Why Kneel?

As part of my Lenten observation this year, I'm taking a break from writing new blog posts and updating and re-posting earlier material. Today's post was first shared on March 20, 2011.

Jesus Christ, Garden of Gethsemane, artist unknown

       Haiku:

         
      The taste
                  of rain

        —Why kneel?

         (Jack Kerouac)

For some reason, kneeling and Lent seemed connected in my mind. Thinking back on the very non-liturgical faith tradition of my childhood, I can’t remember kneeling, or any mention of kneeling. We stood to sing, sat to listen. Our most demonstrative act was to shake someone’s hand after the service.

The first time I remember kneeling was when my grandmother had a heart attack, the spring I was 16. In grief, then prayer, I knelt beside her bed. It seemed the only thing to do, and in my kneeling and prayer, I experienced God's presence and love in a way I had never imagined.

 A few years later I witnessed a frightening domestic dispute, with threatened violence and verbal abuse. By the time the abusive party drove off, all I could think of was to kneel with the shaking injured party, and cry, and pray, and wait for God’s comfort and wisdom.

The first time I took communion in an Episcopal church, kneeling at the altar, I found myself feeling deeply at home, spiritually fed in a profound and unexpected way, and thankful for the opportunity to kneel. There are times when kneeling seems the only thing to do, the best posture for meeting God, the safest place to be. After the tragic events of 9-11, our church held a prayer service, and I remember kneeling with so many others, thankful to kneel in God’s presence.

Why kneel? What are we doing when we kneel?

For me, kneeling can be a physical expression of lament. I kneel when life is too much, when the pain is too great, when there seems no place to turn. Nahum, describing the fall of Ninevah, says “Hearts melt, knees give way, bodies tremble, every face grows pale”  (Nahum 2:10). In Hebrew, the word for grief (כרא- kara) sounds exactly like the word for knee, kneel, smite, sink, fall, bring low (כרע - kara’). 

The Prodigal Son, Salvatore Rosa, Italy, 1650

Kneeling is also an expression of repentence. The prophet Ezra, made aware of Israel’s sin, tore his tunic and cloak:

and fell on my knees with my hands spread out to the Lord my God  and prayed:

I am too ashamed and disgraced, my God, to lift up my face to you, because our sins are higher than our heads and our guilt has reached to the heavens. From the days of our ancestors until now, our guilt has been great (Ezra 9:5-7).

Beyond grief and repentence, kneeling is an expression of submission, and supplication. We are small and God is great. In kneeling, we set ourselves in God’s hands. Lepers, seekers, desperate parents knelt as they called out to Jesus for help. Jesus himself knelt in Gethsemene, praying in submission and sorrow before his journey to the cross. 

I sometimes find myself returning, when I kneel, to the words of TS Eliot’s “Little Gidding,” part of his book-length Four Quartets. Eliot was born in St. Louis, Missouri, but became a British citizen, and an Anglican, in 1927. Fourteen years later, he served as an air raid warden and firewatcher in London during the Blitz, when German bombers targeted London for 76 consecutive nights. Between September, 1940, and May, 1941, forty thousand British civilians, half of them in London, had been killed by bombing. More than a million houses in London were destroyed or damaged.

"Little Gidding" is about many things, but in large part it’s about the pain of living in a ruined city, in a time of great devastation, and the challenge of living in faith when hope seems gone. In a letter to a friend, Eliot noted that the memorable line “Ash on an old man's sleeve” referred to the debris of a bombing raid hanging in the air for hours afterwards. "Then it would slowly descend and cover one's sleeves and coat in a fine white ash."

In the section before that, Eliot writes of kneeling, and of prayer: 

If you came this way,
Taking any route, starting from anywhere,
At any time or at any season,
It would always be the same: you would have to put off
Sense and notion….
…You are here to kneel
Where prayer has been valid. And prayer is more
Than an order of words, the conscious occupation
Of the praying mind, or the sound of the voice praying. 

We come to our knees through different routes, through pain, guilt, grief, helplessness. And once there, we set aside “sense and notion,” all the games our minds play, all the willfulness so hard to escape.

In kneeling, we speak to God in a way that goes beyond “the order of words, the conscious occupation of the praying mind, or the sound of the voice praying.” Certainly we can pray in any posture, but in kneeling, in a physical way, we declare our need, our dependence, our submission.

