Introit and Kyrie
This sermon is part of a midweek series on the parts of the liturgy.
Text: 2 Chr. 5:2-14; Matt. 17:14-20; Luke 18:35-43
In the name of the Father and of the Son and of the Holy Spirit. Amen.
There are certain places that, when you arrive there a specific way, it forever changes the way it stays in your mind. The first time I ever came to Chicago, it was driving up the Skyway. Seeing the skyline spread out from the bridge left a particular impression in my mind that still shapes the way I think of the city when I imagine it. I remember when I drove through Scotland and as we turned a bend in the road, there were the highlands rising up and up and up, covered in heather. We had to pull over and take in the view. But it doesn’t always have to be so grandiose. Sometimes it’s the posture of entering a place that shapes the way you think of it. Entering the Church of the Nativity in Bethlehem, built over the spot where Christ was born, you must bend yourself to fit through a low door, reminding you of how our Lord lowered Himself to be born among us and walk through our fallen world beside us. This is all to say that the way in which we enter a place sets the tone for our time there and the way we think about it afterward.
God’s people have long known this. So when it was time for the children of Israel to move their worship from the tabernacle to the finally constructed temple during the reign of Solomon, there were choirs of Levites—men of the tribe of Levi whose task was to serve in the temple—countless choirs of Levites lining the steps going up into the temple courts. With them were 120 priests with trumpets, accompanied further with other instruments. It was the duty of the trumpeters and singers to make themselves heard in unison as they sang praise and thanksgiving to the Lord. When a song was raised, they sang, along with trumpets and cymbals and other instruments, as we heard them sing in 2 Chronicles, “For he is good, for his steadfast love endures forever.” For those who know the Psalms, these are familiar words. It’s repeated as a type of chorus or refrain in Psalm 136, where the psalmist sings through the history of God creating the world and redeeming His people, with every wonder answered by the response, “for his steadfast love endures forever.” At the dedication of the temple, the Levites and the entire people of Israel entered the temple for the first time by singing and responding in song from the book of Psalms. From then on, whenever the Israelites would go up to the temple, there would be choirs of Levites standing on the steps, singing as the people went into that sacred place. And in response, the people would sing back from the same psalms. Thus, the Introit was born, 1000 years before the birth of Christ, making it one of the oldest parts of our liturgy that we still do on Sunday mornings.
Introit simply means “entrance” or “beginning”. In our service, it happens just after the Confession and Absolution, at the start of the service. It usually is drawn from a psalm, just like the Levites did, or another passage of Scripture, and it gives a preview of what we will be focusing on in the readings. This way of entering the service sets the tone for us. It reminds us that we are leaving behind the workaday world and entering the temple of God to be in His presence. We speak to our Lord, we sing praises to Him, pastor and laity together, facing the altar where the Lord will be with us in His body and blood. The pastor represents the congregation as he goes up the steps of our own Most Holy Place in this sanctuary, and we are all with our God and resting in His presence as the Lord speaks to us in His Word and Sacrament. We join the Church of all times—thousands of years of in the past with the Levites and Israelites, all the Church on earth now, and the great multitude of believers in eternity ahead—as we sing these ancient songs of entrance together.
And what is it that we do when we’ve entered that sacred space? When we’ve prepared our hearts with song and our minds with the anthem of the day? We do what believers have always done: we ask for grace and help. At the beginning of the service we’ve just come in from a world that wears us down. It drains us physically with labor, with stress, with sickness and disease. It wrings us out spiritually with grief, temptation, and unfaith. So once we’ve arrived after the Introit, we ask God for assistance in His sanctuary. We call this part of the service the Kyrie Eleison, which is Greek for “Lord, have mercy.” For short, we call it the Kyrie.
The Kyrie, “Lord have mercy,” is another ancient part of the service, going back at least as far as the 300s AD, perhaps longer. But the words, “Lord, have mercy,” go back even farther. In our reading from Matthew, we heard a father begging for the healing of his son, tormented by a demon of epilepsy, as he called out, “Lord, have mercy!” In Luke’s gospel, we heard a blind beggar call out, “Jesus, Son of David, have mercy on me!” They call out for mercy, for help, for themselves and the people they love. Their requests are echoed in our own requests in the liturgy. “In peace, let us pray to the Lord. Lord, have mercy. For the peace from above and for our salvation, let us pray to the Lord. Lord, have mercy. For the peace of the whole world, for the well-being of the Church of God, and for the unity of us all. Lord, have mercy. For this holy house, and for all who offer here their worship and praise, let us pray to the Lord. Lord, have mercy.”
What is it to ask for mercy? We can figure out from these readings that it means to ask for help. But there’s another dimension to asking for mercy. You can ask for help from someone who’s equal to you, or someone who owes you something. That’s just assistance, or calling in a favor. But mercy is different. Mercy is not something that must be shown. In fact, mercy means not getting what’s deserved or owed. It’s not asking for mercy to call on an employee to do their job. It is seeking mercy to ask for help a stranger who’s not bound to help you in any way. A merciful judge is one that does not impose the full sentence, even though he could. A merciful answer to a tricky question leaves out the meanest, most hurtful barbs. And a God who shows mercy does not give people what they rightfully have earned. So to ask for mercy is an act of faith—faith that this God will not do what He could to those who have earned bad things. Why does He not? Because those bad things have been forgiven in Confession and Absolution, as we discussed last Wednesday night.
In the Gospel reading, Jesus recognizes that asking for mercy is an act of faith. That’s why He says to His disciples that it all hinges on faith. He tells them they could not cast out the demon “because of your little faith. For truly, I say to you, if you have faith like a grain of mustard seed, you will say to this mountain, ‘Move from here to there,’ and it will move.” And when the blind beggar repeats his request for mercy, Jesus praises his faith and says, “Recover you sight; your faith has made you well.”
So too with us. God has forgiven you in the Absolution. You can now enter His sanctuary, His presence, and ask for good things—healing, peace, joy, daily bread, wisdom, grace. And He will give them. Your prayers for these things are all woven together and bound up in the Kyrie. This is what Lent is all about—seeing the great compassion and mercy of your God. So ask away. Great is your faith and even greater is your Savior. In the name of Jesus, the Merciful, Amen.
