The Adoration of Christ - Pastor's Column, January 2022
The Adoration of the Magi by Workshop of Rembrandt - Info : Pic, Public Domain, https://commons.wikimedia.org/w/index.php?curid=3015840
On January 6, which immediately follows the final day of the Christmas season, the church celebrates the festival of Epiphany. This feast day commemorates Christ’s “appearing” or “being made known,” especially to the gentiles. The gospel text for the occasion is the visit of the Magi to the Christ child (Matthew 2:1-12). After following the star and finding the child, Matthew tells us specifically how they adored and worshiped him. In the NRSV translation we read in verse 11, “On entering the house, they saw the child with Mary his mother; and they knelt down and paid him homage.” According to the original Greek, a better translation is that they “fell down and worshiped.” The Greek word used here is where we get the word “prostration,” which means lying stretched out on the ground.
There is no way we can humble ourselves more before the Lord in worship and adoration of him. I had the opportunity to worship in that way when I was ordained. During the prayers, invocation of the Holy Spirit, and before the ordinand’s vows are spoken, the option is given to lay prostrate on the floor at the foot of the chancel steps. It was important for me to take that opportunity to express my faith in that way during the service.
All of our postures from standing to sitting to lying down can be seen as modes of worship and adoration before our Lord. In Volume 1 of Reclaiming the Atonement by Patrick Henry Reardon, he takes a look at the postures of worship and what they mean. He writes:
Among the several ways of confessing what we believe about Jesus, not least important, is our posture when we pray to him… Standing intimates a readiness to do his will. Sitting suggests a humble submission to his tutelage. Prayer on bended knee is a very special posture of love and supplication to Christ. Even lying down on our beds may express the confident faith that our Lord makes us dwell in peace and safety. Among the bodily postures expressive of faith in Christ, however, the most solemn is that of prostration or adoration. In Matthew, prostration is a supreme expression of the Christological faith. Matthew both begins and ends his account of Jesus’ life by describing believers as prostrate before him in faith: the Magi at the beginning, and his disciples at the end (Mt. 28:17).
What all this tells us is that our body can be a tool for worshiping and adoring our Lord and Savior. Our posture models what we believe and are, therefore, actions of faith. Standing, sitting, kneeling, lying in bed, or falling down in prostration are all actions done in faith. Our bodies actually help us worship, then, as we embody our faith. Our bodies can help us when we are at a loss for words. If we find that we can’t find the words to say, if we don’t know what to pray, if we are so low that we don’t feel like opening a Bible to read, then in our bodies we can still fall down before the Lord in worship and adoration. Sometimes when I feel I am at my lowest points I go into the sanctuary and fall down in a prostration before the altar and the cross. Don’t worry if you are not physically able lay prostrate before the Lord. You can take this posture in your heart even as you sit or lie on your bed, and the Holy Spirit, knowing what you intend and what you need, will still carry your prayers to the Lord.