Bonus Primer Guide: The Good News About Our Bodies
Review the Practice (10 minutes)
For the past several weeks, our church has been in a teaching series exploring what it means to carry God’s good news to the world in our bodies. In our Bridgetown Communities, we have used this review time each week to reflect together on our Lenten renunciation—the neutral appetite, habit, or activity that we have chosen to lay down for the 40 days before Easter, in order to make space to experience our deeper love for God.
Has anyone by chance chosen to participate in a Lenten renunciation?
If so, how has your renunciation shaped your awareness of God in this season?
What resistance, discomfort, or attachment is being exposed in you?
Overview (2 minutes)
After breathing life into humanity, God looked at us and called us “very good” (Genesis 1v31). Since then, however—with the intrusion of shame, sickness, addiction, and broken relationships,—it has grown increasingly difficult to agree with God’s original assessment. Each of us can offer all sorts of protest to his claim: we have deep insecurity about how we look or feel, patterns of sin and shame, chronic illnesses, unwanted desires, and so much more. Despite our discomfort, though, God designed us with bodies—bodies that carry his image and declare his good news to the world around us, even in the midst of our brokenness.
Throughout this series, we have explored God’s claim of good news about our bodies through the lens of one of the most embodied practices in church history: fasting. But because there is more to our body than nourishing it with food, we have done so using the ancient exercise of renunciation: laying down a neutral appetite, habit, or activity in order to make space to explore and experience our deeper love for God. While Communities have focused on a different theme for each Guide, tonight our Community will focus on the topic of desire. An embodied spirituality is rooted in trust—trust that God is the Creator of my desire, longs to fulfill my desire, and is the only one who knows how.
Communities have investigated these various implications to God’s claim of the good news about our bodies using the same framework each week. First, we prayerfully explore our relationship to the week’s theme. Then, we engage our rhythm of confession—this time in groups of men and women—sharing and praying for each other. Finally, we end by receiving communion together. This is the same framework we will follow for tonight’s exercise.
Exercise for Tonight
Let’s begin the first movement in our exercise for tonight: silent prayer to process with God our resonance and resistance in our relationship to our bodies’ desires, concluding with silent confession.
Silent Prayer (7 minutes). As we pray, let’s keep in mind that while our bodies’ desires are not sin, the way we interact with them can be. Perhaps we have called a desire “good” that God says will harm us. Maybe we know our desire is out of alignment, but we’ve grown numb to resisting it. Or perhaps we don’t trust that Jesus will actually fulfill our desire—we don’t think he’s kind enough, wants to do it, or is even able. We’ll let the Spirit gently name whatever is out of alignment and then confess it back to him.
As we begin, let’s all find ourselves in a comfortable, open posture of prayer.
(Leader note: Give people a moment to settle in.)
Come, Holy Spirit. Would you accompany each of us now as we pray through a few questions connected to our desires? First, what are some of the strongest and deepest desires within me? What do I think about them? What does God think about them? And, most importantly, what does God think about me in the midst of those desires? Let’s silently explore this with God.
(Leader note: Give people 60 seconds to reflect on this with God.)
Next, how am I currently experiencing God’s presence to me in these desires? Let’s silently thank God as he brings these things to mind.
(Leader note: Give people 60 seconds to reflect on this with God.)
How do I want to be experiencing God’s presence to me in these desires? Let’s silently ask God for these, as they come to mind.
(Leader note: Give people 60 seconds to reflect on this with God.)
Where do I feel resistance when I think about the good news of my body even with these desires? Let’s silently offer our resistance to God and ask him for help to yield more fully.
(Leader note: Give people 60 seconds to reflect on this with God.)
Where are my desires out of alignment with God’s desires? What do I need to confess to God and receive his forgiveness? Holy Spirit, we ask for your help to see where we’ve strayed in relationship to our desires and why. Take us to a moment, attitude, or pattern of behavior that is out of alignment with your Kingdom. Guide our minds, memories, and imaginations—not just to where we’ve strayed, but what led to that sin. And, as you bring these things to mind, we will silently confess them back to you and ask for the forgiveness that you so freely offer.
(Leader note: Give people 90 seconds to confess silently to God.)
