Eastertide 2023 at FCCBC: A Sensible Faith
“You want to tell me to love God? Ask me when I’ve last eaten. Come now, you want me to tell you a prayer? You’ll find it in the blood beating from heart to head to toe and home again. Don’t ask me of salvation. Listen to the hum of my chest as I now fall asleep. I cannot see the face of God by rejecting my own.”
Our resurrection faith calls us to embody God’s love as agents of hope.
But we cannot embody God’s love without being embodied ourselves.
The Risen Christ calls us to touch others’ truths, to taste communion, to see each other face to face.
But society’s rhythms so often overpower our senses, keeping our sight clouded, our ears stopped, our hands bound in selfishness and fear, all the while keeping our minds forever divorced from our bodies.
This Eastertide, we invite you to the liberating spiritual practice of embodiment.
Throughout this season, both in our worship and in our daily life, we’ll explore together the way our bodies and our senses can lead us into deeper communion with God’s presence in one another and in the world.
To flesh out our Sunday learning, consider picking up a copy of Cole Arthur Riley’s NYT-bestselling book, This Here Flesh.
Each week’s theme and scripture passage(s) are listed below for you to read ahead and begin chewing on our sacred story!
April 16th: Touching Truth (John 20.19-31)
April 23rd: Tasting Communion (Luke 24.13-35)
April 30th: Hearing Wholeness (John 10.1-10)
May 7th: Seeing Face to Face (John 14.1-14)
May 14th: Smelling the Holy (John 14.15-21)
May 21st: Ascension - Knowing our Name (Acts 1.6-14, John 17.1-11)
May 28th: Pentecost - Breath, Body, Being (1 Cor 12.3b-13, John 7.37-39)
“For if we genuinely love Him,
we wake up inside Christ’s body
where all our body, all over,
every most hidden part of it,
is realized in joy as Him,
and He makes us, utterly, real.”