Physical Worship – Falling Down
Physical Worship – Falling Down.
“Beloved friends, what should be our proper response to God’s marvelous mercies? With eyes wide open to His mercies, here’s what I want you to do, God helping you: I encourage you, as an act of sensible, intelligent worship, to surrender yourselves to God to be His sacred, living sacrifice. Make a decisive dedication of your bodies, presenting all your members and faculties. Take your everyday, ordinary life – your sleeping, eating, going-to-work, and walking-around life – and place it before God as an offering. Live in holiness, experiencing all that delights His heart. This offering of the whole of our lives is a worshipful act that is pleasing to God. And this becomes your genuine expression of spiritual worship.” (Romans 12:1; a weaving together of The Passion Translation, the Message, Philip’s translation, the Amplified Bible, and the New Jerusalem Bible).
Being Physical with Worship. The spiritual and the physical belong together, and are in fact inseparable. We were created as whole beings with a mysterious fusion of body and spirit and soul and body and everything else that constitutes our personhood. Not only that, the Incarnation reveals how important the body is to Creator God. In a sense, the idea, the reality, of God taking on a physical body was actually a spiritual act. We need to make sure we incarnate our worship. So worship of our Creator needs to include the body if we want to worship with our whole selves. Physical acts of worship become meaningless if it is done thoughtlessly, without its intention of worshipping God. But worship is not limited to the nonphysical, the so-called spiritual either, or one is not truly involved fully in the act of worship. As Rev. Josef Ratzinger once wrote in his excellent article, The Theology of Kneeling, “The bodily gesture itself is the bearer of the spiritual meaning, which is worship. Without the heart of worship, the bodily gesture would be meaningless, while the spiritual act itself must of its very nature express itself in the bodily gestures.” So physical gestures are invaluable in the act of worship. They can point to spiritual truths, they can stimulate worshipful acts, and they can enable a fuller expression of awe, lament, adoration and worship. Using the body helps us to put the Gospel message into motion. The movement of one’s body can be a sign that communicates a message… Do you want to signal to God that you submit to Him, that you want to confess to Him, that you adore Him, that you intend to follow Him in trust? There are gestures and postures and movements that can express what is on your heart without any use of words. Body language is vital to spiritual life and expression. In this blog series entitled “Physical Worship,” I will focus on the worshipful use of the body through such gestures and movements as: prostration before God; sitting at the feet of Jesus; standing in respect and oneness; kneeling in submission; walking in order to follow; running the good race; jumping for joy; lifting up the heart and hands; offering the kiss of peace; and the act of crossing oneself with the sign of the Cross. This is important: Physical postures and actions during worship reflect the attitudes of the heart, but they can also help produce the attitudes of the heart.
“Pipto” = The root Greek word meaning to fall down, used over 90 times in the New Testament; is the starter word for dozens of terms involving falling downward from a higher place to a lower place; pitpo is the biblical term for prostration, falling onto one’s face on the ground, to collapse to the ground; to fall flat down in worship, reverence, allegiance, or submission; to drop down to the earth as if dead. In the Christian tradition, to fully prostrate oneself often includes confession and gratitude, as well as to pray from a low place before God’s greatness and awesome mystery. To prostrate oneself before the Lord is to assume a humble, servile position before our Master, the almighty God.
Literally volunteering to perform a face plant on the ground is unusual to say the least. It takes a lot of pride-swallowing and ego-relinquishment to stretch flat on the ground. But “pipto” was fairly commonplace in the biblical era, as well as in other parts of the world right now. The West does not like to be humbled, evidently. The lesser form of pipto is when one would kneel with both knees on the ground and the forehead touching the ground as well. It was a position slaves would take with their master out of duty and respect. Often out of disrespect a person witnessing this would kick the rear end of the person lying on the ground. This would confirm that person’s place in life. The full prostration would be lowering oneself to the ground and assuming a position in which the entire body was flat on the ground, from the head to the toes to all the limbs. Often the phrase “throw oneself to the ground” would indicate a full prostration, with the word pipto more times than not referring to the full prostration.
