Kyrie / Confession

I truly believe if evangelical churches changed one thing about our worship gatherings, the world might look a little more like the Kingdom of God. Or, at least, we Christians might look a little more like Christ.

What is that one thing? First, let me tell you about a movie I watched this summer.

This past July, I watched for the first time the 1996 animated film The Hunchback of Notre Dame.

The film is very loosely based on the 1831 novel by Victor Hugo, a dark story that centers around the Notre Dame cathedral in Paris. The movie therefore features ecclesial architecture and symbolism, and lots of liturgical language. Multiple songs are sung entirely in ecclesial Latin. And the central events occur on the Feast of Fools, which is a traditional celebration marking the beginning of Epiphany, a holy feast day on the Church Calendar.

So, as someone who loves church architecture, history, and liturgy, I loved the film.

The plot follows the paths of two men: Quasimodo, the protagonist, and Judge Frollo, the antagonist.

The whole movie can be summed up in a single line from the opening song, “The Bells of
Notre Dame.” Near the end of the song, Clopin, sings:

“Who is the monster and who is the man?”

Quasimodo, of course, looks like the monster, at least on the outside. It is the first thing you notice about him. He is malformed and unusual in appearance. He has been raised to believe that he, indeed, is a monster and is therefore incapable of intermingling with the world outside of his bell tower. However, we see throughout the movie that, on the inside, Quasimodo is pure and innocent and good; he is capable of truly and selflessly loving others. In some ways, he may be more *human* than most of the men and women he sees on the streets below.

Judge Frollo, on the other hand, looks like a normal person. In fact, he is the Judge Minister of Justice and when wrapped in all impressive ecclesial garb, he looks better than normal. Given all his years of education and service, Frollo could have stood shoulder-to-shoulder with the apostle Paul as he listed his credentials in Acts 22:3-5 and Philippians 3:4-6.

Frollo is the best of the best…at least on the outside.

On the inside, we see that he is, well, he is monstrous. However, what I love about the movie is that Frollo’s monstrous-ness is nuanced. The problem is not that Frollo is innately evil. The problem is that Frollo had grown unaware that he is capable of evil. Over-confident in his own merit, blinded to his own basic human fallibility, Frollo has unwittingly turned his back on grace and slowly turned into something like a monster.

We get a glimpse of this in the opening song The Bells of Notre Dame, which contains these lines:

“Judge Claude Frollo longed
to purge the world of vice and sin
And he saw corruption
everywhere except within”

This truth is depicted powerfully in the song Heaven’s Light/Hellfire.

The concept of the song is simple. The beautiful gypsy, Esmerelda, had caught the eye of both Quasimodo and Judge Frollo, and this song is sung by both men. Both men sing of the metaphoric light that illuminates from Esmerelda’s beauty. Both recognize the light, but they attribute it to very different sources.

The first half of the song is sung by Quasimodo, and he refers to the light as “Heaven’s Light.” Esmerelda is a gift that stirs within him, for the first time, the hope of companionship and love. An existence beyond the lonely, cold life of the bell tower, becomes for Quasimodo a real possibility. So, he praises God that beauty had awakened him to such hope. Again, Quasimodo is pure and innocent, a good soul.

Judge Frollo sings the second half of the song. And as he sings of the light of Esmerelda’s beauty, his perspective is much different. He sings:

“Beata Maria,
you know I am
a righteous man
Of my virtue I am justly proud
Beata Maria,
you know I’m so much
purer than
the common, vulgar, weak,
licentious crowd
Then tell me, Maria,
why I see her dancing there
Why her smoldering eyes
still scorch my soul
I feel her, I see her, the sun
caught in her raven hair
is blazing in me out of all control

Like fire, hellfire,
this fire in my skin
This burning desire
is turning me to sin”

The song continues and, in the background, a choir sings the traditional liturgical words of repentance:

“Mea culpa
Mea culpa
Mea maxima culpa”

(This translates into English: “Through my fault, through my fault, through my most grievous fault.”)

