The Empress and the Sinner

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:

Jay Winter, “Homecomings:  The Return of the Dead,” in Sites of Memory, Sites of Mourning: The Great War in European Cultural History (Cambridge:  Cambridge University Press,1995), 15-28.

Allyson Booth, “Corpselessness” in Postcards from the Trenches:  Negotiating the Space between Modernism and the First World War (New York and Oxford:  Oxford University Press, 1996) 21-49. 

The Arizona Daily Star published a version of this essay under the title “Humble yourself to be lifted up” in its Keeping the Faith feature, Home + Life section, Sunday November 6th 2022, E3. https://arizonadailystar-az.newsmemory.com/?selDate=20221106&goTo=E03&artid=4

'God, be merciful to me, a sinner!'

There are places you can get to in life, positions you can fill, status you can gain, prizes you can win, by following the rules, checking the boxes off the list, getting the signatures in the right spaces on the forms, and satisfying the tribunal.

There are places you can't.

There are rewards you cannot earn, standards you cannot meet, and tribunals you cannot satisfy - not on your own.


"For all who exalt themselves will be humbled, but all who humble themselves will be exalted." (Luke 18:14)

As St. James says,

God opposes the proud,
but gives grace to the humble.

(James 4:6)

When I joined the Boy Scouts I tried to follow the rules - spoken and unspoken. I was very taken with the Boy Scout Handbook, and tried to instill its precepts in my self like holy writ. I learned to recite the Scout Law, the Scout Oath, and the Scout Motto.

And I followed the rules. You can see in my copy of the Boy Scout Handbook checkmarks against each of the steps to become a Tenderfoot Scout, then a Second-Class Scout. And on it goes...

There were all sorts of very useful rules and instructions. They were helpful - if you kept the purpose in mind.

The purpose was, to my fourteen-year-old mind, to learn the skills to have fun - safely - in woods or on water.

We learned how to canoe, to hike, to camp, to cook outdoors over an open fire, to make the fire, to chop the wood. We learned first aid, surveying techniques, and woodcraft.

We learned a lot of things - to have fun, safely and skillfully, and to be changed. We became better boys - on the way to becoming better men. We learned how to work together. We learned how to lead. We learned how to follow, even when somebody confused leading with bossing other boys around. We learned how to make our way on our own, when that was necessary.

Of course you are never really alone.

(Even Eagle Scouts need help from the other boys.)

God is always walking with you.

And of course you will never make it, on your own. Not to the place that really matters. Not to becoming the person that you were really made to be. You can't - and you don't have to. You weren't made to. You were made to walk with God.

For He has told you, O mortal, what is good;
and what does the Lord require of you
but to do justice, and to love kindness,
and to walk humbly with your God?

(Micah 6:8)

If you are wondering how to find God's will for your life - there it is. Do justice, love mercy, and walk humbly with your God.

Or, to put it another way - one of Jesus' favorites - you can sum up the whole Law for living in two phrases:

Hear what our Lord Jesus Christ saith:
Thou shalt love the Lord thy God with all thy heart, and with all thy soul, and with all thy mind. This is the first and great commandment. And the second is like unto it: Thou shalt love thy neighbor as thyself. On these two commandments hang all the Law and the Prophets.

(The Book of Common Prayer, The Holy Eucharist, Rite One)


Do justice, love mercy, and walk humbly with my God? Oh! Is that all?

It'll only take a lifetime to learn.

And a good lifetime it will be.

For we are not made to make it on our own - despite all the strivings of the earnest but overconfident Pharisee, neither he - nor any one of us - is able to exalt ourselves.

He did all the 'right' things - checked all the right boxes. He tithed, he fasted. He gained position, and won status for himself. He had forgotten the purpose. He just wanted to make it to the top. But - nobody makes it on their own.

You cannot get into heaven by pulling up on your own bootstraps.

The repentant tax collector knew this. He may not have lived a good life - in fact, he was sure he hadn't, and repented for it - but he did know this:

All he was able to offer, all he had, was humility, a prayer of humble access before the Lord.

Lord, have mercy on me, a sinner.

Christ, have mercy on me, a sinner.

Lord, have mercy on me, a sinner.

Amen.

Alleluia.


For the Lord is good, and a merciful maker of righteousness:

Our sins are stronger than we are, *
but you will blot them out.


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 65:3-5)

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