Romans 15:1-7 • Matthew 9:27-35
In our Gospel reading today we heard the blind men crying out, “Son of David, have mercy on us!” Does that sound familiar? Of course it’s the origin of the Jesus Prayer: “Lord Jesus Christ, have mercy on me.” Never let anyone tell you this prayer is not scriptural: Here it is in the Gospel.
We sometimes hear criticism that the Jesus prayer is a mantra, a meaningless bunch of words, a vain repetition. And, you now, it can be: some repetition is vain. It’s perfectly possible to rattle off “Lordjesuschrist…” all while thinking, “…and I need to get some detergent, and paper towels, and maybe some broccoli?”
If that happens, then stop. Stop all your prayer and self-talk; turn your attention to the One who’s listening, and to the Eternal God. In his holy presence, without any hurrying, ask with intention: “Lord Jesus Christ! Have mercy on me!” Make your repetition not vain but fruitful.
We often have some kind of self-talk going on in the back of our minds. Maybe we heard a tune and it’s stuck between our ears. We’re outwardly pious-looking but in our heads it’s “Baby shark, doot doot doodoot doodoo…” The Prayer is given to us to become the baseline, the background that never quite goes away. And as a side benefit it’s the best way to get rid of the tune stuck in your head.
I was just reading about the experience of the prophet Elijah, in 1 Kings 19. He’s just had a great victory, but now the Queen has promised to have him killed. And he says to God, “I have had enough, Lord. Take my life!” Then the word of the Lord comes to him: “What are you doing here, Elijah?” And we hear his complaint:
“I have been very zealous for the Lord God Almighty. The Israelites have rejected your covenant, broken down your altars, and put your prophets to death with the sword. I am the only one left, and now they are trying to kill me too.”
God shows him all his holy power, and again asks, “What are you doing here, Elijah?” And Elijah repeats, word for word, the same complaint: “I have been very zealous for the Lord God Almighty. The Israelites have rejected your covenant, broken down your altars, and put your prophets to death with the sword. I am the only one left, and now they are trying to kill me too.”
I suspect Elijah has had this lament running through his head nonstop for a long time like a broken record. Sorry, wrong generation: Like an MP3 stuck on repeat. “I’ve been very zealous for the Lord, but now I’m the only one left, and they’re going to kill me!”
We have that same kind of lie that repeats itself in our thoughts. “I’m stupid and ugly, I never finish anything, I have no staying power, I fail because I’m a failure. People only put up with me out of pity.”
The Jesus prayer is the scalpel you use to cut off that lying, repeating thought. Christ commanded, if your hand makes you sin, then cut it off; if your eye makes you sin, pull it out. Now, your hand or eye can not make you sin; only your thoughts can do that. The Jesus Prayer is a weapon in the spiritual battle to own your thoughts, your words, and your actions.
Today our two blind men are following Christ around, shouting, “Son of David, have mercy on us!” They follow him right into the house where he’s staying. There’s no ignoring them — you can’t have a conversation when there are two strangers in the living room with you, shouting, “Son of David, have mercy on us!”
A thousand years earlier, the Lord promised King David that some day, a son of David’s line would sit on the throne of Israel forever (2 Samuel 7:12-13).
Kings in Israel, like priests and prophets, were set aside by anointing with oil. That word, anointed, in Hebrew is Mashiach (Messiah) and in Greek Hristos (Christ.)
Our two blind men can’t see, but they’re more perceptive than anybody else in their generation. They openly call Jesus the Son of David, the King anointed by God, the Messiah and Christ. You won’t find very many others in the Gospels making this confession so openly.
When the Pharisees questioned Jesus about who he was, he turned around and questioned them: He asked them,
“What do you think about the Christ? Whose son is he?” “The son of David,” they replied. Jesus said to them, “How is it then that David, speaking by the Spirit, calls [the Christ] Lord? For David says [in the Psalm], “The Lord said to my Lord: ‘Sit at my right hand until I put your enemies under your feet’ (Psalm 109:1LXX). If then David calls [the Christ] ‘Lord,’ how can [the Christ] be his son?” No one could say a word in reply, and from that day on no one dared to ask him any more questions (Matthew 22:42-46).