God, thank you for bringing up our sin so that you can forgive it. Thank you for delighting to forgive and restore us back to right relationship with you. Help us live more in line with your good news. Amen.
Corporate Confession & Prayer(20 minutes). Ok, as we’ve begun to process these things with God, now we’re going to continue processing them with one another in two groups—men and women. Once in these groups, we’ll begin by going around, one at a time, to confess out loud in one or two sentences the sin we just confessed to God in prayer.
Before we split up, a confession for tonight might sound like, “I confess that I’ve become apathetic to resisting a desire in my life that I know is not helpful to my relationship with God, and I want to start doing so again,” or “I confess that I’ve been calling a desire in me “good” that God does not, and, even though it’s difficult, I want to submit to him,” or “I confess that I envy people whose broken desires are different than mine, believing the lie that they have it easier,” or “I confess that I actually don’t believe that any of my desires are good, but want to learn to trust the ones that Jesus has given me.”
We’ll begin by going around in a circle so each person can make their confession. After each person confesses, the next person to go will say, “Thank you for your honesty. God loves you, hears you, and sees you. And so do we. And God freely forgives you.” And then they will make their own confession.
After we each take time to confess and declare forgiveness over each other, we’ll spend the remaining time processing what came up for us in prayer and praying for one another.
Remember, due to the personal and sensitive nature of the topics, these conversations will feel different from what we’re used to. With that in mind, in order to guide our conversations and guard our vulnerability, let’s establish some shared agreements for engagement in this series.
Our Posture: Trust the process. For the sake of clarity, focus, and constructive conversation, the scope of our conversation will be highly particular for tonight. More has been brought up each Sunday than we are able to discuss, so if you need someone to process something we don’t get to, please reach out to me (i.e. your Community Leader) or the Communities Team to set up a time to do that.
Our Promise: Honor everyone. As we discuss personal and vulnerable topics, we will build trust and safety and maintain each other’s dignity by protecting confidentiality. If a Community member is absent during a particular conversation, the only person who gets to fill them in—if they choose—is the person who shared. The only caveat to confidentiality is if the confession reveals a threat of harm—in which case the Community Leader will contact a Communities Pastor (if the threat is less urgent) or 911 (if the threat is urgent).
Our Practice: Focus on our own bodies. There can be a temptation to use these topics to discuss other people’s experiences and bodies, instead of our own. Our shared goal, though, is to understand God’s good news about our bodies, so each of us is committing to limit our sharing to the context of our own experience.
Do we all agree to this?
(Leader note: Go around to get everyone’s agreement.)
Thank you. Let’s break up into those two groups—men and women—and spend the next 15 minutes on corporate confession, sharing what came up for us during that prayer time, and then praying for one another.
(Leader note: Set a timer, calling everyone back together when both groups are done.)
Communion (1 minute). Having had time now to confess to God and to one another, we’re going to receive communion together. Before we do, let’s take a moment in silence to come back to God’s loving presence to us—to our God who calls us “very good.” Even now, draw your attention to his nearness to you.
(Leader note: Allow everyone about 30 seconds of silence, and then hand out the communion elements and speak these words of absolution before receiving communion together.)
Sisters and brothers, Jesus allowed his own body to be broken for ours—that we might be made whole. Your body is good news because his body is good news. One day, we will be raised, whole and free. Until then, we receive God’s grace to help us live as embodied good news to the world. Take the body and blood of Christ, who poured out his love for us on the cross to freely forgive and restore us to himself. Let’s eat and drink and remember him.
Exercise for the week ahead (1 minute)
Tonight we reflected on the good news about our bodies in the midst of the desires we experience, confessing where we’ve erred and receiving God’s grace through communion and prayer for one another.
This Friday, April 3, all are invited to join our church in remembering Good Friday, as we anticipate the celebration of Easter this coming Sunday, April 5. The week following, our Community is encouraged to engage in our newly established Service rhythm by connecting with a local Justice partner. The week of April 12, we will plan to join the broader Bridgetown Communities beginning the first Community Guide aligned with the new teaching series starting that Sunday.
A brief timeline of those events is provided below for review:
April 3 - Good Friday Gatherings
April 5 - Easter Sunday Gatherings
Week of April 5 - Service Rhythm
Week of April 12 - Faith, Hope, and Love Series: Community Guide 1
