My friend Crazy Eddie has been carrying a laser down the road that he must travel for forty years. This is not as alarming as it sounds. Knowing Eddie, it probably should be. I should probably explain.
In everyday English, the word mercy has wandered a long way from the biblical cry that gave it its meaning.
A boss shows mercy when the office Wi-Fi dies, and he allows everyone to go home fifteen minutes early. Social media has turned “Mercy!” into “Someone please bring me a fainting couch.” On TikTok, “mercy” is what you type under a video of a cat falling off a counter and somehow landing in a cereal bowl.
The mercy of Scripture is not God shrugging and saying, “Fine, I guess I’ll let this one slide.” Biblical mercy is the covenant love of God who will not let go of people who keep letting go of Him. It is the cry of a people who finally recognize the truth: “Lord, You are the only one who can fix this mess—and we are the mess.”
Which brings us to 1985. Ronald Reagan and Mikhail Gorbachev met in Geneva and discovered that Americans and Russians could occupy the same room without immediately ending civilization. French intelligence agents sank a Greenpeace ship in New Zealand and then seemed genuinely surprised that someone cared. New Coke happened—talk about a real crisis.
A band called Mr. Mister released a song called “Kyrie.” Most Americans in 1985 had never heard ancient Greek liturgical language. They were not familiar with the phrase Kyrie eleison. What they did not understand, they invented.
Which is why my friend “Crazy Eddie” was convinced the song said: “Carry a laser”. To be fair, lightsabers were more familiar than litanies; the original Star Wars trilogy dominated the culture. A lyric about carrying a laser did not sound completely unreasonable. My Cousin Fiona once printed out the actual lyrics and handed them to him at a cookout. Eddie read it, nodded, and continued singing “carry a laser” for the rest of the afternoon.
He is not alone. Grandma Geraldine heard “carry an angel.” We often asked her how one carried an angel, but her response when asked is a “harrumph”. Tina the Terror thought it was about a woman named Carrie who was getting her revenge in a dramatic power ballad and possibly pig’s blood at the prom, which was definitely not in the lyrics. But no one was willing to tell her otherwise. Not even today.
All of those interpretations made perfect sense to the people hearing them. That is what the human brain does. When it encounters something unfamiliar, it fills in the blanks. We do this with songs. We do this with conversations. Sometimes, we even do this with God.
The phrase Kyrie eleison means “Lord, have mercy.” Greek-speaking Jews offered this prayer when they recited the psalms.
When blind Bartimaeus heard Jesus passing by, he cried out, “Jesus, Son of David, have mercy on me!” When the Canaanite woman begged Jesus to heal her daughter, she pleaded for mercy. This wasn’t religious small talk. They were asking Jesus to do something only Jesus could do.
The fourth-century pilgrim Egeria—history’s first travel blogger, thankfully without sponsored camel tours—recorded Christians in Jerusalem answering the deacons’ petitions with Kyrie eleison. An eleventh-century copy from Monte Cassino drifted through Italian libraries, not helped by Napoleon’s habit of closing monasteries. It resurfaced in 1884 and became an instant bestseller among liturgists, making her perhaps the only travel blogger whose audience grew after she stopped posting and had been dead for 1,500 years.
From Jerusalem, it moved west and was gradually incorporated into the Roman liturgy. During the Middle Ages, the Kyrie developed into a ninefold dialogue because medieval liturgy rarely met a good phrase it was willing to say only once. Some medieval theologians saw symbolism in the nine repetitions, connecting them with the nine choirs of angels. St. Thomas Aquinas reflected on its Trinitarian symbolism.
The liturgical reform that followed Vatican II restored the Kyrie’s character as a prayer of the whole church: the cry of Bartimaeus; the plea of the Canaanite woman; the prayer of the Psalmist; the voice of pilgrims in Jerusalem. The reform returned the prayer to the whole assembly, desiring fewer flourishes and more voices.
So when we respond Kyrie eleison, we are joining the people of God across the centuries who have prayed:
“Lord, we need You.”
Mercy is what cat videos and New Coke cannot do.
And if, somewhere in the back of your mind, a small voice still hears “carry a laser down the road that I must travel,” that is okay. Liturgical formation takes time. Sometimes it takes forty years and a cookout.
God has been dealing with our misunderstandings for a very long time.
He heard Abraham. He heard Moses. He heard the prophets. He heard blind Bartimaeus shouting from the roadside.
He can handle Crazy Eddie. He can handle us.
And that, in the end, is mercy.
The Joy of the Gospel 