Third Sunday after Epiphany: Old Testament, Nehemiah 8:1-3, 5-6, 8-10       

Nehemiah 8:1-3, 5-6, 8-10

The title of our meditation this morning may be a bit difficult to navigate. Is it referring to our emotions being moved? Is it speaking to logistics in regard to when worship will happen as to the clock? Both are open considerations. But no. What I am isolating in our text today is the actual movement of those present in worship. It is not something we are not familiar with in my tradition. We stand, sit and kneel regularly. We even leave our seats and walk forward to receive the gifts of God in Holy Communion, returning with rejoicing to our pews.

In Nehemiah chapter 8 there is a monumental event described and I want you all to crack open your Bibles and take it in. Perhaps even read the entire book. The law of the LORD has been rediscovered upon the people’s return from exile in Babylon. God’s people are called to gather around it and oh what joy it evokes. And that joy is expressed in physical responses. Verse 6 reads: “And Ezra blessed the LORD, the great God. Then all the people answered, ‘Amen, Amen!’ while lifting up their hands. And they bowed their heads and worshiped the LORD with their faces to the ground.”

In our day, the lifting of hands in worship is quite normal in many circles, but taking the scene as a whole, it is arresting that the motion of each person moves from high to low–in the full expression of the body’s space-taking. It’s as if the people are saying with their bodies, “The fullness of who we are we now place before our God.” And the physical is oftentimes the external shout of the inward whisper.

Kneeling, standing, the lifting of hands and even clapping are all found in the worship presented in Holy Scripture. Decently and in order, of course. But nothing held back. All the earth, indeed all we are, shall worship the LORD, the great God.