Ash Wednesday

Ash Wednesday – Year B (RCL) 2009
Joel 2: 1 – 2, 12 – 17; Psalm 103; 2 Corinthians 5: 20b – 6:10; Matthew 6: 1 – 6, 16 – 21
St. Stephen’s Episcopal Parish, Portland, OR
Wednesday, February 25, 2009

HAVE MERCY, FOR YOU ARE MERCIFUL

Let us Pray: Create in us clean hearts, O God and renew in us a right spirit. Have mercy most merciful God as we strive to maintain the balance of our sinfullness against the glory to which you call us. Fix in our hearts a true repentence for the ways in which we have failed you by failing each other and ourselves. Prepare in us a quiet repose for the contemplation of your greatest gift; life for life and death to conquer death. By the sign of your cross may we atain the purification of our lives to the glory of your name. Amen.

(SUNG) KYRIE ELEISON, DOWN THE ROAD THAT I MUST TRAVEL.
KYRIE ELEISON, THROUGH THE DARKNESS OF THE NIGHT.
KYRIE ELEISON, WHERE I'M GOING WILL YOU FOLLOW?
KYRIE ELEISON, ON A HIGHWAY IN THE LIGHT.

So here we find ourselves, once again at the holy season of Lent (a word derived from Lengthen referring to the lengthening of the day that occurs in the spring) and coming before God’s presence with humble and contrite hearts seeking compassion and peace as we prepare ourselves in body and spirit for the observence of the lentan rituals familiar to some of us – and not so much to others. We have draped the crosses in royal purple. We have burried the A – the word we don’t say in this season – and we begin to pray the trisagion or the Kyrie in place of the Gloria.

What is this Greek phrase with which we started our gathering today this “Kyrie Eleison”? As Part of the introductory rites of the Mass or The Holy Eucharist, the Kyrie Eleison (Greek for "Lord, have mercy") is a song by which the faithful praise the Christ and implore God’s mercy.

The beginnings of the Kyrie eleison can be found in Holy Scripture, mostly in the book that served as the Church's first prayer book, the Book of Psalms ("Have pity on me, O Lord ..." Psalm 6:3).Written origins of the Kyrie can be traced to the fourth century. In 390 A.D. the Gallic pilgrim lady Aetheria tells how in Jerusalem at the end of Vespers one of the deacons read a list of petitions and "as he spoke each of the names, a crowd of boys stood there and answered him each time, 'Kyrie eleison' ... their cry is without end."The Kyrie was finally incorporated into the Latin sacramentary in the sixth century for Matins, Mass and Vespers, according to Canon 3 of the Synod of Vaison (529). I remember it like it was yesterday.

In today's post Vatican II Church, the Kyrie has been translated into English and is ordinarily prayed/sung by the assembly (which means everyone, ministers included) after the Penitential Rite, in keeping with the rubrics (General Instruction of the Book of Common Prayer and originally printed in red – hence the word rubric from “rubio” latin for red). As a rule, each of the acclamations is said twice (e.g. Presider: "Lord, have mercy." Assembly: "Lord, have mercy." P: "Christ, have mercy." A: "Christ, have mercy." P: "Lord, have mercy." A: "Lord have mercy.")

Why is the Kyrie in Greek? It harkens back to the earliest years of the Church, when the members of the Church in Rome themselves used Greek, and Greek was the language of worship until about the middle of the third century. After the great split between the Churches in the East and West – the Latin took the day in the Western manifestation of Catholicity. During the days of the Latin Mass, it was the only remaining Greek prayer. Consequently it alows us to hearken back to our traditions in order to place ourselves in a space where we can begin to grasp the power of those traditions to lead our hearts forward into claiming them for our own and using them to shape our liturgical and corporate lives.

(SUNG) KYRIE ELEISON, DOWN THE ROAD THAT I MUST TRAVEL.
KYRIE ELEISON, THROUGH THE DARKNESS OF THE NIGHT.
KYRIE ELEISON, WHERE I'M GOING WILL YOU FOLLOW?
KYRIE ELEISON, ON A HIGHWAY IN THE LIGHT.

We join with Christians far and near in this season of repentence and renewal to focus our minds and hearts on the message which has been handed down to us from generation to generation that our God is a forgiving and benificent God when we are truly sorry for those things which have separated us from the heart of the One who loves us beyond compare. This is our God who has been revealed in the Hebrew scriptures when the prophet Joel writes “Blow the trumpet in Zion; sanctify a fast; call a solemn assembly; gather the people. Sanctify the congregation; assemble the aged; gather the children even infants at the breast…return to the Lord your God, for he is gracious and merciful, slow to anger, and abounding in steadfast love…: (Joel: 2: 15 – 16a; 13b)” We encounter this fulfillment of this idea reflected in the 2nd letter to the early Christian community at Corinth when the writer says, “See, now is the acceptable time; see, now is the day of salvation! (2nd Cor: 6: 2b)”

There is reason for hope in this season of repentance. Several people have commented to me that they actually miss the confession of sin when we have omitted from our liturgy during the festal seasons of our liturgical calendar such as Christmas and Easter. There is something about confession which is “good for the soul”. Oftentimes in her history, the Church has gone to either end of the extreme, either bewailing our manifold wickedness” or focusing on the “feel good Jesus” who asks nothing more of us than we might demand of ourselves. However, when we can remember that we walk this earth not of our own power and volition – but rather of the power of the One who accepted obedience to the point of death – even death on a cross – than we can begin to understand that more is asked of us; because much is given to us.

We will smudge our foreheads with the ashes of palm in the sign of the cross to remember that “we are dust – and unto dust we shall return”. We do this because it also is a part of our tradition. As early as the 6th Century CE, during the papacy of Gregory the Great the palms from the Passion Sunday liturgy were burned and the ashes placed on the foreheads of the believers to remind them of their mortality. We will pray the penitential prayers and ask God for forgiveness of our sins – on the first Sunday in Lent we will chant the Great Litany as it has been chanted in centuries past. We have several “resources” which I have oh so cleverly weaved into my Ash Wednesday message this evening and are available in the back of the Church and I invite each of us to take them with us and use them as part of our spiritual disciplines this holy season. Jean Fleming has done a wonderful job in assembling and printing out a parish Reflection on the Lectionary Readings for Lent. This is a collection of musings from many of our members about what spoke to them in a particular reading or theme that emerged from the readings on any given day in the forty day journey on which we have embarked this day. Also, Episcopal Relief and Development has provided meditation materials and what many of us might remember as the “blue box” from our United Thank Offering days – and has turned it into a white “hope chest” that we might fill with our spare change or dollars saved from passing on that morning latte – and instead putting it toward our Church’s commitment of devoting 0.7% of our resources in support of the United Nations Millenium Development Goals. In each of your bulletins tonight is a prayer that ERD asks we pray in support of the vital work that organization carries out in the name of all of us who call the Episcopal Church our spiritual home.

All of these tools are suggestions only and we invite your participation at whatever level is right for you in this time of reflection and repentance we call Lent. We will turn our hearts inward and turn our minds toward our relationship with the God of forgiveness who has told us time and time again that our sins will not be remembered – but rather we will be blessed in our weaknesses and strengthened in our adversity,. So we pray, Lord have mercy, Christ have mercy, Lord have mercy. Kyrie Eleison, Christe Eleison, Kyrie Eleison.

(SUNG) KYRIE ELEISON, DOWN THE ROAD THAT I MUST TRAVEL.