SUNDAY SERMON – June 4, 2006

by Ven Christopher Page

St. Philips Anglican Church
Prostrate Before God
MATTHEW 4:8
“All this I will give you ”

In the last temptation to which Jesus is subjected in the wilderness, the devil
sums up the heart of every temptation. The devil took Jesus “to a very high
mountain,” where he “showed him all the kingdoms of the world and their
splendor.” Then the devil says to Jesus, “All these I will give you, if you will fall
down and worship me.” (Matthew 4:8) The core of every temptation is the idea
that there is something outside ourselves apart from God that can “give” us
something that we lack. This is the fundamental lie Satan would like us all to
believe. This is the basic deception that keeps us enslaved to the forces of death
and destruction. Every temptation comes from that sense of lack and emptiness
within ourselves that we try to fulfill apart from God.

Satan offers Jesus “all the kingdoms of the world and their splendour.” (Matthew
4:8) What could “the kingdoms of the world” possibly have to offer Jesus? What
could “the kingdoms of the world” possibly have to offer any of us? There is no
doubt “the kingdoms of the world” glitter and shine. There is no doubt “the
kingdoms of the world” appear to hold great promise. But what do they deliver?
What lasting satisfaction do the kingdoms of the world” ever really have to
contribute to our lives or to the well-being of the world?

When all “the kingdoms of the world” have finally let us down we will be forced to
recognize that there is nothing we can do, or achieve, or acquire, or possess in
this world that finally satisfies the deepest longings of our hearts apart from God.
There is no person, no job, no food, no vacation that will finally fill us and nourish
us for the journey of life. All these things will fall short in one way or another.
“The kingdoms of the world,” exist to demonstrate their own insufficiency.

Thomas Merton, in The Sign of Jonas writes, “Every creature that enters my life,
every instant of my days, will be designed to wound me with the realization of the
world’s insufficiency, until I become so detached that I will be able to find God
alone in everything. Only then will all things bring me joy.” The wilderness exists
to “wound us.” A wound is an opening, a softening, a place of vulnerability.
Wounds are good for us. Wounds open us to reality. When we heed our wounds
we discover a depth within ourselves that we might otherwise never discover.
Wounds are our teachers in the skills of the spirit, our guides in the terrain of
depth.

Richard Rohr writes, “If only we could see our wounds as the way through, as
Jesus did, then they would become ‘sacred wounds’ and not something to deny
or disguise.” Our wounds are “the way through” because our wounds reveal
reality. They show us our true human condition. Our wounds enable us to see
where we are truly worship.

When we are willing to look at our wilderness wounds, they reveal to us the
things to which we have truly given ourselves. This is why, when Satan tempts
Jesus with “the kingdoms of the world,” there is one small condition. The
condition Satan says to Jesus is “if you will fall down and worship me.” (Matthew
4:9) The two words in Satan’s instruction are quite similar in Greek. Satan says
Jesus must pipto and proskuneo him. All that is required for Jesus to acquire
“the kingdoms of the world” is for Jesus to prostrate himself to Satan.

Think about what a prostration looks like. First you go down on one knee, then
both knees. You put your hands on the ground you slide forward until you are
stretched out full length on the ground, spread eagle face down at the feet of the
person before whom you lie prostrate. This gesture coveys only one thing. Pipto
and proskuneo signify complete and utter abandon. When you prostrate
yourself, you have surrendered. You have acknowledged the superiority of the
other person and have acknowledged their authority in your life. You have given
up all your rights, privileges, power and prestige. You have simply abandoned
yourself.

The thing we need to understand here is that we all pipto and proskuneo to
something or someone. That’s what Bob Dylan was saying when he sang

You may be an ambassador to England or France,

You may like to gamble, you might like to dance,
You may be the heavyweight champion of the world,
You may be a socialite with a long string of pearls

But you're gonna have to serve somebody, yes indeed

You're gonna have to serve somebody,
Well, it may be the devil or it may be the Lord
But you're gonna have to serve somebody.

You may be a preacher with your spiritual pride,

You may be a city councilman taking bribes on the side,
You may be workin' in a barbershop, you may know how to cut hair,
You may be somebody's mistress, may be somebody's heir

But you're gonna have to serve somebody, yes indeed

You're gonna have to serve somebody,
Well, it may be the devil or it may be the Lord
But you're gonna have to serve somebody.

The reason we are “gonna have to serve somebody” is that we were designed
with this sense of lack in our being. We looked in the previous chapter at Brian
McLaren’s understanding of the lack created in humanity by the removal of one
rib from the side of Adam to create Eve. The loss of that rib created within us a
Hungry Monster. The thing we serve, the thing we bow down to is the thing we
hope will satisfy Hungry Monster. We prostrate ourselves before Satan in the
hopes that Satan will fill Hungry Monster’s voracious appetite and bring an end to
our desiring. We are looking for fullness. We want an end to our loneliness, an
answer to our restlessness, a solution to our dissatisfaction. Satan promises to
feed Hungry Monster with “the kingdoms of the world.”

But, Hungry Monster is never satisfied. When we look in the wrong places for
that fullness for which we long, we end up more empty than before we headed off
down the illusory path along which Satan has lured us. The thing we bought
loses its shine. The job we sought becomes a source of pressure and tension.
The relationship for which we longed, brings pain, uncertainty, and frustration.
Hungry Monster prowls on and on, always clinging to the illusion that somewhere
out there is the meal that will bring an end to all hunger. But Hungry Monster
always comes home wanting more.

