TEACHING

SUNDAY, NOVEMBER 28, 2021
10:30 AM (in-person + livestream, KIDS!)
2021 ADVENT SERIES
Good Gifts, The Gift of Your Body
John 1:14; Gen 1:27; Psalm 139:13(14)-18; 1 Corinthians 6:19
This Sunday, we look at the goodness of your body (Your Blessed Body). So often we miss this important and foundational aspect of our God-blessed humanity—having a body! Stewardship of our body starts with recognizing it as a gift. The Spirit of God often speaks to us through our bodies!
God gives good gifts. The very act of creating the universe is an act of giving. This Advent/Christmas season, join us for an Advent Series on Good Gifts.​
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TAKE OFF: Stories to Frame Our Relationship with Our Bodies
We must play.
         But our merriment must be of that kind (and it is, in fact, the merriest kind) which exists between people who have, from the outset, taken each other seriously—no flippancy, no superiority, no presumption.     
         And our charity must be real and costly love, with deep feeling for the sins in spite of which we love the sinner—no mere tolerance or indulgence which parodies love as flippancy parodies merriment.     
        Next to the Blessed Sacrament itself, your neighbor is the holiest object presented to your senses.
    —C.S. Lewis, The Weight of Glory (HarperOne, 2001), pp. 45-46.

FLIGHT
Embodiment and Scripture
We are not just a mind, or brain, carried around by a meat-puppet of flesh and bones. Embodiment is a kind of re-membering of who we really are, because what we picked up along the way was disembodiment. (McBride, 13-14).

• Genesis 1:26-27 - Memorize?
• Psalm 139:13-18 v.14 Memorize?
• John 1:14 

Incarnation: Jesus and Mary

• God taking on flesh - God in a Bod
  + Hypostatic union (from the Greek: ὑπόστασις hypóstasis, "sediment, foundation, substance, subsistence") is a technical term in Christian theology employed in mainstream Christology to describe the union of Christ's humanity and divinity in one hypostasis, or individual existence (wiki).
  +  Theotokos Θεοτόκος

The Problem of Disembodiment

• The Old Gnostic Heresy
• Body As “It” vs “You”

Where To Start? Truths to name and experience about your body (McBride)

• This Is My Body
• My Body and My Mind Can Be Friends
• My Body Is a Resource
• My Body Is a Resistance
• My Body Is a Sanctuary

LANDING
Next Sunday - Gift of the Body #2: Naked and Unashamed - Sexual Formation
Start a new ______________________ in this season
Allegiance to Jesus includes recognizing ALL bodies as _______________

SERIES TRAVEL PLAN

• 1 Receiving the Gift of Your Body - Incarnation
• 1.2 Naked and Unashamed - Sexual Formation
• 1.3 Feasting Affirming Pleasure
• 1.4 The Christmas Community - The Body Gathered

Sources: Bible; The Wisdom of Your Body: Finding Healing, Wholeness, and Connection through Embodied Living, Hillary L. McBride; Play, Tongues, and Liberation Power, Shelby T Boese; The Deeply Formed Life: Five Transformative Values To Root Us In The Way Of Jesus, Rich Villodas; Others

​For Reflection and Discussion

(HLM, 49; other)

1. In what ways was your body restricted when you were younger? In what ways was your body allowed to be free?
2. If God works through bodies in the most profound way, like, in Mary and in becoming part of the creation in Jesus, what does this tell us about the value God places on our bodies?
3. Reread some of the key Bible passages and share reactions/reflections?
4. What early messages did you learn about bodies?
5. If you could go back and tell your younger self something loving about your body, what age would you go back to? What would you say?
6. What kind of friend are you on your most loving days? What would it be like to treat yourself the same way? What love languages would you use (for example, words of affirmation, quality time, giving gifts, acts of service, physical touch)?
7. What social or cultural messages shaped how you experience your bodily self?
8. When have you felt the most social power? How was that experience related to your body?
9. Other thoughts? How does this discussion make you feel?