our kind of people," one might say!  But that foreigner discerned what he must do to find the wholeness he needed to get his life back on track: give thanks and glory to God--"Then one of them, when he saw that he was healed, turned back praising God with a loud voice.  He prostrated himself at Jesus' feet and thanked him."

Although we may not focus on this aspect of the Gloria when we sing it, here are the words of its second stanza:  "Lord God, heavenly King,/ almighty God and Father,/ we worship you, we give you thanks,/ we praise you for your glory."  Our liturgy causes us to give thanks and glory to God, no matter how our week has been or how our lives are right now.

Is this a meaningless exercise, ancient words said for centuries, now sung to a rather nice tune, but repeated by rote with no thought of the context of our lives?  If that were so, we should just stop singing the Gloria.  Rather I believe, it calls us to be attentive to where we may in some way or other experienced the mercy and compassion of God.  It also calls us to be attentive where we have had the chance to reach out with mercy and compassion in God's name.

Despite what things may be weighing on our hearts and troubling our minds, where can we see a moment of mercy in our lives?  Have we created that moment of mercy for someone else?  And above all, are we willing to say, "Thanks!?"

Such a moment occurred this week, right here at St. Nicholas'.  A couple came to the door for some assistance--I am always a bit suspicious of a person's honesty under those circumstances--but as we talked, I could see she was shivering.  They said they had come here from Alabama for work.  They had slept in their vehicle last night, because the site where he had been working was vacated; and he had not been paid.  I asked if they were hungry.  Their response was, "Yes," said with an eagerness I have heard from children who hadn't eaten breakfast.  We had some left-over frozen ziti.  So I fixed them cups of tea and heated the ziti in the microwave.  When I came back from doing a couple things in the office, I found the woman washing up the dishes they had used.  She said it was the least she could do, given the meal they had just eaten.  I sent them on their way back to Alabama with a gas card from my discretionary fund and some of the food left over from our last packing of Go-bags for the Empowerment Center--crackers, juice, and a "protein source."   They had said their thank-you, but she demonstrated it by washing the dishes.  I am thankful to God for being part of St. Nicholas'; because of my work here I was able to experience this moment of mercy!