God & The Whole Person, Pt. 2: Feasting
Leader’s Note: The Guide tonight will differ from our traditional rhythm. The “Take Communion” and “Do This Practice Tonight” sections will be combined into a Liturgy to guide your Community through. This is best done before the meal, but can be done afterwards, if that’s what works best. There are also some questions connected to the Sunday Gathering that you could work through before or after your meal.
Read This Overview Aloud & Do This Practice Together Tonight
God created us, he authored us. The very fact that we have desires was God’s idea. More than that, it’s part of what it means that we were made in his image. This means that desire, in its essence, is good – even while some of our desires are disordered and misordered. Throughout church history, desire has been understood as one of the ways by which God speaks to us. One day, every one of our desires will be satisfied in God. We will experience a union with him that will satiate every longing, hope, and dream that we have (even the ones we aren’t conscious of).
While there’s something about that that sounds good, there’s another part of it that, if we’re honest, can feel depressingly out of our grasp. This ache, though, has more to do with how disembodied we have allowed the idea of our eventual union with God to become to us. Many of us don’t even think about our union with God – what the Bible calls “the marriage supper of the Lamb” – as an embodied reality. But the Scriptures teach us that it will be! The separation of the soul from the body is how the Bible describes death, not resurrection. Resurrection means that, one day, our bodies will rise, just like Jesus’.
We can get to a place where deferring some of our desires now makes sense because we believe that their true filling can only be satiated in our resurrected state. And it’s in the midst of this tension that we will engage our Practice for tonight. I will lead us through a liturgy that will help us remember that our whole selves – soul, mind, and body – were made in God’s image. As we eat our meal afterwards, we do so remembering that, one day, we will sit at Jesus’ table forever.
Before we start, there are a few elements of this liturgy that are helpful to know about. First, each of the three movements will invite a different posture: hand on your head, hand on your heart, and hands open in front of you. These postures will help us to hold in our bodies the prayers we are praying. The other element is that after each of the three moments, we’ll pause to take communion together. (Leader: Make sure everyone has the communion elements. When everyone’s ready, guide them through the liturgy below.)
Discussion Prompts
(for during or after the meal)
As or after we eat, let’s work through some or all of the following questions:
As we went through the liturgy, what resonated in you? Where did you feel resistance? What else stirred?
Why do we defer some desires, like Jesus, instead of trying to satiate them all?
Throughout the Old Testament, salvation was understood as a physical reality (e.g. the Israelites leaving Egypt, David being saved from his enemies, God opening wombs, etc.). Is this a new idea for you? What does it stir in you?
How is an embodied gospel better than simply “going to heaven when you die”?
What invitation do you think God might be extending to you throughout the last few weeks of this series?
Read The Practice for the Week Ahead
This week, take some time to sit with God and have a conversation about any of the initiations you may feel him extending towards you these last few weeks. How would you name them? What do they involve? How do you want to respond to them? (Keep in mind that invitations can come through where you feel resonance and where you feel resistance.)
End in Prayer
Leader: Close your time together asking for God to continue growing each of you into people who know his love, hear his voice, and abide in him.