Before we’d reached the pink candle of Advent this year, Mary was not singing her Magnificat in one particular nativity.
It is one of my favorite manger scenes from childhood. The figurines are numerous and tiny enough for young hands to move them around. There are the expected characters: sheep and shepherds, wise men and the holy family. There are also trees, a guy carrying a lantern, little girls kneeling in prayer and a woman carrying a casserole. Yes, seriously. Surely a church lady created it.
The downside to the nativity scene is that the pieces fall over easily. One little shake of the floorboard, and a tree would fall on a wise man. Scoot the baby under the stable roof, and Joseph would pass out. I vaguely remember seeing my parents sigh when my sister and I would pull all those pieces out with glee. It’s a wonder we still have all the pieces or that we never heard anyone yell after stepping on one of them.
In a moment of not-thinking, I set the manger scene up next to the coffee maker this year. Amazingly, with all the movement, most of baby Jesus’ admirers remained in their upright and locked positions.
Except for his mother.
When Mary tumbled over, she tumbled beautifully. It looked like she fell face forward into a nap, sending baby Jesus flying out of the stable. Joseph kept standing there. I’m sure the woman with the casserole was tending Jesus while his mother rested.
I started to pick Mary back up on that third Sunday of Advent and return Jesus to rest under her loving gaze in the stable. But then I thought, “Why?”
We sing about the little Lord Jesus asleep on the hay at Christmas time, but the visual of his mother doing the same brings a lot of comfort. Mary and all of the worshippers needed rest. She had waited nine long months to give birth, but she and her people had waited much longer than that for the Messiah to come. In the aftermath of Jesus’ birth, here in the season after Epiphany, God invites us with Mary to rest in his promise fulfilled.
What Mary demonstrated in that manger scene went beyond a good, well-deserved nap. Hers was a life defined by a falling-down kind of surrender —a rest much deeper than a nap or meditation.
It’s a rest we experience when we are facedown in worship before the Lord. It’s the kind of rest the shepherds experienced, as they ran from the hillsides to the stable. They, too, fell down in worship, but the were not the first to fall. Lying prostrate before the Lord preceded them hundreds of years, which is where we will travel this week.
The seventeenth chapter of Genesis begins with the Lord appearing to 99-year-old Abram (who is not quite yet Abraham). We don’t know how the Lord appears or in what context. We do know that the Lord immediately speaks to him, “I am Almighty God; walk before Me and be blameless. 2 And I will make My covenant between Me and you, and will multiply you exceedingly.”
In verse three, Abram responds not with words but with actions. The Scripture tells us “he fell on his face.” In verse four, the Lord keeps talking, picking up where he left off before Abram’s fall down: “As for Me, behold, My covenant is with you, and you shall be a father of many nations. 5 No longer shall your name be called Abram, but your name shall be Abraham; for I have made you a father of many nations. “ These are only the beginning of the promises God speaks over Abram-now-Abraham, all while his face lies in the dust from which he was created.
Fast-forward to the sixteenth chapter of Numbers and to one of those descendants promised to Abraham. Moses is on the home stretch of leading the Israelites into the Promised Land, and of course everything goes awry in the last quarter, doesn’t it? A rebel named Korah incites 250 men to rise up against Moses, to speak against him and to demand they should have the same power and authority he does. In verse four, Moses’ response is to “fall on his face,” and he instructs them on what the Lord requires of them. In verse 11, Moses tells them of the Lord’s displeasure with their actions, saying, “You are gathered against the Lord.” There is some back and forth between Moses and Korah. Then comes one of the most frightening verses in Scripture. In Numbers 16:21, the Lord tells Moses and his brother Aaron, “Separate yourselves from among this congregation, that I may consume them in a moment.”
How do Moses and Aaron respond? That’s right. In verse 22, they fall on their faces before the Lord. This time they begin interceding for God’s mercy. If you want to know the end of the story, grab your Bible and check out all of Numbers 16.
Finally, as they are even closer to the promised land, Moses’ apprentice, Joshua, is now the leader. In chapter five, he is near the land of Jericho when he sees a Man with a capital M. In verse 13, the Man with a capital M is carrying a sword. Joshua demonstrates how super obedient he was to God’s earlier command to be strong and courageous, because instead of running in fear, he walks right up to capital-M man and asks, “Are you for us or for our adversaries?”
The Man answers-does’t-answer the question in verse 14, “No, but as Commander of the army of the Lord I have now come.”
I bet you can guess what Joshua does next. Yes, he falls on his face and offers one of the best responses to God’s presence, “What does my Lord say to His servant?” In a beautiful throwback to a story that Joshua had likely heard from Moses many times, the Commander tells Joshua to remove his shoes, for he stands on holy ground.
Literally falling on one’s face is not good. There is likely injury. There is trauma. There is often embarrassment. Falling is what we human beings try to avoid—both in the natural with our physical bodies and in the spirit with striving not to fall into the temptations of sin.
The kind of falling down we witness in Abraham, Moses, and Joshua is the opposite of a harmful accident. It is a response to the presence of God. These are men who walked closely with God, who knew him as friend and feared him as holy. When God revealed himself in new ways to them, it’s as if their response was unavoidable. They were overcome with who he was and couldn’t hold themselves up anymore.
They encountered glimpses of glory from his face that naturally caused them to lay their own faces down in the dirt.
The overwhelming presence of God is a very real thing available to those who, like these three men, seek him, walk with him, know him, and revere him. When in prayer we approach the Lord through the blood of Jesus and in the power of the Holy Spirit, we can experience the same power. It requires us, as Jesus said in the gospels, to lay down our lives, to plant our faces on the earth not by accident but because there’s nowhere else to go but to his feet when He walks toward us.
I remember seeing a photo once of an ordination service where the priest lay down at the foot of the altar in a church. The front of his body was on the floor, and his arms reached toward the candle-lit altar that held the body and blood of Jesus, reaching for the One who meets us on the ground. His was an intentional prostrate position.
We can assume this posture on our own when praying, if our bodies allow. Sometimes, though, the posture takes us.
When the posture took Abram, he received a new name.
When the posture took Moses, people received mercy.
When the posture took Joshua, the Israelites would receive victory over Jericho.
None of them set out to make an exchange with God, to give him worship so they might receive something in return. They were simply with him. They simply worshipped and honored him. They simply laid down everything.
In the story of Joshua, did you notice how the Lord viewed his prostrate position? He did not say, “Good job lying down, Joshua.” He didn’t ask if he were okay. He said, “You are standing on holy ground.”
We are only able to stand if we learn how to fall.
We only learn how to fall safely when we spend time praising and worshipping and simply being with our Lord. He longs to show us Himself. He asks us to long for him, and to tell him that we long for him. He wants the same closeness with us that he had with Moses and Joshua and Abraham.
He has shown us his face in Jesus Christ, a face bruised and beaten and shoved into the stony ground. We fall down as we seek that face, only to discover his hand reaching down, under our chin, lifting our gaze to see Him.
Once our gaze has lifted, our feet will follow. And with Joshua we slip off our shoes for holy ground is here and now, where He is. Let us pray…
Father, Son, Holy Spirit, I want to bow more than my knee. I bring myself facedown before you, in awe of you. You are holy, righteous and just. What a comfort to rest in your splendor. With your servants Mary, Abraham, Moses, Joshua, and all who have witnessed your presence, I declare in response to your glory, “Here I am, Lord. Here I am.” Amen.
all good things to each of you,
dr. darian
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