Lord, Have Mercy [Advent 3; St. Matthew 11:2-10]

LISTEN TO THE AUDIO HERE.

Jesus speaks to you, even this day, saying:

“This is he of whom it is written, ‘Behold, I send my messenger before your face,

who will prepare your way before you.’”

Just in time for the Advent season and its annual fake news about how Christmas was pagan and how Jesus wasn’t born on the 25th and how all of Christianity is stolen from other religions, we look to our Kyrie in the Divine Service, that is, the place where we say, “Lord have mercy”.

The reason this all coincides is because, in the earliest forms of the Divine Service, the Kyrie was not there, but it was there in pagan rites and ceremonies. As we sing it, sandwiched between the bright tones of the Introit and the Gloria, the Kyrie is sung with somber and humble tones, in the Divine Service today.

This is exactly the tone they wanted that pleads for favor or help. That the sun worshipers cried, “O Helios, have mercy”. The emperor worshipers cried out, “O Lord (emperor), have mercy”. It is the religious petition toward a god to gain something, usually something good. Never would anyone beg for something bad or tragic, but such is the Santa Claus god we are used to.

We don’t actually see or hear the Kyrie in the Divine Service until the 6th century AD, probably through the powerful influence of the great church at Constantinople, thus it is retained in the original Greek, even to our modern day, so the historians say.

Thus, I guess, we must resign ourselves to prison as St. John does today, that Christianity was and is just another hotplate on the buffet table of history. No matter what we do; no matter what St. John does, he ends up in prison. He had the call from God, he did what God said, and he went where God said. And yet it turns out he was just another crazy street preacher who just happened to annoy the wrong king and lost his head.

This is the one who prepares the way of the Lord?! This is the path that Jesus is to take and then we are to follow that?! On top of that, do we have no originality to stand on? Is there not something that is uniquely Christian that we didn’t have to borrow from pagans or Jews?

As St. John knew very well, he was a borrower, but not from any worldly organization that was somehow around before Christianity. He was a borrower of words, words that God had spoken centuries before he was born. Christianity may have added things on to liturgy and lectionary throughout the centuries, but there is nothing pagan about it, Christmass, or the Kyrie.

In fact, before these sun-cults and emperor fan clubs was King David and he pens psalm 123 which says, “O Lord, have mercy upon us” (v.3) which is exactly what Kyrie eleison means. On top of this, King David was not Jewish, in the religious sense of the word, but a Christian. He was expecting the Lord’s Christ, or Messiah, to come and rescue him, as God told him in 2 Sam. 7 saying, “Moreover, the Lord declares to you that the Lord will make you a house…And your house and your kingdom shall be made sure forever before me. Your throne shall be established forever.” (v.11, 16)

Those “forever” words can not apply to mere mortals, but to those who will be resurrected in the resurrection of all flesh, which David believed in saying of his recently dead son, “But now he is dead. Why should I fast? Can I bring him back again? I shall go to him, but he will not return to me” (2 Sam. 12:23).

There is no other way to describe religion directed toward God as anything other than Christian; having to do with Christ. This means that there never was a religion, instituted by God that did not have to do with Christ. That is to say, that Christianity did not beg, borrow, and steal. It was the others who stole from Christianity.

So when we come back to St. John in prison and the use of the Kyrie, we find that not only is the Kyrie super-Christian, but that St. John’s predicament is, as well. 

In this way: Isaiah tips us off and tells us great news; we are to be comforted immediately. We are to lay down our warfare, because its over. The fighting has stopped. The treaty signed. But he does it by telling us that our iniquity is pardoned and that we will be receiving double for all our sins.

Iniquity? Sins? Have we not lived life to the utmost for You, God? Have we not done all the right things, said all the right things, and been in the right places? And still the answer is no. Still the answer is temporal and eternal punishment for our sins.

If we make light of sin; if it is simply something we can overcome with a change of mind or a change of attitude, then this is not the place for you, Christ is not the man for you, and the Kyrie is not the phrase for you.

Because Isaiah prepares a way for you that gives comfort and joy, but only after warfare, iniquity, and sin. St. Paul, in our Epistle reading, says that it is the Lord Who judges. Jesus tells us that the man who is “more than a prophet” does not escape jail and death. Jesus then goes on to show us that not even the Son of God escapes all of those things.

Lord, have mercy! That God would engage in war, taste iniquity, and wallow in sin. What brokenness the world is in that the sole, sinless being in the entire universe must empty Himself and become obedient to death. What depths of degradation has humanity fallen into that the Father of all mercy and the God of all comfort must become a judge.

Indeed, all people are grass, and the Word of the Lord will stand forever. But the judgment of the Lord does not stand forever. Yes, sin will always be judged, but now the Lord of all has been sent to prison. Now, Jesus has taken on the darkness, the iniquity, and the warfare, not just to lose His head and become a martyr, but to open the prison doors that held St. John and that hold you, which you could not open.

Where King David, St. John, and the Church have only sacrifices to depend on and no real certainty that God will show them favor at their cry of “Lord have mercy”, Jesus is the sacrifice Himself, Who gives pardon, Who gives rest, and Who gives double for all sins all because He will stand forever, meaning, all because Jesus stands at the Resurrection, never to die again.

God judges Himself on the cross. God raises Himself, three days later, and assumes the throne of His “father” and loyal subject, David. God places Himself in the hands of men in order that, in their suffering, He would relieve them with the Gospel; the fact that all their iniquity is pardoned and that their death-cell door has been propped open with a cross-shaped door jam.

So even though we would call the Kyrie a sacrificial act on our part, meaning, it is an act we do in service to God, it is only sacrificial because of the one sacrifice made for all in Jesus. So it is then that we can “…with confidence draw near to the throne of grace, that we may receive mercy and find grace to help in time of need” (Heb. 4:16), for upon these two wings of humility and confidence all liturgical prayer rises to the throne of grace.

We offer the sacrifice of the Kyrie within the sacrifice Jesus made. Jesus cries out for mercy for us, not for Himself, and so we echo His Word. The mercy shown to St. John and to us within the Church, is a mercy not of this world. A mercy that can be vibrant and effective even behind bars and even in death.