Amen to that: Matt Rosen says the Jesus prayer

‘Christ has come to teach all of us himself.’

In worship recently, the refrain Kyrie eléison – Lord, have mercy – has been on my mind. This phrase is found throughout the Psalms, and it occurs at key moments in the Gospels. In the Christian east, it takes a longer form in what is often called the Jesus prayer: ‘Lord Jesus Christ, Son of God, have mercy on me, a sinner.’ This is repeated as a doorway into ceaseless prayer of the heart, wordless stillness before God.

When I first heard this prayer, I winced. I thought it would do me no good to persistently identify myself as a sinner, and I preferred to pray for illumination rather than mercy. The concepts of sin and mercy were not central in my spiritual life, probably because of their unfortunate cultural associations; these words reminded me of guilt more than grace. But I have come to feel that my initial response was short-sighted.

Most of the heroes of the New Testament were serious sinners. One of the first people to recognise Jesus as the Christ was the Samaritan woman at the well, an outsider who had hardly led a virtuous life (John 4). Even Simon Peter managed to deny Jesus three separate times despite his best intentions (Matthew 26). Mary Magdalene had played host to seven demons (Luke 8), and the apostle Paul called himself the chief of sinners (1 Timothy 1). A thief crucified alongside Jesus is the only person assured of paradise in the Gospels (Luke 23). These are the people Jesus spent his time around. These are the people he sent out into the world with his good news, and they are no more flawed than any of us. If this outrageous fact doesn’t show God’s glory, I don’t know what does. It defies the logic of the world around us: in the kingdom of heaven, the last really are first.

The early Friends recognised that Christ is a friend of sinners: imperial tax-collectors, prostitutes, militant zealots, and thieves, as well as other social outcasts like lepers and the poorest of the poor. But one of George Fox’s greatest insights was that we are not simply mired in sin, left to look towards the vicarious sacrifice of the cross, as the Calvinist culture of the time had it. The cross is the transforming power of God, and that power is as active today as it ever was. Christ didn’t only come to Roman Palestine to save the lost. He has come to teach all of us himself.

Fox’s realisation was that sinners are also students. Christ chose a group of flawed people to be his disciples; forgiveness and transformation belong together. Our capacity for sin – for forgetfulness of God – does not negate our status as humble learners in the school of Christ. The inevitable challenges of attention and faithfulness are the school. We have a living Teacher who doesn’t only show us where we fall short but, as Advices & queries reminds us, brings us to new life.

I now hear the Jesus prayer as a reminder of some very good news. It is news about the sort of God I worship: a forgiving God whose mercy extends into present guidance, a God who scandalously loved to share food and drink with the delinquent and the perplexed, a God whose rain falls on the just and the unjust. It has become, for me, the gospel in brief: a wonderful reminder of who God is and who I am.

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