You may not speak a great many foreign languages, but there is one language other than English at which most of us are proficient. That is body language. Whether our mouths can pronounce strange sounds or whether our eyes can make any sense out of different alphabets, we can see body language. Body language is eloquent. Body language is forceful and vigorous. The way we use our physical selves, really communicates.
When I call the children up here for the children’s moment, they use body language. Some of them run and skip down the aisle. They are ready and eager to get on to Children’s Worship and all the good things that have been planned. But some of them poke and slouch and drag their feet, as if to say, “Church is boring. Yawn.” You don’t have to hear a word from the children. The body language says it all.
We got caught up watching body language in the recent election, didn’t we? One candidate was said to be stiff. So he tried to limber up. During one debate he walked all over the stage, trying to be up close and personal. But he couldn’t fool us. It wasn’t a casual, friendly walk. It was more like marching here and marching there. Even his relaxation was stiff. The body language didn’t lie. It communicated.
But then the other candidate had a body language too. His was centered on his face. It seemed to be locked into a perpetual smirk. The words coming out of his mouth were serious and addressed major questions, but that grimace seemed to say, “What, me president? You’ve got to be kidding!” And lots of people – well forty-nine and 99/100 percent of them – thought this was some sort of clown prince. Never mind what the man said. His body language sent a powerful message.
In some cultures, body language is a very formal, very sensitive process. For Asian people, for example, how and when you bow is of supreme significance. To fail to bow is a serious insult; to fail to return a bow is a supreme insult. It says that you consider whomever you are dealing with to be a non-person. It says that you do not respect them. And so not only must you bow, in these Asian cultures; you must also be careful how you bow. I read one Zen Buddhist text that warned its readers not to bow too slowly, lest someone think you were reluctant to show respect. But also not to bow too quickly, lest someone think you had not carefully considered their virtues. Tricky business, isn’t it, bowing?
Well, we don’t bow. We shake hands – a peculiar thing, when you think about it. Somebody has guessed that it comes from the Middle Ages, and that it demonstrated to the person you were meeting that you weren’t carrying a knife to do him in! And how to shake hands – not too limp, lest you be thought a sissy, and not too firm, lest you hurt somebody’s hand. The most interesting handshaker I ever met was the man who used to be the fund-raising officer at Southern Baptist Seminary; Jim Austin’s handshake wound its way over your entire hand and lingered there, prowling around, as if he were trying to raise funds right out of your palm! What eloquent body language he had!
Body language. Girls curtsy for the Queen, good friends hug each other, weary teenagers drop their heads on the table, six-foot-plus men hunch down to try to look smaller. We all use body language to communicate how we feel about those around us. We use body language to express to others what they mean to us.
So what body language do we use around God? What do our personal presences communicate to God? Paul asked us to “present our bodies”. What does your body communicate about your feelings toward God?
The inimitable James Weldon Johnson once wrote a prayer that contains a memorable phrase. In this prayer Johnson spoke about coming before God “knee bowed and body bent.” “Knee bowed and body bent.” That phrase suggests a great deal about how he presented himself to God. Listen to a portion of James Weldon Johnson’s prayer:
O Lord, we come this morning
Knee-bowed and body-bent
Before thy throne of grace.
O Lord—this morning—
Bow our hearts beneath our knees,
And our knees in some lonesome valley.
“Knee-bowed and body-bent”. “Present your bodies a living sacrifice, holy and acceptable to God, which is your spiritual worship.” Your spiritual body language. Let me suggest what it means to present your body knee bowed, and what it means to present your body bent.
I
“Knee bowed” means that in everything we need to acknowledge and to obey God’s will. “Knee bowed” means submission to the one who has the right to tell us what we ought to do. To present ourselves knee bowed means that we acknowledge that there is no other choice that makes sense other than obeying God’s will.
