My wife told me a story once about the funeral of a great Empress. A grand procession accompanied her remains to the cathedral and when they arrived at the doors, a voice from within asked, “Who seeks entry?” And a herald pounded on the great doors and proclaimed, “Open! For the Great Empress, Protector of the Faith, etc., etc., etc.” - and the doors remained closed. “I do not know her.” Again. The doors stayed shut. Then finally the herald humbly asked, “Please open the doors for Catherine, a sinner, a child of your own redeeming.” The doors opened wide. And the welcome was glorious.
This story comes to mind this week for a couple of reasons. Two festivals are coming up in the Church calendar, one right after the other: All Saints and All Souls. On November 1st while we are recovering from a candy binge we remember the Saints of the Church recognized in our calendar. On the following day we remember All Faithful Departed, All Souls, that is, a commemoration of every one, known and unknown, who has gone before us into glory.
And the other reason is that the story of the empress resonates with a parable of Jesus… which I will tell here with the labels removed from the characters.
“Two people went up to the temple to pray. One …stood and prayed about himself with these words, ‘God, I thank you that I’m not like everyone else—crooks, evildoers, adulterers—or even like this person here. I fast twice a week. I give a tenth of everything I receive.’ But the other stood at a distance. He wouldn’t even lift his eyes to look toward heaven. Rather, he struck his chest and said, ‘God, show mercy to me, a sinner.’ I tell you, this person went down to his home justified rather than the other. All who lift themselves up will be brought low, and those who make themselves low will be lifted up.” (Luke 18:10-14, Common English Bible, paraphrased)
“God, have mercy on me, a sinner,” is the prayer at the heart of this gospel story. In fact, in folk tradition, this prayer becomes ‘the Jesus prayer’ - the prayer one may recite repeatedly until it sinks into one’s heart. It can become a reflex, a prayer as close as breath, one that accompanies every step.
Of course in Boy Scouts the closest to a prayer that accompanied every step was, “A hundred bottles of beer on the wall.” Not so eternally sustaining.
Many people have versions of the Jesus Prayer, simpler or more elaborate than the prayer of the man in the Temple, building on it or stripping it down to a simple “Je-sus” inhale/exhale, or adding words, “Lord Jesus Christ, have mercy on me, a sinner.”
And of course there is a long tradition of other repeated recited prayers.
This one can be ours, as people of faith. Or as sinners. To be more accurate. And to be a bit humble about it. Nobody really owns this prayer; but one may own up to it.
The great empress, when all her finery had been folded and put away, was still a soul in search of God. Of mercy.
And the Psalms remind us that,
Our sins are stronger than we are, but you will blot them out.
and that we are welcome, not because of our own merit or position or greatness in the world, or conversely our practiced pieties, but because God is great and God is gracious.
In other religious traditions we come across a saying that could be taken from the Psalms, “Let these words be written above my throne: ‘My mercy always prevails over my wrath.’”
In other words, however tremblingly terrifyingly true it might be that God’s holiness and majesty, and our faltering failings, may be in chasmic distance from each other, God will come to us, as Jesus came, to bridge that gap between unutterable majesty and ineffable holiness, and our own - rightly acknowledged - humble condition.
The good news is that God does not leave us in despair, or the loneliness of sin, but comes to us, and brings us home.
Happy are they whom you choose and draw to your courts to dwell there! they will be satisfied by the beauty of your house, by the holiness of your temple. Awesome things will you show us in your righteousness, O God of our salvation, O Hope of all the ends of the earth and of the seas that are far away. (Psalm 65:3,4-6)
Father John Leech is a priest associate of the Episcopal Church of Saint Matthew in Tucson.
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http://edgeofenclosure.org/proper25c.html
Two unusual sources of inspiration from Prof. Laura Hollengreen's University Humanities Seminar on World War One and the Avant-Garde:
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