And as the choir repeats these words, Frollo sings in the foreground:

“It’s not my fault
I’m not to blame
It is the gypsy girl
The witch who sent this flame
It’s not my fault”

Frollo blames anyone but himself. In fact, he goes on to, much like Adam did in the garden, blame God for his predicament. He does not repent. He does not recognize his own fallibility nor his continual need for grace. And because of that, Frollo goes on to do monstrous things to pretty much everyone around him. By the end of the movie, the entire city nearly ends up in flames because of him.

Frollo continues, to the very end, to be tragically unaware that he is deeply and forever in need of grace, just as we all equally are.

What struck me about the movie is that there is a direct line that connects Judge Frollo’s inability to see his own weakness and need for grace on one side of the equation and the ruin he brings upon himself and everyone else on the other side of the equation.

So, what does this have to do with the song I wrote this week or the question I posed at the start of this post?

As odd as it may sound, I believe the one thing that we evangelicals could change about our worship gatherings that might result in us looking a little more like Christ and the world around us looking a little more like the Kingdom of God is to regularly pray together (or sing together) prayers of confession.

Now, what I don’t mean is that we should stand up and say how bad we are or attempt to recite together each and every individual sin we may have committed. That is never the point of a good prayer of congregational confession.

What I do mean is that, week-after-week, we offer the congregation an opportunity to stand before God and one another and to do what Judge Frollo could never do: to admit our weakness, our fallibility, our utter and complete reliance upon God and his grace, to confess our inability to live and love in healthy and redemptive ways if not for the Spirit’s graceful and patient guidance, to place again all our hope in Christ’s righteousness rather than our own, to be reoriented by the Gospel and realigned by the righteousness that comes through the faithfulness of Jesus, to remember and to confess that, even at our best, we are deeply in need of mercy and forever reliant upon grace, which–praise be to God–we thankfully receive in Christ.

Congregational confessions are not guilt-inducing; they are gratitude-inducing. Their emphasis lies not on shame but forgiveness. We ask again. We receive again. And we once again have opportunity to say again “Thank you.”

I wrote this song to be sung as a kind of Congregational Confession. It combines three traditional liturgical elements: the Kyrie Eleison, the Confession of Sin, and the Agnus Dei.

The chorus is the Kyrie Eleison:

“Lord, have mercy
Christ, have mercy
Lord, have mercy”

The verses are a paraphrase of the “Confession of Sin” from the Book of Common Prayer (Holy Eucharist: Rite II). And the descant in the final chorus is the Agnus Dei:

“Lamb of God, who takes away the sin of the world, have mercy on us
Lamb of God, who takes away the sin of the world, have mercy on us
Lamb of God, who takes away the sin of the world, grant us peace”

These three prayers do not appear side-by-side in the liturgy. In fact, they are prayed at three very distinct moments. The Kyrie Eleison appears near the beginning of the liturgy. The Confession follows some time after the sermon or homily. The Agnus Dei is prayed near the end of the Great Prayer of Thanksgiving, before taking Communion.

I find it an immensely powerful thing that in the Church’s historic order of worship, from beginning to end, worshipers are never far removed from expressing their need for grace.

In fact, you could say that liturgy prays in the key of grace and moves to the humble rhythm of gratitude.

I don’t know what I don’t know. So, I may be wrong. But I do wonder, if Frollo’s inability to confess led to the tragic downfall of his world, might our regular and heartfelt requests for grace make our world–and make us–just a little better.

Given Jesus’ words in Matthew 7:7-11 regarding God’s good and loving response to our requests, I have to believe it is worth a shot.

“Ask and it will be given to you; seek and you will find; knock and the door will be opened to you. For everyone who asks receives; the one who seeks finds; and to the one who knocks, the door will be opened. “Which of you, if your son asks for bread, will give him a stone? Or if he asks for a fish, will give him a snake? If you, then, though you are evil, know how to give good gifts to your children, how much more will your Father in heaven give good gifts to those who ask him!” (Matthew 7:7-11)

Credits

Words & Music: Bill Wolf
Cello: Brandon Givens
Piano: Keaton Stone
Backing Vocals: Lydia Emerson
Backing Vocals: Thomas Smith
Produced: Thomas Smith