Now you know the thing that is astonishing about human nature is that we develop such strong wills, such stubborn hearts. From our earliest days we just figure out that with a loud voice and vigorous body language, we can get our own way. I heard about a little boy, three years old, who one day stormed into his grandmother’s house, slammed the door, and, even before grandmother said, “Hello” or “Will you please” he stamped his foot and blurted out, “Grandma, I won’t!” Whatever you were about to ask, the answer is “No, I won’t”.
We develop such negative body language so early. My wife was reminiscing the other day about our daughter, and how independent she was, even as a tiny little thing. She would squirm loose from our grasp and tell us, “Don’t hold me. I don’t want to be held. I don’t need you!” What a will, and what body language! By the way, if there is any justice, when in a couple of months’ time her own child is born, I just hope that she get some of the same treatment! Maybe her child will push her off and let Grandpa do the holding. That would be justice!
Body language and our wills. Some of us have learned how to look like we are in charge. Some of us have figured out that if we look successful, wear the right clothes, drive the right cars, traffic in all the right status symbols, other people will think we are together and in command of ourselves. We use body language to communicate, “Nothing can happen to me. I am OK. I am strong.” The truth is we are playing a game. We are not strong. We are a mess. We are not together. We are barely able to hold ourselves from falling apart.
Mark it down and remember it – that the person who looks and sounds so confident is the very one who is utterly insecure and about to cave in. I’ve seen it over and over; some folks operate with bravado. They have an opinion about everything. They overwhelm you with their boisterous pronouncements and their pick-me-up posture. But it’s all a game. It’s an act. One day you hear they’ve gone off the rails mentally, they’ve broken down, they are in total disarray.
Friends, being secure begins with obedience to the will of God. Paul says,
“I appeal to you … to present your bodies as a living sacrifice … so that you may discern what is the will of God.”
If I do not learn to obey God’s will, I won’t make it. I need to bow my knees in submission. I need to break my will and make it His. I need to get my hands off trying to make everything happen and find out what God wants to make happen through me. I need to get my feet out of running around in circles so that I can look like a big wheel. I need to bow my knees, presenting my body, my self, first to God and to His will.
Guess what I’ve discovered? I’ve discovered that I cannot manage my life on my own. I cannot manage my household on my own. I cannot manage my money on my own. I cannot commit my time on my own. I cannot administer this church on my own. I cannot even run my little life on my own. The only way it can be done is that I bow my knees and acknowledge God’s right to be God. The Psalmist said it, “It is He that hath made us and not we ourselves.” But we’re trying to make ourselves! I need to receive and to obey God’s will in all things. I need to present myself knee-bowed.
II
And then I need to present myself body-bent. I need to get down to work, hard work, on the things that matter. I need and you need to bend our backs to the tasks that make a difference.
Where did we ever get the idea that being a Christian meant just “going to church.”? I hate that phrase, “going to church.” We are not called to “go to church” and sit there like passive pigeons. We are called to BE the church and to do something significant. I am tired of armchair theologizing. I am wary of disengaged philosophizing. I want to see the rubber-hits-the-road spirituality that does what must be done and does it with love and with grace.
As I look back over my life and ministry, I marvel that I am doing what I do. It wasn’t what I had in mind when my will was engaged. When I was a seminary student, back in nineteen hundred and none of your business, all of us bright young things talked about professorships and academic posts. One was going to be the next brilliant Old Testament professor, spending hour after painful hour poring over some obscure Hebrew verb. (Imagine giving your life to a Hebrew verb!). Another was going to be the next brilliant lecturer, sailing through rhetorical skies on flowery beds of ease, while others fought to win the prize and sail through bloody seas. The slow, slogging, hard work of church building, that was for the little people. That was for the ordinary guys who just didn’t have the stuff up here. If we had to be pastors – we were realistic enough to know that not everybody would make it into academia – so if we were to be pastors, we knew that we would be in large, affluent churches, surrounded by staff flunkies to do our bidding, so that we could read in leisure and craft timeless masterpieces for the crowds on Sundays. One gallus preachers – not us, we said. We are going to do the brainy stuff. No hard work for us, thank you very much.
