Guide 1: Work
Good News About Our Bodies
(Leader note: Consider inviting people to bring a journal to each night of Community during this series, to capture what God is speaking to them during the moments of silent prayer.)
Review the Practice (10 minutes)
As we focus in this series on what it means that we carry God’s good news to the world in our bodies, we will use this review time each week to reflect together on our Lenten renunciation—the neutral appetite, habit, or activity that we are laying down for the 40 days before Easter in order to make space to experience our deeper love for God.
Have you been following through on your intention in your Lenten renunciation?
How has your renunciation shaped your awareness of God this week?
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.
During this series, we will delve into 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 will do 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 we will focus on a different theme for each Guide, tonight we begin with the topic of our paid and unpaid work.
We will investigate these various implications to God’s claim of the good news about our bodies using the same framework each week. First, we’ll prayerfully explore our relationship to the week’s theme. Then, we’ll continue our rhythm of confession—this time in groups of men and women—sharing and praying for each other. Finally, we will end by receiving communion.
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 work, concluding with silent confession.
Silent Prayer (7 minutes). As we pray, let’s keep in mind that there are so many ways that sin can show up in our paid and unpaid work. Perhaps we’ve undervalued our calling as a parent or spend too many hours at the office. Maybe we envy someone else’s job, are neglecting God’s invitation to us in retirement, or are placing more importance on work than people. Maybe it’s something else entirely. 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 work? First, what are the various aspects of my paid and unpaid work? What is my current understanding of how I’ve been invited to partner with God to bring his good news to the world around me? (Leader note: Give people 30-60 seconds to reflect on this with God.)
Next, how am I currently experiencing God’s presence to me in this work? 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 this work? 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 in my work? 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 am I living out of alignment with my embodied work? 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 work 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 resent my work because it doesn’t look like my friend’s, which means I’m not trusting how God is using my work,” or “I confess that I’ve been striving to find approval in my work and have been spending too many hours at the office, neglecting my work as a parent and spouse,” or “I confess that I feel so overwhelmed with trying to find a job, that I’ve given into the sin of sloth,” or “I confess that I’ve been trying to do so much because I’m insecure about the sufficiency and importance of my work as a full-time parent.”
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.
Our conversations in this series will likely feel different from the ones we’ve typically had, due to the personal and sensitive nature of the topics. 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 each time we get together. More will be 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) 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. We’ll come back to this weekly to build trust together. For now, 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 as it relates to our work, confessing where we’ve erred and receiving the grace of God through communion and prayer for one another. Until our next Community Guide, the exercise for the week ahead is to:
Continue your Lenten renunciation, turning the attention you would have given to whatever you’ve renounced to God instead.
As you continue your renunciation, be curious about how God might be inviting you towards a deeper relationship with him in your embodied, everyday life.
