Printer-friendly version   Email to a friend

As the Memorial Union was closed for the Labor Day weekend, we made use of a chapel building on the campus of a local university. The outside of the church is of a colonial Williamburg style, with a red brick exterior, a white steeple, a colonnade that surrounds three sides of the building. Historic hymns play on the hour. On the inside, the church has chandeliers which hang from a vaulted ceiling, large picture windows on three sides and white wood which contrasts with the wine red carpet and pew cushions. The communion table is featured prominently in the front, in between both lecterns, that of the preacher and the reader. Pipe organs supply a grand sound from the balcony in the back.

Our family arrived early and my children started exploring the building. They asked me what the little green benches were for. I explained that they were "kneeling benches for people to use when they pray to God." I went on to greet some of the early arrivals and a few minutes later, I noticed that the children had lowered all of the kneelers for one side of the church. I asked them to put them up. Seven-year-old Jonathan then asked me, "Why can't we kneel?"

I don't know that Jonathan asked the question out of any special piety. I do know the question was especially profound. Like most of the questions from a child, it is hard to answer. Why did God let my dog get run over in the street? Why did God let those children in Russia die? Why do we pray to God and to Jesus? Is this really Jesus' blood? And now this one, why can't we kneel?

The immediate answer was, "I'll explain it to you on the way home. Just put them back up for now."

The answer on the way home was, "We didn't have the kind of prayer today that was suited for the entire congregation kneeling and our people are not used to doing this sort of thing. But maybe we can kneel the next time we worship there."

The answer that awaits him one day well into the future may have to be this one:

"The real reason we don't kneel Jonathan is because most of us were raised in Gnostic churches where you bring your mind and heart to church but leave your body at home where it supposedly belongs. Do you know about Gnosticism, yet, Jonathan? Well, at any rate, we were taught to believe that true religion happens in the head, or, uh . . . in the heart. Somewhere you can't see, somewhere hidden. The body is not the important thing. The spirit is. That's why you don't see people raising their hands even though the Bible commands us to lift up holy hands to heaven. That's why we don't kneel when the Psalmist invites us to come and kneel in the presence of the Lord God our Maker. That's why we don't use oil with the prayer of intercession for the sick. That's why we don't greet each other with a holy kiss. We do all of this worship inside our head, deep inside our heart. We don't want what is 'spiritual' to be dirtied with material things like oil and bread and water and wine and robes and physical posturing of the hands and knees and a kiss.

"You see, Jonathan, people are afraid that we will get like the Pentecostals and start hooping and hollering and rolling in the aisles and forget all decorum. Or we might end up like all those Catholics who are hypnotized into unbelief with their many rituals -- genuflections and rosaries and making the sign of the cross. Or, God forbid, those Muslims who pray with their nose on the carpet. Since we don't want to be like them, well, Jonathan, some Christians just play it safe and try to keep their worship 'spiritual'."

There is, of course, another possibility. I'm holding out hope for the future that Jonathan and I can change the subject. I'm hoping that I won't have to answer Jonathan's question when he gets older. Not because I don't want to answer his question, but because he no longer has this question to ask. Maybe he will have already grown accustomed to kneeling for prayer and opening up his hands to receive God's blessing. Maybe instead, we will talk about lex orandi, lex credendi.