DAY 197
Faith in the Midst of a Pandemic
A series of daily reflections for people of faith
by Rev. Robert Bayley, Interim Pastor
Patuxent Presbyterian Church, California, Maryland
pastorrobert@paxpres.org
Week Twenty-nine Sunday 27 September 2020
Mercy and Pity
O God, you declare your almighty power chiefly in showing mercy and pity: Grant us the fullness of your grace, that we, running to obtain your promises, may become partakers of your heavenly treasure; through Jesus Christ our Lord, who lives and reigns with you and the Holy Spirit, one God, for ever and ever. Amen. - The Book of Common Prayer: For the Sunday Closest to 28 September.
While I like the phrase “running to obtain your promises” in the prayer for today, I am drawn more to our growing need for the qualities of mercy and pity in our society, for they seem to be increasingly in short supply on the national level, even as countless numbers of ordinary citizens exhibit mercy in their responses to needy neighbors and the sick and hospitalized.
‘Kyrie eleison, Christe eleison, Kyrie eleison” is recorded as being part of the worship of Christians as early as the 7th century. It is solidly Scripture-based, with the Psalmist pleading multiple times for mercy, and the sick, the blind, and the desperate crying out “Lord, have mercy in me” in the Gospels. It is used today in Roman Catholic, Episcopalian and Lutheran churches as well as in some Methodist and Presbyterian congregations. It is always an appropriate prayer, ‘The Kyrie.”
If mercy is what we ask of the Lord, it is pity or compassion with which He responds. Showing mercy can be a perfunctory act in a court of law without any personal involvement. Pity and compassion, on the other hand, originate in the deepest part of who a person is, and in this instance, who God is, having to do literally with movement in the deepest internal organs of a person, what the King James Version translates as “the bowels of compassion.”
May the ancient liturgical worship prayer “Lord, have mercy; Christ, have mercy; Lord, have mercy” find a comfortable place within us in our deepest place of need, in what our prayer reminds us are the chief ways God shows His power, sustaining us on our pandemic journey.
Reflective question: In what deepest place do you need to cry out, “Lord, have mercy?”
Reflective Scripture: Luke 18:38 – “’Jesus, Son of David, have mercy on me!’”
Reflective hymn:
“There’s a Wideness in God’s Mercy” – Frederick Faber (1813-1863)
There’s a wideness in God’s mercy, like the wideness of the sea.
There’s a kindness in God’s justice, which is more than liberty.
There is no place where earth’s sorrows are more felt than up in heaven.
There is no place where earth’s failings have such kindly judgment given.
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