Psalm 22 says “all who go down to the dust will kneel before him— those who cannot keep themselves alive.” Contemporary Americans tend to be control freaks, desperate to fortify ourselves against the hazards that surround us. But despite our efforts, we, like all who have lived before us, are “those who cannot keep themselves alive.” Independent though we are, resourceful as we like to think ourselves, a moment of honest reflection will remind us that we are in need of resources and wisdom beyond our own.

The famous poem “Invictus”, poet William Ernest Henley’s one claim to fame, boasts “I am the master of my fate: I am the captain of my soul.”

The truth is something different. We are not masters of anything. We are frighteningly dependent. Watch the evening news and be reminded of how fragile this life is.

In kneeling, we find our place again, as people of the Lord’s pasture, small sheep in his care: "Come, let us worship and bow down, let us kneel before the Lord our Maker; for he is our God and we are the people of his pasture, the flock under his care." Psalm 95

We kneel now, in penance and petition, but we are also told there will come a time when all will kneel.  Isaiah tells us: "Before me every knee will bow;  by me every tongue will swear." (Isaiah 45) Paul repeats this in Romans 14:  “‘As surely as I live,’ says the Lord, ‘every knee will bow before me; every tongue will acknowledge God.’

Adoration of the Lamb ~ Jan Van Eyck

In Philippians 2, Paul expands this vision, to both a present reality (Jesus is already exalted, already give a name above every name), and a time in the future when we will kneel to acknowledge him:

 Therefore God exalted him

to the highest place

and gave him the name

that is above every name,

that at the name of Jesus

every knee should bow,

in heaven and on earth

and under the earth,

and every tongue acknowledge

that Jesus Christ is Lord,

to the glory of God the Father.

          Philippians 2

Jack Keroac, in his 'western haiku', questions the value of kneeling. What is your own experience of kneeling? How would you answer his question "Why kneel?"

 Please join the conversation. Your thoughts and experiences in this are welcome. Look for the "__ comments" link below to leave your comments. 

A Learn-as-You-Go-Along Marriage

detail, Le Bateau Atelier
Claude Monet, 1876, France

Like the water

of a deep stream,

love is always too much.

We did not make it.

Though we drink till we burst,

we cannot have it all,

or want it all.

In its abundance

it survives our thirst.

In the evening we come down to the shore

to drink our fill,

and sleep,

while it flows

through the regions of the dark.

It does not hold us,

except we keep returning to its rich waters

thirsty.

We enter,

willing to die,

into the commonwealth of its joy.

   (Like The Water, Wendell Berry)

It’s wedding season. Yesterday we attended the lovely wedding of a young friend we’ve known since she was in middle school. Tomorrow will be our own anniversary. 

We married thirty-five years ago, on a bright June afternoon in an old Baptist church in Carmel, New York. Our friend Harry officiated, reading the service from a small black Book of Common Prayer. He had just recently been ordained, and was so nervous he accidentally turned two pages at once. If he hadn’t listened when I whispered to him that he’d skipped a page, we would have missed the marriage vows completely. 

I was twenty-one. I’d graduated from college just three weeks before and spent those weeks sewing my wedding gown and a bridesmaid’s dress for my friend’s wedding on Long Island the Saturday before. Whitney, the groom, handsome in grey cutaways, had just turned twenty-three, and had just that week found us a second floor apartment in a creaky old row house in West Philly. 

Looking back, I’d have to say I was clueless about marriage, love, adulthood, and a whole host of other things. The marriages in my own family had all ended sadly, as far back in the family tree as anyone could remember. I had thought maybe I’d put off marriage completely, yet there I was, promising to “love him, comfort him, honor, and keep him, in sickness and in health; and, forsaking all others, keep thee only unto him, so long as ye both shall live.”

We weren’t given much advice. Our premarital counseling consisted of an awkward dinner and an hour of stilted conversation at Harry’s dining room table, with his wife and small son down the hall. I’d read Scanzoni and Hardesty’s All We’re Meant to Be, so I had some vague idea of equality in marriage, but we’d also been hearing reverberations from Bill Gothard’s Institute of Basic Youth Conflicts, which seemed to me to treat wives as permanent teenagers. A Gothard enthusiast told me, not long after the wedding: “You were under your grandmother’s umbrella. Now you’re under your husband’s. Remember that.” Living under an umbrella seemed a bit constraining. I still shudder when I think of the patronizing tone, and the limiting, constricted image. 