Flat on the Ground. When a defeated soldier is brought to a conquering king, the captured foe lays his body out, face down, fully on the ground. That physical act acknowledges the fact that he is in subjection to the king, tht he submits to his power and authority. To lie prostrate in worship is to acknowledge much the same thing, that the worshiper is humbly in full submission to God the King. To lie prostrate in prayerful worship is done out of reverence and a healthy fear of God’s might and authority over us. Interceding for the people of Israel after the Golden Calf debacle, Moses fell prostrate before the Lord for forty days and nights. He fasted the whole time he was prostrate, because he “feared the anger and wrath of the Lord.” (Deut. 9:18-19). Moses acknowledges his subservience to Yahweh by his physical gesture. Even more telling was the time when all the people on Mt. Carmel saw the fire of heaven come down at Elijah’s request, ‘When all the people saw this, they fell prostrate and cried, “The Lord – He is God! The Lord – He is God!’ (1 Kings 19:39). Prostration is a rather radical, visual way to signal one’s submission and respect to God. It would be interesting to try this posture in private prayer, no less in community worship.
Gethsemane. One of the most heart-breaking scenes in the Gospels reveals a full prostration… Jesus praying in the Garden of Gethsemane flat on the ground in utter agony. “And He took with Him Peter, James and John, and began to be very distressed and troubled; and He said to them, ‘My soul is deeply grieved to the point of death; remain here and keep watch.’ And He went a little beyond them, and fell to the ground (pipto), and began to pray that if it were possible, the hour might pass Him by. And He was saying, ‘Abba! Father! All things are possible for You; remove this cup from Me; yet not what I will, but what You will.'” (Mark 14:33-36; also refer to Matt. 26:36-39).
We see here that Jesus is in desperate distress, and He literally threw Himself to the ground, fully prostrating Himself in prayer to His Father. Jesus is humbly submitting to the Father as He opens His heart to Him. He is fully on the ground, in total privacy, stretching out and remaining vulnerable to whomever might come to Him there. But that is not all he is doing on the ground like that. According to many biblical scholars, Jesus is also identifying Himself with the fall of mankind, kissing the dust of the earth. Jesus “let’s Himself fall into man’s fallenness.” (Fr. Ratzinger). With a tormented soul, Jesus collapses to the ground and assumes a servile position before the Father as well as a position of solidarity with His fellow human beings in the flesh.
There are many other fascinating situations in the New Testament in which pipto was demonstrated, whether voluntarily or not:
(1.) The Samaritan leper who was the only one of the ten healed lepers who returned to Jesus to express his gratitude by falling at His feet (pipto). (Luke 17:16);
(2.) Peter, James and John on the Mount of Transfiguration went flat on the ground (pipto) with Jesus after they heard the Father’s voice out of the holy cloud (Matt. 17:6);
(3.) The three wise men from the East fell down (pipto) when they approached Jesus (Matt. 2:11);
(4.) The Devil demanded that Jesus pipto before him to show subservience to the Devil’s power during the Temptation (Matt. 4:9);
(5.) The midnight mob of Roman soldiers and religious authorities fell to the ground (pipto) in Gethsemane when confronting Jesus, and Jesus saying that He was the great I AM (John 18:6);
(6.) Saul, soon to become Paul, lay prostrate (pipto) on the ground after his “come to Jesus” moment on the road to Damascus. (Acts 9:4, 22:17).
(7.) The scene at the throne of worship in John’s Apocalypse, “The 24 elders will fall down (pipto) prostrate before Him who sits on the throne, and will worship Him who lives forever and ever…” (Rev. 4:10).
It’s no wonder the physical gesture of pipto, lying flat on the ground, is out of fashion in so many Christian churches. It is truly a sign of weakness and submission, and many of us are not so good at that. There are many church traditions, though, that have retained that physical act of worship, most notably the Roman Catholic, the Anglican, and the Orthodox Churches. During the Good Friday services, the priests and deacons like prostrate before the altar, to identify not only with man’s fallenness, but also to participate in the anguish and humiliation of Christ during His Passion. One would also witness aspiring priests prostrating themselves during their ordination service, stretching out on the floor, to symbolize their utter inadequacy and insufficiency in assuming this mission in their lives, pleading with God to provide the strength and wisdom necessary for them to perform their church duties in a way that would honor Him.
It would seem that if one were not physically capable of prostration, or is in the situation in which that would be feasible, one could prostrate themselves in their hearts. A wonderful act of worship might indeed be to speak to the Lord while mindfully lying on the ground, humbly, reverently, in our hearts.
Here is a most beautiful meditational song centered on when Jesus fell to the ground in Gethsemane, collapsing in agony. Perhaps identifying with Jesus here would be easier to do if we assumed the same worshipful posture. Your soul is in for a spiritual treat if you haven’t heard Taize music yet. Wonderful music for meditation and worship. Bless you with peace.
TAIZÉ – Stay With Me – YouTube