I began my morning prayer today with “The Jesus Prayer.” This ancient prayer dates back to the Egyptian Desert Fathers of the fifth century. The prayer has been used over the centuries to help believers find a place of “stillness” in their communion with God. It goes like this:
“Lord Jesus Christ, Son of God, have mercy on me, a sinner.”
Today I wrestled with the word “sinner.” Not that I question if I am a sinner. I am. No question about it, I am messed up.
What I struggle with is the religious baggage attached to the word. Rather than being a word of confession calling for mercy, it has become a word of condemnation calling for guilt, shame, alienation, and exile. This misuse and misunderstanding has produced a taxidermic transformation resulting in a word gutted of all substance and replaced with a stuffed and mounted form devoid of all power, meaning, and danger. Like the shed skin of a snake, the form remains but the serpent moves on.
The words the Bible uses for “sin/sinner” convey the ideas of “missing the mark,” “deviating from the goal,” “going astray,” “taking the wrong road,” “going beyond the norm,” “doing wrong,” “to be guilty,” and “to be a debtor.” This is the universal human condition. We drift in all things, including our understanding of what we think the Bible says and means. I go astray in my thinking, in my feeling, and in my doing. Even my understanding of a biblical word like “sinner” strays from the path and I miss the mark of what it means.
“Lord Jesus Christ, Son of God. Have mercy on me, a sinner.”
I confess my condition and my need. I confess it not in condemnation that leads to death, but in repentance that leads to life.
Through this prayer I embrace my humanity in all its broken, messy, and beautiful dimensions. I celebrate being the image bearer of God by birth and the redeemed of God by grace. I cry out that the consequences of death in Adam be reversed in me as one who is made new in Christ because the glory of God is best revealed in a human being made fully alive.
So this morning I prayed:
Lord Jesus Christ, Son of God, have mercy on me, I am broken.
Lord Jesus Christ, Son of God, have mercy on me, I miss the mark.
Lord Jesus Christ, Son of God, have mercy on me, I deviate from you.
Lord Jesus Christ, Son of God, have mercy on me, I go astray.
Lord Jesus Christ, Son of God, have mercy on me, I take the wrong road.
Lord Jesus Christ, Son of God, have mercy on me, I do wrong.
Lord Jesus Christ, Son of God, have mercy on me, I trespass.
Lord Jesus Christ, Son of God, have mercy on me, I transgress.
Lord Jesus Christ, Son of God, have mercy on me, I am guilty.
Lord Jesus Christ, Son of God, have mercy on me, I have a debt I cannot pay.
Lord Jesus Christ, Son of God, have mercy on me, I try to overrule you.
Lord Jesus Christ, Son of God, have mercy on me, I seek my own way.
“Have mercy on me, a sinner” is my plea before the throne of God. The cry for mercy does not exploit or condemn. Mercy calls back from the throne of grace, “Come to me, all you who are weary and heavy laden, and I will give you rest.”
Mercy invites and heals all who will gather around Jesus Christ, the friend of sinners. If being a sinner means I can have Jesus as my friend, I think I will learn to like this word again.
Debbie and I serve as the FMI Global Associate Director for MENACA and Europe. We focus on cultivating disciples, leaders, and church planting movements.
