In Eucharistic worship, where the unspeakable gets spoken and where this new priest sings the Lord’s song as for the first time, every time, we—priest and people—bid each other to prayer with the ancient kyrie eléi̱son. In English,
Lord have mercy,
Christ have mercy,
Lord have mercy.
Eléi̱son is a Greek aorist imperative verb tense (which is saying a lot for someone who nearly melted her neural passages studying Biblical languages). I might characterize it as demanding sort of respectful address, as in “I know you are really powerful and really just, and because of that I really expect you to do the right thing.” New Testament prayers are shot through with aorist imperatives, “GIVE us this day our daily bread” being one very well known case. There’s something quite good and right about insisting that God do God’s holy thing. But at the same time, an imperative implicitly suggests that whatever it is we are demanding is not already happening. What if we shifted the tense, so that the response were not “Christ have mercy” (Christé eléi̱són) but rather “Christ is merciful” (eleí̱mo̱n o Christós)?
At our staff retreat last week, Bishop Marc Andrus—a practitioner of Buddhist-Christian dialogue—recounted a conversation with a Buddhist friend who challenged him as to whether Christianity fails to notice the fullness of the present moment. To the extent that we focus our petitions on things (promised or hoped for) to come, do we miss what’s already here? “The kingdom of heaven is at hand,” Jesus said.
Today began its digital demands at about 7:00 am, with five intractable problems (both personal and professional) waiting in my inbox. Which required seven long unscheduled phone calls and two personal visits, all of which turned out to be graced pastoral opportunities to connect with people who love God and are passionate about ministry. Each eventually pointed towards solutions that would have been unimaginable when I woke up and blinked at my inbox and said “Lord have mercy.”
The day began with an aorist imperative, even if I didn’t exactly recognize it as such at the time. “God, I really don’t have the resources to figure all this out so you do it, please” was the desperate prayer behind the ancient prayer. And lo, it all came to be figured out. Through patience and humility, and listening for the solutions which were already there even before I woke up to the problems, the day revealed to éleos tou Christoú. The mercy of Christ, already present.
I had intended for this to be a blog of lectionary reflections, and maybe it will become that. But I’m not preaching this Sunday. (Although… I could think of those extravagantly-scattered seeds as the already present mercy…) For now, however, I am busy solving intractable problems. Next week I am on deck to preach again (in Spanish, so I’m praying “Señor, ten piedad” even now). Because of that, I’ll surely be back in my Bible and in your inbox again soon. Through the mercy of Christ, of course, which is the one certain and always present thing.
Amen.