Kyrie: “We are Beggars; this is True”
I.
As Jesus was traveling from Jericho to Jerusalem, he encounters a blind beggar on the side of the road, Bartimaeus, the son of Timaeus. Being blind meant that Bartimaeus was entirely dependent on other people for everything. Whether clothing or shoes, food or drink, house and home, none of these things could be secured by himself. He depended entirely on the kindness of passersby, but especially the kindness of God. And, lo and behold, he hears that Jesus of Nazareth is coming and so he begins to cry out, “Jesus, Son of David, have mercy on me!” And even with the crowds rebuking him, telling him to be quiet, he cries out all the more, “Son of David, have mercy on me!” When he hears that Jesus has called him, he springs up on his feet and comes to Jesus. Jesus asks him, “What do you want me to do for you?” to which Bartimaeus immediately replies, “Let me recover my sight.” Jesus answers, “Go your way; your faith has made you well.” And it did indeed. At Christ’s word, Bartimaeus recovered his sight.
A similar story unfolds while Jesus is passing along between Samaria and Galilee where he is met by ten lepers. Because they are lepers they cannot approach their fellow man nor can they approach God. They are cut off from their neighbor and from the temple and thus their lives are ones of isolation, sorrow, and hardship. Standing at a distance they cry out to Jesus, saying, “Jesus, Master, have mercy on us.” When Jesus sees them, he tells them to present themselves to the priest, and while they are on their way, they are cleansed of their disease. One of the ten realizes and returns to thank and praise God. To this one Jesus says, “Rise and go your way; your faith has made you well.”
What blind Bartimaeus and these ten lepers notably have in common is their plea, “Lord, have mercy!” This plea is one of the more ancient cries of the church. This is the plea of David in view of his great sin, “Have mercy on me, O God, according to your steadfast love…blot out my transgressions” (Ps 51:1) and in view of his great suffering, “Have mercy on me, O God, for man tramples on me; all day long an attacker oppresses me…” (Ps 56:1). But finally, it is also our plea, “Lord, have mercy upon us. Christ, have mercy upon us. Lord, have mercy upon us.” And as such, when we come to the Divine Service we come as sinners and sufferers, as the spiritually blind and leprous. In the famous last words of Luther, “We are beggars! This is true!” With these words we recognize that we are beggars who rely on the goodness of God for every need of body and soul, for “peace from above and for our salvation,” “peace of the whole world, for the wellbeing of the church of God,” “for this holy house, and for all who offer here their worship and praise,” and for God to “help, save, comfort, and defend us…” With the biblical background of our plea, we can understand our Kyrie as a confession of sin, a confession of the misery that presses upon us, and a plea to a present God and Lord to act on our behalf.
II.
The use of the Kyrie in the West hails back to the 4th century as part of the prayers of the church, and to the 5th century in its present location between the Introit and Readings. In its earliest form, the Kyrie was sung 6, 9, or 12 times responsively to various bids. This “Ektene” or extended form is retained in a simplified form by settings one, two, and four in Lutheran Service Book. In Luther’s reforms of the Mass, he opted to simplify the Kyrie by reducing the number of repetitions to three and writing a very simple chant tone which is replicated exactly by setting three in Lutheran Service Book. Additionally, Luther wrote or adapted a number of Kyrie hymns which are also retained for us as LSB 581 (“These are the Holy Ten Commands”), 617 (“O Lord, We Praise Thee”), and 768 (“To God the Holy Spirit Let Us Pray”). Luther’s greatest stroke of genius in regard to the Kyrie, however, is to set the Kyrie and the Agnus Dei to the same chant tone in his German Mass (1526) so that there is a very obvious musical connection between the congregation’s plea for mercy and God’s answer in the Lamb of God who takes away the sins of the world. This parallelism isn’t perfectly replicated in setting three, but the connection is still musically quite strong.
Apart from the materials provided by our settings of the Divine Service and Luther, Lutheran Service Book has also included a number of settings of the Kyrie from various and sundry other traditions. LSB 944 is a beautifully harmonized ninefold Kyrie that comes from the Russian Orthodox tradition. LSB 943 is a highly meditative setting of the Kyrie from the French Catholic Taize community. LSB 942 is a more distinctly Medieval setting of the Kyrie. And finally, LSB 945 is a trinitarian responsive form of the Kyrie from the Slovak tradition.
Rev. Philip D. Bartelt
Lutheran Church of the Good Shepherd
25th Sunday after Trinity, 2024