In a culture with reverence for elders, this was a confusing question. In the Vietnamese church I had one elderly man who was genuinely scandalized by this very question: if the Christ is the Son of David, then Jesus has to call David his lord and master — but in fact the son of David turns out to be David’s God! We hear these verses so many times that our brains don’t melt when we look at the paradoxes. And of course we live in a culture where parents and the elderly are not automatically respected.
I recently ran across something written by the Orthodox theologian Olivier Clément:
In the Christian East… we love old age because we think that it is made for praying. When one is old, and feels the nearness of God across the increasingly transparent surface of biological life, one becomes in consciousness a child, returned to the Father, made light in spirit by the nearness of death, transparent to another kind of light.
A civilization in which one no longer prays is a civilization in which old age has no meaning. People walk backward towards death, pretending to be young. It’s an agonizing spectacle, because a wonderful possibility is offered – a journey towards ultimate surrender to God – yet it is not taken advantage of.
We need old people who pray, who smile, who live with a non-possessive love, who have a sense of wonder. They alone can show young people that that living is worth the effort, and that oblivion is not the last word.
Every monk whose spiritual practice has borne fruit, whatever his age, is called “a beautiful elder.” He is beautiful with the beauty that rises from the heart. In him all the periods of his life have come into harmony, as with a symphony, one might say. And, especially, the original child is found again: shining with a transfigured shining, the beautiful old man has the eyes of a child (in La prière de Jésus)
Not every one of us will be that kind of elder, even if we become quite old. But we can set our feet on the path to become that kind of saint. And it’s not a requirement that we be old: if you want, at any age, you can begin to be purified, illumined, and united to God.
Our two blind men have gained this kind of simple, even childlike faith. Like a pair of four-year-olds demanding snacks, they crowd Jesus, shouting their prayer. There’s no elegant speech here; no “O our almighty most holy Redeemer, verily do we beseech thee…” They are loud and straightforward: “Son of David, have mercy on us!”
Of course in their prayer we recognize the root of the Jesus Prayer. We have our prayer rope, with some number of knots, and we spend a few minutes each day simply repeating “Lord Jesus Christ, have mercy on us.” Like the blind men, we don’t need to lay out a strategy and give God his marching orders. We offer up our hearts, spattered with the mud of our sins, and we offer up our budget and health and family and community. We lift them up to the Lord who already sees and knows what we need — better than we do — and we just say, “Have mercy on us!”
You’ll hear Orthodox people in the Old Countries sometimes saying “I’ll pray a prayer rope for you.” Aside from your own rule of prayer, you can take a 33- or hundred-knot prayer rope, or whatever, and turn your attention to the one who’s in need and to the Lord who loves them and just say for a few minutes, “Have mercy on us.”
You know, mercy in Greek and Hebrew is a bigger word than in English. It comes from a Hebrew word ḥesed that means steadfast lovingkindness, stubborn, overflowing love. The Greek verb means to feel and act in compassion. And so we say a few dozen times on our prayer rope, “Lord Jesus Christ, have mercy on me!” We’re asking the Lord to act according to his faithful lovingkindness. To let the compassion and healing and redemption, power and wholeness and kindness of eternity pour out one the one who is crying out.
And the Jesus prayer isn’t the only prayer we have. In fact there’s a whole prayer book, plus the other 23 hours every day when you’re not in your prayer corner, yet you’re trying to obey St Paul’s instruction to “rejoice always, pray without ceasing, give thanks in all circumstances; for this is the will of God in Christ Jesus for you” (1 Thessalonians 5:16-18).
But the Jesus prayer is the single short thought that is meant to become the baseline, the norm, the soundtrack to your life. When you’re standing in line at Safeway, you’ve got a minute of downtime. Will you read the celebrity headlines, or have an empty exchange with your neighbor in line about how slow the cashier is, and how awful this weather, “At least it’s a dry heat…” Instead, put that minute to use for your profit and salvation: Let the Prayer of Jesus start in you. “Lord Jesus Christ, have mercy on me!” We’ve all had a day where a song was stuck in our head for hours at a time; let the name of Jesus be the thought that arises whenever you stop talking to yourself. That will start to happen, if you’ll devote a little time to the Prayer. How many knots in your prayer rope? 300? 100? 33? If you don’t rush, 33 Jesus Prayers will take you about three minutes. That’s a discipline you might be able to fit into your schedule.
