When we gather at Christ’s table each month, we hear again the words he used to connect experience and memory: this is my body, given for you. For in one body, God became flesh, love found the highest expression, and eternal reconciliation to God was made possible for us all. In his body, the church becomes a body, and we all find home.
Like Jesus, our lives too are lived in bodies: strong and capable, imperfect and flawed, aging and growing, broken and bruised. Our experience of the world is inseparable from the bodies that carry us through it. They inform our life and faith, they call forth for us our humanity and limits, they struggle and strain, they enable life to carry on.
During the season of Lent this year at First on Fifth, we’ll use the prompt This is My Body to enter into this season of preparation and repentance — connecting the bodily life of Jesus and the bodies he healed — eyes opened, thirst quenched, death unbound, new life reimagined — with the bodies we inhabit in this world.
Devotional guides and daily cards called “Wilderness” will shepherd your personal experience of the season, and the downstairs perimeter of the Sanctuary will again be set up for your reflection with Stations of the Cross and spaces for prayer. As we prepare for Holy Week and Easter, might we enter into this sacred time with our full selves, ready to be transformed.
Ash Wednesday, February 26
Sanctuary, 6:30pm
This is My Body: Marked
Psalm 51
Sunday, March 1
This is My Body: Empty
Matthew 4:1-11
Communion Sunday; Baptism of Emily Grissing
Sunday, March 8
This is My Body: Birth
John 3:1-17
Sunday, March 15
This is My Body: Thirst
John 4:5-42
Special leadership by Al Staggs
Sunday, March 22
This is My Body: Sight
John 9:1-41
Amy McClure, proclaimer
Sunday, March 29
This is My Body: Rise
John 11:1-45
HOLY WEEK
Palm Sunday, April 5
This is My Body: All In
Matthew 21:1-11
Communion Sunday; special music from the Ardmore Brass
Monday through Wednesday, April 6-8
Midday services of worship, 12:00-12:30pm
Maundy Thursday, April 9
Community-wide multiracial worship, communion, and foot-washing, 6:30-8:30pm
Location TBA
Good Friday, April 10
Service of Shadows, 7:00pm
Easter Sunday, April 12
This is My Body: Witness
Acts 10:34-43; Matthew 28:1-10