March 24, 2023
Worship Words
The Christian traditions, like the Jewish traditions before them, are rooted in the understanding that you tell God’s story by becoming God’s story. The story of God’s activity in human history is not just a recounting of past events, but an ongoing event of which we are a part. The Christian churches since the earliest centuries have used the voices of biblical characters as part of their prayers, connecting our voices to their voices, our story with their story, as a way of identifying our common human nature and common relationship with God.
For example, in the Gospels we describe several people calling out to Jesus asking for Jesus to be merciful to them, such as the blind man in Luke 18:35-43. These cries for mercy found their way into the spiritual life of Christians and evolved over the years into a form of personal prayer known as the “Jesus Prayer.” It simply states, “Lord Jesus Christ, Son of God, have mercy on me a sinner.” It also became a form of cooperate prayer where we ask our Lord for mercy, “Lord, have mercy. Christ, have mercy. Lord, have mercy.” We pray this after our confession of sin and our assurance of pardon in Lent, voicing both our assurance of forgiveness, while acknowledging our ongoing need for mercy. This year we are singing this prayer in its original Greek. “Kyrie Eleison. Christe Eleison. Kyrie Eleison.” This and the Lord’s Prayer are two of very few prayers that all Christians have in their vocabulary. Praying this prayer roots all of our stories, as different as they may be, back to the stories of those women and men who cried out to Jesus for mercy in his ministry.
We also tell God’s story by becoming God’s story in the way we remember. We think of remembering as reflecting back upon past events. The New Testament word translated as “remember” is “anamnesis.” But the opposite of anamnesis (re-member) is not “forget,” but to dis-member. When The Jews gathered for the Passover they re-membered the event. Participating in that meal and the story of the exodus that was told during the meal placed those people in the story. They were now a part of line of people through history who held that story and its promise as their story and promise as well. It brought the people of God together.
As Christians, when we hear the words of Jesus to remember (anamnesis) him at his Table, we gather as witnesses that we are Christ’s Body in the world today, even as generations of Christians before us have done. We gather as those baptized into Christ, having died with him we are now risen with him, and the distinctions in the world that keep us apart have died as well. That is why Paul says that when you have not “discerned the body” properly—understood our unity in Christ appropriately—we are not remembering well. (1 Corinthians 11:29)
The ancient words of our scriptures and our faith continue through time as living words as we live into them and allow them to define our lives. The story of God’s people, though made up of many individuals, from the famous to the unknown, is the story of a people in relationship with each other in God. Each Sunday we gather to hear this story that we might encounter our God and respond in worship, and then depart to live this story for the world to experience the living word of God through us.
Let us pray this might be so. Lord, have mercy.
A blessed Lent to you all.
~ Pastor Todd