Whitney had grown up in a well-ordered home where the governing principle seemed to be “learn as you go along what pleases the Lord,” the Living Bible rephrasing of Ephesians 5:10. His parents were steeped in scripture, interested in following the lead of the Holy Spirit, and not very concerned about defined gender roles. In points of conflict or disagreement, their default mode seemed to be prayer, then acquiescence, with a shared resolve to learn along the way what God had to teach them. I watched, intrigued, as they navigated conflicts, changes, crises, with surprising harmony and good grace. They’re still learning as they go along, sixty years into marriage, still good friends and partners.

Is theirs a complementarian marriage? Egalitarian? I’m not sure they ever gave it much thought. In fact, refreshingly, the idea of “who is in charge” doesn’t seem to be much of an issue: God is in charge, and together they look at the example of Jesus, ask for wisdom and discernment from the Holy Spirit, consult others, including my husband and me, and wait for a sense of unity and peace. 

We’ve followed that same model through grad school, job changes, financial constraints, selling and buying of houses, moves from Philly to Virginia and back to the Philadelphia suburbs. We’ve parented three children, hosted one wedding, given shelter, over the years, to a mix of extended family, friends in transition, cats, hamsters, fish, birds, a legendary lizard and one very stubborn beagle. 

We’re never talked much about “men’s jobs” or “a woman’s place.” Whoever is nearest the baby changes the diaper. Whoever has the skill or interest does the job that needs to be done. I helped our kids edit their school papers: I was a writing teacher, so that made sense. He taught them golf and basketball: he played both in college, so that made sense. I remodeled our bathrooms, removing and installing toilets and sinks, something I learned helping rehab a house the fall I was sixteen.  He makes great omelets, something he learned as a short-order chef in high school. 

He tells better bedtime stories than I do: his imagination is wonderfully random, and endlessly amusing. But I do a better job reading at bedtime: he’s more apt to fall asleep mid-sentence. For the most part, I taught our kids to swim; I taught swimming at camps for years, and had more time with them in the neighborhood pool. For the most part, he taught them how to drive; he thought it would be a fun Sunday afternoon activity, and he’s far better at parallel parking than I am.

Yes, he mows the lawn, operates the power tools, and is more likely to be the one lugging heavy furniture up and down stairs. But he cried as much as I did when we left each child at college for the first time. Which proves not a whole lot – except that we both love our kids, and would love to keep them nearby forever.

But we also want them to learn, and grow, and find their way to the lives God has for each of them. There’s no umbrella here for them to stay under. We told each one, when we said goodbye at college, and at other transition points along the way: “We trust what God is doing in you.” In each that’s different. In each it’s a joy to watch.

They aren’t here to please us, make us look good, make us happy. And we’re not here to do that for them, or each other. We’re here to please God, to learn how to use the gifts he’s given us, to share his love with each other and those he brings across our paths. 

Marriage is a mystery, a means of grace, and a daily challenge. We are very different people, with very different personalities. I’d love to have a backyard full of chickens and a house full of neighborhood kids and noise. He’d like a townhouse with no lawn to mow, no clutter of any kind. I like meandering down back roads, floating lazily in my kayak in the nearby lake, wandering through the woods listening for bird song. He prefers focus: if he’s going somewhere, he wants to get there sometime soon, whether by foot, boat, car, or golf cart. For him, the idea of going is to get there. For me, the idea of going is to see what's happening along the way.

Marriage offers a place to learn all those lofty words the Bible invites us to grow into: patience, forgiveness, humility, forbearance. 

And love: the kind of love that invites us to die to our own plans, our own preferences, our own love of comfort, our own visions of what might be best. 

Submission is like one of those lovely Celtic knots: there’s no telling were it starts, no telling where it ends. Together we submit to each other, the needs of the family, the callings God leads us to, the cry of the broken world around us. The pattern emerges as we go, beautiful, complicated, so interwoven it’s hard to tell: is it one strand, or two? Maybe three.

Here’s the passage we live under, live into, rest in, taped for years inside a kitchen cupboard door:

For this reason I kneel before the Father, from whom every family in heaven and on earth derives its name.  I pray that out of his glorious riches he may strengthen you with power through his Spirit in your inner being, so that Christ may dwell in your hearts through faith. And I pray that you, being rooted and established in love, may have power, together with all the Lord’s holy people, to grasp how wide and long and high and deep is the love of Christ, and to know this love that surpasses knowledge —that you may be filled to the measure of all the fullness of God. (Ephesians 3:14-19)

We aren’t there yet, but we’re learning as we go along. 

