The Epiphany, 5 January 2020, Austwick, Keasden
‘They knelt down and paid him homage.’
Wise travellers knelt before the baby Jesus. Insightful visitors, following a divine hunch, bent their knees to revere a great leader newly born.
Wise men on their knees… that’s the image at the core of Matthew’s myth. That’s the posture we place them in, in our crib scenes and our nativity plays. Wise men kneeling before the baby Jesus.
What a quaint picture. What an embarrassment. For us, kneeling is out of fashion. Consider those beautifully-crafted kneelers in our churches, many of them designed only a generation ago sometimes in memory of a loved one or in celebration of the church and village life - they’re barely used. The only places of worship where it’s normal for devotees to bend their knees before the Almighty today, are our mosques.
And kneeling before another person is unheard of. Even members of our Royal Family only expect men to make a small bow of the head to them in greeting, and women to do a modest curtsy, or if they prefer simply to shake hands in the usual way. [1]
It’s interesting to consider that this discomfort with kowtowing to others is maybe a legacy of the teachings of the adult Jesus which have seeped into our consciousness over the centuries. For Jesus was never one for propping up social conventions which elevated some and diminished others. ‘The greatest among you will be your servant’, Jesus told his followers. ‘All who exalt themselves will be humbled, and all who humble themselves will be exalted.’ [2]
It was Christianity which introduced the notion that all people are equal in dignity - an unprecedented idea at the time, and one to which our world owes its entire democratic inheritance. Matthew’s nativity story introduces the good news that God chose to take part in the great drama of the world, not in the role of a king but as a suffering servant; not intending to conquer the world by force, but to redeem it by grace.
We believe in the inestimable worth of human life - every human life - worth because we are valued by God, who took on flesh, entered our world, and shared our experiences of love, joy, compassion and intimate friendships; anger, sorrow, suffering and tears. For Christians, God is not distant or detached; he carries the wounds we all carry, he weeps and laughs along with us. All of this elevated the human experience and laid the groundwork for the ideas of individual dignity and inalienable rights which we can confidently say are the Christian roots of modern society. [3]
Had those travellers from the East the foresight to perceive that this special child had come to ‘kneel’ beside us; that this son of God had come to place himself where we all are; and especially, to put himself in the position of those of us who are - metaphorically - on our knees? Besides Gethsemane, the only other place where scripture records Jesus kneeling was before the crowd preparing to stone a woman caught in adultery: his kneeling and writing in the sand on that occasion was the prelude to his unforgettable statement which saved the woman by levelling them all before God: ‘Let anyone who is without sin among you, cast the first stone.’ [4]
There is one occasion in our culture when kneeling before someone is still regarded as ‘the right thing to do’. It’s an old-fashioned ritual but it still has plenty of symbolic meaning for us. It’s the marriage proposal. You’ve seen it countless times on films and TV. You’ve maybe even done it yourself. Got down on one knee, drawn out the little box containing the engagement ring, and asked your loved one for their hand in marriage.
Now getting down on one knee to propose is quite different to kneeling before a king or queen, or bishop. It’s not a gesture of submission to someone of higher rank, power or authority. Rather, it’s a sign of our great love and devotion for the other person.
When you’re proposing you’re not kneeling down before that person because they’re your social superior, you’re kneeling down before them because they’re the focus of your desire. And in that position you’re usually confident that they desire you too, that the feeling is mutual. So, a little nervously perhaps, nevertheless you trust: that their desire is the same as your desire and, hallelujah! - they say ‘yes’.
Now you may have been sitting through this talk thinking, this is all very well but the real reason why fewer people kneel for prayer in church today is because of our sore backs and dodgy knees and creaky hips. I can relate to that. The day I was ordained in Liverpool Cathedral seventeen of us, most of us well past our youth, knelt together before the bishop at the altar rail for an increasingly painful twenty-five minutes or more. That great liturgical movement climaxed in the sound of clicking joints and creaking limbs and groans of pain as we all got back up on our feet.
Of course, regardless of sore knees and dodgy hips we can all still give ourselves to Jesus - if not by actually kneeling, then by kneeling in our hearts in an attitude of prayerful devotion. As we bow our hearts before Jesus in prayer, we do it in the way of the marriage proposal: we do it to express our love and devotion for him.
We’re prostrating ourself before Jesus not as our demanding social superior, but as the human one who, in his love for us, desires to make us fully human. We’re kneeling at his feet because he is the focus of our desire, and we look towards him in love, expecting that his desire for us more than matches our desire for him and, hallelujah! - we feel him, hear him, see him, saying ‘yes’ to us, in love.
Was this what the wise men were doing in that story of Matthew? Were the gold, frankincense and myrrh just outward signs of something far profounder? Did their kneeling down before him show that what they were really giving Jesus, was their heart, confident that his heart’s desire was, at that moment and for ever, for them - just as it always is for us?
Notes
A revised version of Wise men kneeling, preached at Sparkford, Epiphany 2016.
[1] The official website of the British Monarchy: Greeting a member of The Royal Family.
[2] Matthew 23.11-12.
[3] Peter Wehner, The Christmas Revolution, New York Times, December 25, 2015, referencing theologian Steve Hayner (adapted).
[4] John 8. 2-11. Our 2019 Lent study series was an extended meditation on this passage of scripture: see my blog post Public shaming and writing in the dust.
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