Saint Ambrose of Optina described for us how to practice the presence of God at all times:
If you feel bad, turn to Christ with a prayer, “Lord, I feel bad, help me.” (Wow, this is complicated!)
If you feel good, tell him, “Lord, glory be to you, I thank you for the joy I’m feeling.”
If you’re worried about someone, tell God, “Lord, I am worried about them, I feel sorry for them. Help them!”
And do that throughout the day – turn whatever happens to you into prayer.
We’re a people who love what’s new and grabs the attention. Repetition is strange to us. If we repeat the same words, is our prayer still alive? Is it even prayer? G.K. Chesterton wrote,
A child kicks his legs rhythmically through excess of life, not absence, of life. Because children have abounding vitality, because they are in spirit fierce and free, therefore they want things repeated and unchanged. They always say, ‘Do it again’; and the grown-up person does it again until he is nearly dead. For grown-up people are not strong enough to exult in monotony. But perhaps God is strong enough to exult in monotony.
It is possible that God says every morning to the sun, ‘Do it again,’ and every evening ‘Do it again’ to the moon. It may not be automatic necessity that makes all daisies alike; it may be that God makes every daisy separately, but has never got tired of making them. It may be that He has the eternal appetite of infancy; for we have sinned and grown old, and our Father is younger than we (in Orthodoxy, pg 60-61).
I want to be like these two blind men. They won’t leave Jesus alone! Remember the Lord’s parable:
Which of you shall have a friend, and go to him at midnight and say, “Friend, give me three loaves of bread; for a friend of mine has come to me on a journey, and I have no food to offer him.” And the one inside answers, “Don’t bother me. The door is already locked, and my children and I are in bed. I cannot get up and give you anything.” I tell you, even though he will not get up and give you the bread because of friendship, yet because of your persistence he will get up and give you as much as you need (Luke 11:5-8; see 18:1-5).
Like the blind men, without stopping, we keep coming back to the Lord saying, “Son of David! I did it again. I spoke in fear or annoyance or envy, inconsiderate and selfish, I just did the exact thing I said I wasn’t going to do again. I’ve let my fears or appetites live in my thoughts, I’ve made them welcome guests in my head. Forgive me and give me clean hands and a pure heart that I can offer you! Son of God, have mercy on me! Lord, you know there’s too much month left at the end of the money. You see my family is sick and my body hurts. Have mercy on me! You see that my neighbor is full of grief and my friends are hungry and my nation can’t tell its right hand from its left. Have mercy on us!
Tip over a glass of water and watch. It is the nature of water to dribble away and not change anything. But what was the irresistible force that cut the Grand Canyon a mile wide into the crust of the earth? Drops of water — flowing continuously, over time. The fact that we prayed, this one morning, may not make any visible change in us. But with perseverance each of us may become a man or woman of prayer.
If my few minutes on a prayer rope is a chore I do with a grudge, is it still prayer? Absolutely! “When we carry out our ‘religious duties’ we are like people digging channels in a waterless land, in order that when at last water comes, it may find them ready.” (C.S. Lewis in Reflections on the Psalms).
Whether you use the Prayer of the blind men, maybe on a prayer rope – or you have a path you walk every day, through Holy God, Holy Mighty to Our Father and the rest – and whether that means five minutes before you put the coffee on, or it fills your whole sleepless midnight – prayer begins with the grace and call of God in Christ. He’s the reason you feel like you ought to begin the day with some kind of prayer, at least as much as you say hello to your husband or your dog first thing in the morning.
Schemamonk Gabriel wrote:
If you want to learn to swim, jump into the water. Only that way you can learn. Only the one who prays will feel the meaning, the taste and the joy of prayer. You can’t learn to pray sitting in a big warm armchair. If you are ready to stand, to bow, to repent sincerely, to raise your eyes and hands to Heaven, then many things will be revealed to you. Of course you can read many books, listen to lectures, talk to people – these are also important and help to understand more. But what is the value of all these things if we don’t take any real steps afterwards? If we don’t start praying?”
Therefore, “Be anxious for nothing; but in everything by prayer and supplication with thanksgiving let your requests be made known unto God. And the peace of God, which surpasses all understanding, will guard your hearts and your minds in Christ Jesus.” (Philippians 4:6-7)
To the glory of God the Father, the Son, and the Holy Spirit. Amen.
