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Guiding Worship

For those who plan and lead worship events.

Affirming our sexuality in public worship

by Jeremy Funk

The New Testament pictures the church as “the body of Christ” (1 Cor 12:27). But the church is also a body of bodies. Sexuality encompasses our embodiment, our distinctiveness, and our capacity for intimacy. Within the church, the Spirit makes us agents of God’s love. Yet as body-soul creatures, we hunger for closeness ourselves. How might worship leaders guide congregations first to acknowledge the immense thirsts of our embodied, soulful lives, and then to direct these thirsts Godward?

1. Create spaces where God’s beauty is perceived and celebrated.

Natural seasonal arrangements (e.g., flowers, wreathes, green plants, seeds, or husks) display God’s creative, regenerative activity and the resilience of life. Worship music thoughtfully chosen and well wrought can also enliven us to God’s beauty.
Hymns herald God’s loving creativity, provision, and salvation. For proclaiming these themes, consult earlychapters of Genesis, Psalms (e.g.,19, 148), and other biblical hymns to God’s creating work (Prov 8:22– 36; Isa 40; John 1:1–14; Col 1:18–20).
Remember biblical images of God’s birthing and mothering (Isa 46:3–4, 66:6–12), of God’s nourishing (Exod 16), and of God’s protection (Exod 19:4–6).
Friendships affirm God’s gift of our sexuality. The word friendship describes various human relations, including marriage; it may also hint at ways God meets us individually (Psalm 139). Biblical friendships include the bond between David and Jonathan (1 Sam 18–20; 2 Sam 1:17–27), communion between Jesus and his Father (John 17), friendship between Jesus and his followers (John 15:14–15), and Spiritinspired closeness within the early church (Acts 2).

2. Practice rituals that attend reverently to the body.
Stephanie Paulsell, in Honoring the Body: Meditations on a Christian Practice (Wiley, 2003), urges us to “honor the body.” To worship with our bodies is to echo the psalmist’s praise: “I am fearfully and wonderfully made” (139:14).

Leaders in the ordinances of baptism and the Lord’s Supper may note the earthiness of water, bread, and wine. Rejoice that these cleansing, nourishing signs point to Jesus: God’s healing embodied.
Consider incorporating oil anointing in worship. In one Mennonite church I know, folks are received confidentially. Leaders (one man, one woman) listen to requests for healing, offer prayers and blessings, and make the sign of the cross on each forehead. This practice follows a biblical directive to link healing prayer with a bodily act (James 5:14). Anointing acknowledges our brokenness while also evoking the healing Spirit’s descent at Pentecost. Finally, anointing continues a long tradition of associating oil with the Holy Spirit’s identity-forming presence in the church.
Mark significant events with public blessings. For example, in one church, those with birthdays in a given month receive as a group a spoken pastoral blessing and a sung congregational blessing. This ritual relates aging to God’s faithfulness and recalls strong Old Testament themes, especially from the stories of the patriarchs.
To the disciples the risen Christ says, “Peace be with you” (John 19:19, 26). Whether through a handshake or a hug, a public exchange of peace can embody our hope in Christ’s resurrection. Since a major move in 2006, I have participated in a house church. As I continue to explore and adjust to this community, I return to worship because with the exchange of peace, everyone embraces everyone else. For the touch and closeness it affords me as a single person, and for the opportunity to express myself bodily, I relish this weekly hug feast.

3. Celebrate the gifts of embodiment, uniqueness, and intimacy by revering the bodies of others in public worship.

Encourage wide participation in your church’s worship guidance. Note emerging gifts or distinctive voices. Tap younger people, and nudge older ones to get involved. Or invite nonnative English speakers in your congregation to read Scripture publicly in their native tongue, and then provide translation following.
Nurture an inclusive awareness of bodily differences, whether by offering glutenfree communion bread and refreshments, by incorporating languages other than English (such as sign language) into worship services, or by installing a handrail near steps (including those to the front platform) that might otherwise challenge folks with physical disabilities.

Recently I’ve been listening to a CD of Celtic lullabies. Lullaby helps me notice not only my body’s ongoing felt rhythms such as breath and heartbeat but also the persistent human longing for God’s caress. To attend in public worship to God’s gifts of our embodiment, distinctiveness, and capacity for intimacy is to offer to God the longings and rhythms that make us human.

Jeremy Funk served as an interim associate pastor at Lombard Mennonite Church, and now works as a copy editor in Eugene, Oregon. He attends the Church of the Servant King.