As for me, I was going to become a specialist in Renaissance and Reformation history. I was going to live happily ever after in the sixteenth century and never come up for air. Martin Luther and John Calvin and Henry the Eighth and all those folks were going to be my constant companions. Who needed ordinary, boring church folks? I was going to be the academic historian, puttering around with German sermons and Latin lyrics.
But God said along the way, “I appeal to you … to present your body as a living sacrifice”. I heard the Lord tell me that it was not enough for me to live up here in some rarified world of intellectual pursuit. I heard the Lord tell me that I needed to get into the trenches and work. Work with people, work for people, work. Bend that body and work!
Oh, He let me live in the academic world for a while, all right. But no professorship for me. No history classroom, no dwelling in the past. He put my body on to the college campus to counsel and organize and develop students as a campus minister. Folks, I didn’t know what work was until I got into doing campus ministry. Visiting students at night in the dormitories .. organizing retreats where everything from the menu to the sleeping quarters to the recreation had to be put together out of nothing .. struggling with the disappointment when some student you’ve finally gotten to a level of maturity graduates and moves on, and you have to start all over with a new batch of eighteen-year-old turkeys – I mean, freshmen. (Sorry, got confused with Thanksgiving!) That stuff is work!
And then I came to Takoma. Whatever else Takoma is, it is no rest home. It is no picnic. There is more work to do here than I ever imagined, more than many of us would tolerate. But over the last fifteen years if there is any one thing I have learned it is that if I resist the temptation to climb on the high horse and if I get down into the trenches and work – if I bend my back and labor for the things that really matter to people – if I do that, then God will bless. And His grace will be sufficient.
“ … we have gifts that differ according to the grace given to us: prophecy … ministry … teaching … exhortation … giving … leading … compassion. Let love be genuine … do not lag in zeal, be ardent in spirit, serve the Lord.”
As I look at the days and years ahead, I see more work before us than most of us would think possible. We are truly going to have to bend our bodies to meet more opportunities than we could have dreamed of only a short while ago. I see the possibilities of an outreach to this community and to its hurting families, second to none anywhere in this city. I see the opportunity presented by a congregation of capable people, equipped for the tasks of ministry, inspired by winsome worship, instructed by well-trained teachers, doing ministries of all sorts. I see this all housed in a facility that needs to be safe, comfortable, accessible, and effective. I see a church whose members feel fulfilled just being a part of it.
And the key is in the body language: knees bowed and body bent.
Knees bowed to acknowledge that God’s will is God’s will and it is to be obeyed. That when He says, “You shall be my witnesses”, then we set aside our inhibitions and we share our faith. That when He says, “The tithe is the Lord’s”, we set aside our excuses and our fuzzy math and we give it. That when He says, “Worship the Lord in spirit and in truth”, we stop worrying about dignity and propriety. That when He says, “Outdo one another in showing honor”, we will forget about every petty jealousy we’ve had, and just do it. Just do it. Knee-bowed, in submission to the will of God.
And body-bent. Bodies bent to work hard. Time invested in leadership, committees, ministries. Energy applied so that every work for Jesus will be the best. Minds engaged so that everything will be done with excellence. Without apology this morning, I appeal, along with Paul, that we present our bodies – our time, our finances, our prayers, our energies, our talents – everything that makes us God’s gift – I appeal that we present our bodies as living sacrifices. I believe this church is a worthy place to do that. I believe that we are committed to the redemptive work of Christ. I believe that it is right that here we would commit our lives, our fortunes, and our sacred honor. I believe that our body language, today, right here, must be “knee-bowed and body-bent.”
O Lord, we come this morning
Knee-bowed and body-bent
Before thy throne of grace.
O Lord—this morning—
Bow our hearts beneath our knees,
And our knees in some lonesome valley.