The writer of Ephesians counsels his readers, “Do not get drunk with wine, for
that is debauchery; but be filled with the Spirit.” (Ephesians 5:18) The fullness
we desire comes, not from wine, not from anything external; it comes as a gift of
God’s Holy Spirit. And the awareness of this fullness comes to us through
worship. Ephesians says, “be filled with the Spirit as you sing psalms and hymns
and spiritual songs among yourself, singing and making melody to the Lord in
your hearts.” (Ephesians 5:19) When we “sing psalms and hymns and spiritual
songs…singing and making melody to the Lord” in our hearts, we are prostrating
ourselves before God. To worship is to surrender. We gather Sunday by
Sunday, not primarily to be taught or entertained, not even primarily for the
encouragement and strength we gain from our fellowship together. We gather in
order that we might pipto and proskuneo before God. We come to acknowledge
our absolute allegiance before all else to the Almighty. To worship is to practice
prostration before God and nothing else.

Now of course this prostration is not something confined to Sunday or restricted

to church. We must prostrate ourselves before God every moment of our lives.
But, we are physical beings and we learn and grow by practice. Worship in
church is practice in surrender. We come together in order to encourage one
another to lie face down before God. We gather to abandon our agendas, to lay
down our demands, to surrender our need for life to be a certain way. We gather
for public worship in order that we might give visible, physical expression to our
desire that God and God alone might reign at the centre of our lives.

This is the path of fullness. If the vessel of our lives is going to be filled, it must
first be emptied. We begin with the willingness to surrender, to lie face down on
the mat before God. We sing together so that our hearts might be softened and
our spirits opened. We pray together in order that we might acknowledge that we
are empty and helpless before so many of the forces of life. We confess our sins
together so that we might lay aside all of the perpetual habits and obsessions
that clutter our lives and hinder the ways of God’s Spirit. We even listen to
sermons in an attempt to lay aside our own wisdom and discern the outlines of
God’s wisdom mediated to us through Scripture and preacher. We come to
Eucharist empty handed having laid aside all our greatness and simply opening
to receive the presence of God in our being.

From time to time in our worship we use helium filled balloons. A balloon is
actually a wonderful symbol of the Christian journey. We are all born into this
world with a small supply of helium and a wonderful vision. We come into this
world believing somehow that we were created to fly. But fairly early in life we
begin to feel as if we do not have quite enough helium to fulfill the vision we have
for our lives. So, we start looking for someone or something that will help us
learn to fly. We attach ourselves to teachers who promise to teach us to fly and
we try so hard to fulfill their instructions. We work and we strain and we do the
best we can, but somehow we never get very far off the ground. We always have
this uneasy sense that we were created for something more.

As we work away at learning to fly, a sad thing begins to happen. Most of the
helium we brought into the world by virtue of being created in the image of God,
begins to leak away. We become more and more empty. Flying becomes more
and more difficult. Until, finally one day, we decide that flying is really for the
birds, not for balloons at all.

But, if we were not created to fly, what were we created for? The only conclusion
we can come to is that we were created to get filled up. So we try to find some
way to fill that great empty space that has been created in us by the loss of
helium. We try to stuff all kinds of things into our inner most being in an attempt
to feel satisfied and content. But none of them really work. And some of the
things that we try to fill ourselves with are like razor blades. They tear and
destroy the fabric of our being.

Eventually, if we are fortunate, we realize that none of those things we have been
trying to inflate our balloon with has really done the trick. All those things we have
stuffed into the mouth of our balloon have only left us more and more empty and
less and less able to fly. Then we begin the process of emptying ourselves of all
those things we have looked to for a sense of fullness apart from God.

This emptiness can be a scary thing. It takes courage to let go of those little
projects we have worked so hard on to try to give us a sense of well-being. It is
frightening to surrender our addictions, to lay down our fine schemes for making
ourselves feel important, strong, and meaningful.
Our fear of this emptiness is made even greater by the fact that the helium we
were designed to hold is gentle and invisible. Dallas Willard writes, “The
obviously well kept secret of the ‘ordinary’ is that it is made to be a receptacle of
the divine, a place where the life of God flows.” But then Willard adds, “But the
divine is not pushy.” God will not force fullness on anyone. If a balloon is hard
and brittle it cannot be filled. A balloon must be supple and open in order to
receive the breath of helium. Before a balloon is filled everything is hard work.
After a balloon is filled with helium the balloon can float, riding the crest of the
wind, going wherever the breath of God’s Spirit might lead. The full balloon is
free.

Filled with helium, the balloon takes its proper shape. It conforms itself without
effort to the presence of that which fills it. We all take the shape of that before
which we prostrate ourselves. If we worship at the altar of success and material
well-being, then money and power will shape the choices, decisions and
relationships of our lives. If we soften and prostrate ourselves before God, we
will have God-shaped lives.

The more we resist, the more difficult it is for God to be present in our being,
shaping and forming us to the likeness of that image in which we were made.
This is not meant to be hard work. Jesus said, “my yoke is easy, and my burden
is light.” (Matthew 11:30) “The kingdoms of the world” are brought by sweat. The
kingdom of God is brought by surrender.

The challenge of Jesus’ last temptation in the wilderness, is the challenge to lay
aside all his personal goals and aspirations, to empty himself before God. This is
the way of the Spirit. This is the path to fullness of life. Without this gesture of
ultimate surrender we condemn ourselves to a life of perpetual seeking, a life of
chasing after an illusion, seeking fullness where it cannot be found. Prostrate
before God, we will discover the fullness of God’s Spirit and the answer to every
wilderness we might ever encounter.

Thomas Merton The Sign of Jonas (New York: Harcourt Brace Jovanovich,
1953), p. 51.

Richard Rohr Job and the Mystery of Suffering: Spiritual Reflections (NY:
Crossroad Publishing, 1996), pp. 90,91.

Dallas Willard The Divine Conspiracy: Rediscovering Our Hidden Life In God
(San Francisco: Harper Collins, 1997), p. 14.