Lord, Have Mercy; Christ, Have Mercy

As Jason has been preaching and teaching about mercy the past couple of weeks, there is a song from the Taizé tradition that keeps running through my mind: “Lord, Have Mercy; Christ Have Mercy” or also known as Kyrie Eleison.

Taizé is a small village in the south of France. It is a monastic community that includes people from all continents. They gather to pray three times a day. Their worship and prayers are quiet and meditative in nature. Two characteristics of their worship and prayer times are:

• Repetitive sung prayers
• Silence

The Taizé community has become known in worship circles because of their meditative style of worship. Many other Christian traditions have adopted these elements into their worship. One of the churches I served in Charlotte held a monthly Taizé service in the evening. We sat up chairs in the worship space in a circle so that we were all facing the middle. We entered the space in silence. We were surrounded by candlelight and natural light. We used lots of visual images and paintings to focus our attention. We read scriptures and other meaningful verses and then responded with silence and sung prayer.

These sung prayers are meaningful because they are a simple prayer of one or two lines that are set to a simple melody. This melody or refrain is then repeated many times. Generally there is no formula for how many times the prayer is sung. Each time the refrain is sung something new is added: a new instrument, a new verse laid over top by a single cantor, new harmonies, etc. This simple prayer, over the course of many minutes, finds itself rewritten into many different arrangements. As you sing this simple prayer over and over it again, the prayer becomes part of your very being!

And so, in the past few weeks, I have sung/prayed “Lord, have mercy; Christ have mercy” in my mind until the prayer has become part of my being.

I encourage you to sit with this prayer, this genuine plea to God. Listen, sing along, pray, reflect, meditate on God’s mercy in your life and the places where you need God’s mercy. Kyrie Eleison (Lord, Have Mercy)

This week…

Wednesday, January 27, 12 noon – Prayer & Inspiration ONLINE & FREE CONFERENCE CALL ONLY (no in-person meeting this week)
Thursday, January 28, 10:00 am – Ladles of Love Food Distribution
Sunday, January 31, 10:30 am – Worship “Have Mercy”, Online Only

**Please note that our Wednesday prayer time will not meet at the church this week. We will be online and free conference call only. You can find the Bible Study on our church website (hoodmemorial.org), Facebook Live, or Free Conference Call (563-999-1222 or join.freeconferencecall.com/hoodchurch).