And for that, I’m very very thankful.

detail from Book of Kells, c. 800 AD, Ireland

Lenten Submission: Rethinking Hupotassō

 The Washing of the Feet, Jesus Mafa, 1973, Cameroon

Who is in charge?
Who gets to call the shots?
Whose rules will we play by?
What happens when we don’t agree?

Questions of power, hierarchy, authority, coercion seem to be surfacing in every direction. This blog is part of the March synchroblog: “All About Eve.” As the synchroblog invitation suggests, “It’s Women’s History month and International Women’s Day is March 8. Women’s rights have been all over the news recently, from bills in Congress and state representative bodies to crass “jokes” by national broadcasters. The idea that women are or should be equal to men has become a polarizing topic of discussion on the national stage.”

For me, Lent is bracketed by considerations of power. During Lent we look back to Jesus’ time of solitude in the desert, and the temptations he faced as he prepared for his years of teaching and healing. Offered all the authority and splendor of the kingdoms of the world, Jesus answered “It is written, Worship the Lord your God and serve him only.” (Luke 4)

At the end of Lent, we remember Jesus’ applauded entry into Jerusalem, and the eagerness of the crowd to make him king. His refusal to embrace earthly power fed the disillusionment that led to Judas’ betrayal, and the crowds’ determination to see him crucified.

Christ Washing the Feet of St. Peter,
Sadao Watanabe, 1963, Japan

When Jesus’ followers asked about power and reward, he reminded them that the first would be last, and offered them a cross. Before his own last meal with them, he picked up the bowl and towel and washed their feet, the act of a servant or slave. So much for power.

I’ve been thinking about the word “submission.” It’s the word used to translate ὑποτάσσω, “hupotassō,” a Greek word that shows up in some of the most controversial passages in the New Testament. Slaves are encouraged to “hupotassō” their masters. Women are urged to “hupotassō” men (or – wives/husbands. Interestingly, the Greeks used the same word for women as wives, the same word for men as husbands). We are all asked to “hupotassō” all authority: kings, governors, elders. And we’re asked, repeatedly, to “hupotassō” each other.

Michelle Bachman caught headlines with conversation about wives submitting to their husbands. I found myself wondering what she meant by the word. Was she willing to submit to President Obama’s leadership in the same way she said she submits to her husband?

Mark Driscoll, pastor of a church often in the news, and author of a recent much-discussed book, Real Marriage, talks about submission: his wife’s submission to him. Does he submit to her in the same way? Who are the church leaders, the political leaders, that he offers the same submission?

When I read the passages using the word hupotassō, I find myself wondering if submission is really the best translation. More and more I find our understanding skewed by flattened, or slightly off-target, translations. Are we sure we understand what’s meant?

The original word was often used in a military context, and meant "to arrange [troop divisions] in a military fashion under the command of a leader". In non-military use, it was "a voluntary attitude of giving in, cooperating, assuming responsibility, and carrying a burden,” or “identifying with and supporting.”

As I was puzzling over this, my mother-in-law called me to ask my help in something. As we talked, she described a group she’s gathered to pray for my husband in his current travels: “like the Roman soldiers, who linked shields when they went into battle.”


I had heard that before, but forgotten: Roman soldiers at the time of the early church were legendary for their formations. Sometimes their shields were linked together and they moved as a tightly choreographed phalanx, a single entity.

Is it possible that hupotassō is another way of asking us to live out what Jesus, Paul, Peter, John said over and over? We’re one body, part of each other, connected to each other. We’re made to serve each other, protect each other, carry each other’s burdens. Is hupotassō a practical expression of that, living in cooperation and coordination with each other, rather than as independent agents only concerned for ourselves?

Jesus is our example in this. His mission was us. His burden was us. He was so aligned with his father that his actions reflected their shared intent. He was so concerned for us that he took on our guilt, our own sense of separation. He asked us to be united with him, and with each other, in the same way that he was united with his father, serving the same goals, sharing the same vision.

If you read 1 Peter straight through – not breaking it into chapters, or little headlined sections, you’ll see one central theme emerge: we’re called from our isolated, individual lives into something new. We’re living stones in a spiritual house, “a chosen people, a royal priesthood, a holy nation . . .Once you were not a people, but now you are the people of God.”

Part of that is living in hupotassō with each other – old, young, male, female, slave, free, aligning ourselves to serve each others’ needs. In the middle of the examples, Peter offers Jesus as the prime example:

“Christ suffered for you, leaving you an example, that you should follow in his steps. . . When they hurled their insults at him, he did not retaliate; when he suffered, he made no threats. Instead, he entrusted himself to him who judges justly. ‘He himself bore our sins’ in his body on the cross, so that we might die to sins and live for righteousness; ‘by his wounds you have been healed.’”

Christ is Condemned to Die,
Anna Kocher, 2006, PA

In this way, Peter goes on, wives are encouraged to hupotassō husbands. In this way, husbands are encouaraged to live with their wives in an loving, understanding way.

The bottom line, for all of us:

“love each other deeply, because love covers over a multitude of sins. Offer hospitality to one another without grumbling. Use whatever gift you have received to serve others, as faithful stewards of God’s grace in its various forms.”

This kind of life goes far past husband and wife, parent and child. The church, along with the marriages and families within it, are meant to demonstrate, in practical ways, Jesus’ own love and care for the needs of the world.  We’re supposed to band together, link together, serve each other, not so we can gain power, win elections, force our rules on everyone else, but so we can be more effective in serving the needs of the world.

I’ve been helping a family with a difficult move, in a way that has taken more time than I had planned. One afternoon one of the family’s teens helped me packing the kitchen. He had hoped to spend the time with friends, but was submitting to his mother’s request to help. As we worked, he talked about what he’d rather be doing, then asked, “And why are YOU doing this?”

I explained that although we’re not family, we’re family. I explained that there were times in my teens when my own family fell apart, and there were people from our church who aligned themselves with us, invited us to live with them, sacrificed themselves for us, treated us as part of the family. I didn’t confuse him by saying “this is what hupotassō looks like,” but that’s what I was thinking. It has nothing to do with who gets to call the shots, who gets to make the rules. It has everything to do with whose need, today, is greatest, and who has gifts to use to meet that need.

There are some scholars and pastors who do a great job of working through the thorny passages about men and women, who gets to lead, who gets to talk when:

• Christians for Biblical Equality offers a strong statement, in thirty languages, of the Biblical basis for equlity between genders.  
• Alan Johnson of Wheaton College offers a detailed discussion of the word submission. 
• Anglican Bishop N. T. Wright explains his views on women in ministry, and his interpretation of relevant scripture. 
• Scot McKnight has a great deal to say about submission, authority, and how we read Biblical texts in The Blue Parakeet, and also on his Jesus Creed blog. He also reviews helpful texts on this topic, including a recent book byAlan Padgett, As Christ Submits to the Church: A Biblical Understanding of Leadership and Mutual Submission.  
• For some great discussions of women, submission, and the role of women in the church, check blogs by Rachel Held Evan and Kathy Escobar.

Christ Takes Up His Cross,
Anna Kocher, 2006, PA

For me, this is all useful, helpful information, but maybe it’s enough to consider the simple summary Peter offers: Love each other deeply. Offer welcome and hospitality, even when you’d rather not. Use your gifts to help others. And when it comes to power? Remember Jesus, and his gentle reminder that the leader is the one who loves most and serves longest, at the greatest personal cost.


This is the fifth in a Lenten series:
     Looking toward Lent
     Lenten Sorrow : Lament and Nacham
     Lenten Silence: Charash, Be Still
     Lenten Sweetness: Tasting Towb

Other Synchroblog posts on the All About Eve topic:
Michelle Morr Krabill – Why I Love Being a Woman
Marta Layton – The War on Terror and the War on Women
Ellen Haroutounian – March Synchroblog – All About Eve
Jeremy Myers – Women Must Lead the Church
Carol Kuniholm – Rethinking Hupotasso
Wendy McCaig – Fear Letting Junia Fly
Tammy Carter – Pat Summit: Changing the Game & Changing the World
Jeanette Altes – On Being Female
kathy escobar – replacing the f-word with the d-word (no not those ones)
Melody Hanson – Call Me Crazy, But I Talk To Jesus Too
Glenn Hager – Walked Into A Bar
Steve Hayes – St. Christina of Persi
Leah Sophia – March Syncroblog-All About Eve
Liz Dyer – The Problem Is Not That I See Sexism Everywhere…
Sonja Andrews – International Women’s Day
Sonnie Swenston-Forbes – The Women
Christine Sine – It All Begins With Love
K.W. Leslie – Undoing the Subordination of Women
Carie Good – The Math of Mr. Cardinal
Dan Brennan – Ten Women I Want To Honor

As always, your thoughts and comments are welcome. Click on the  _commentslink below to open the comment box.