Rhythm: Lent Reflections
During Lent we will be reflecting and preparing for Easter during Rhythm, our online weekly prayer space for LGBT+ Christians and allies. You can join us the first Tuesday of each month at 6.30pm. For details of how to join, drop us an e-mail on hello@onebodyonefaith.org.uk Find our more about Rhythm here.
Easter Sunday – Resurrection (John 20:1-18)
Easter a celebration of resurrection AND a profound act of liberation. In the Gospel of John, Jesus, risen from the dead, first reveals himself to Mary Magdalene — a woman, marginalized in her society, yet first chosen to witness the glory of new life. She does not simply recognize Jesus with her eyes; she knows him with her body, her heart, and her innermost being.
This is the gospel for all those whose bodies have been discarded, rejected, or silenced. The resurrection is a bold proclamation that all bodies — which yes, therefore includes LGBT+ bodies — are sacred, and that the pain we have endured is not the end of the story. We are not discarded, we are loved. And we, too, are called to new life.
Mary’s encounter with the risen Christ invites us to embrace our own bodies, to know them as sacred, to see them as the place where the divine encounter can occur. For queer and trans people, this is a radical invitation to claim the fullness of our bodies — our difference, our diversity, our authenticity — as holy. Just as Christ was raised in a body, so too are we called to rise, to live fully in our bodies, and to walk in the truth of who we are.
Prayer: God of resurrection, we celebrate your victory over death, over pain, over oppression. Just as you called Mary by name, you call us. You call us to rise, to live, to be fully present in our bodies. We claim our lives, our bodies, our otherness, as sacred and holy. We thank you for the promise of new life, and for the assurance that we are loved. Help us to live in the fullness of who you have made us to be, and may our bodies reflect your glory. In Christ’s name we pray. Amen.
Good Friday
There is no Good Friday without physicality, and all of it difficult to bear. The physical pain, the excruciating treatment of Jesus’ body in this last day of his earthly life is hard to take. After the physical exertion of the journey to get here from Ash Wednesday we do not want the physical exertion of the state sponsored execution of Jesus and the criminals with him. We might want to rush away from this scene, understandably so.
But Good Friday ends with stillness, Jesus breathes his last and gives up his life. The poet Edwin Muir picks out another aspect of stillness in his poem The Killing,
“Beside the cross-foot,
Alone, four women stood and did not move
All day.”
After the journey to the cross we are called to stay and be still and not to rush on too quickly. Tomorrow, as Holy Saturday, we are called to sit with the desolation of Jesus’ death.
At this point in the journey we are invited to stillness, to an acknowledgement of all that we mourn or grieve, the pain we have endured, the deaths we have died, the lives we could have lived. We are called to acknowledge and hold the pain of our LGBT+ siblings who went before us, those who do not have the freedoms we do, and the very real threat of those freedoms being taken away. But like the women at the foot of the cross, we still stand together.
Prayer: God of stillness, our souls wait in silence for you and the hope you offer us. Take the pain and sorrow that we offer you, knowing that you lived that pain on the cross. Show us how life can spring from death, how our hurt and even our failure and the failures of others can bring us life. Help us to see in the cross our hope, our rest, our life. Amen.
10th April – Mary Anoints Jesus (John 12:1-8)
This text is beautiful in its portrayal of radical and intimate devotion. Mary’s anointing of Jesus’ feet is more than an expression of gratitude — it is a declaration that the body is sacred, worthy of care, and worthy of love. For LGBT+ people, Mary’s act is deeply significant. In a world that often tells us our bodies are sinful or wrong, her act of loving Jesus’ body with such tenderness calls us to reframe our understanding of our own bodies.
Mary’s act of anointing was not just about the physical act of touching Jesus; it was about embracing the sacredness of the body and doing so with her own body – one which would have seen through the lens of inferiority and weakness. It is a intimate act of bodies touching one another, the caressing touch of friend to friend, disciple to teacher, human to Christ. Mary refused to allow shame to take over. Instead, she chose tenderness and care to anoint the Son of God. For LGBT+ Christians, this act of care is an invitation: to care for our bodies, our own and our siblings’, to reclaim them, and to resist the societal forces that seek to diminish them. Our bodies, too, are sacred — not despite their difference, but because of it.
We are called to love our bodies as God loves them, and to honour God with them, whilst honouring the sacred and the human of who we are. Mary’s devotion reminds us to reclaim our bodies as good, holy, and worthy of honour and compassion. That in our humanness, our sensuality, our desire, we are invited to bring this to Christ in honour and love.
Prayer: God of love and tenderness, God made flesh in Christ. Like Mary, we pour out our love for the bodies you have given us and seek to use them to honour you. In a world that so often seeks to shame, to reject, to harm, we declare that our bodies are holy, that they are vessels of love, beauty, and grace – because you have declared them to be so. We reject the lies that tell us we are unworthy of care. We choose love, we choose tenderness, we choose to honour the sacred. May our bodies reflect your divine image, and may we, like Mary, pour out our love without reservation. Amen.
3rd April – The Prodigal Son
The parable of the Prodigal Son is probably up there as one of the favourites. I have a large poster of Rembrandt’s The Return of the Prodigal Son in my study and regularly invite people who come for spiritual direction or advice to consider who they might be in that scene today. The truth is we all play the different characters at some points in our lives.
What strikes me about the parable is how physically active it is. There is a lot of travelling, there is hard partying, there is a lot of sex (implied not described to save the blushes at Sunday School), there is excess and hunger, walking and running, hugging and kissing, rushing to get clothes and grumpy folding of arms and scowling.
For many of us LGBT+ Christians we can be made to feel like the Prodigal, not good enough for the banquet and left to feed on the scraps of the Church’s hospitality and welcome. On the other hand, some of us can be the elder brother, too relieved to have won our equality that we don’t want the younger siblings who now face oppression to rock the boat.
As we continue to journey towards Jerusalem, we might all be starting from very different places. Some of us might need to allow ourselves to be welcomed in love; some of us might need to accept the physical acts of loving and the sexual acts that bring us life as gifts from God; some of us might need to let go of the resentment or fear of others that stop us and them flourishing.
Whatever it may be the parable invites us to continue the journey to Jerusalem, to physically inhabit and explore what it means to be a disciple of Jesus.
Prayer: God of welcome who embraces us in your love and calls us your child, meet us where are in our own journeys, help us to know the next steps towards accepting ourselves and others in your grace. Amen.
27th March – The Juiciness of Life (Isaiah 55)
Lent as a time of abstinence and fasting is almost a social norm now, even friends who don’t have any faith talk about giving things up for Lent. So, it’s a surprise that as the journey starts to get a bit harder, we have Isaiah 55 with its invitation to drink and eat, not just the basics of water and bread, but wine, encouraging us to delight in rich food!
It reminds me of Hildegard of Bingen, an 11th Century mystic, abbess and all-round polymath from the Rhine valley. One of the main strands in her thinking and teaching was the term veriditas, which kind of means greening, a flourishing of growth and fruitfulness. Hildegard saw life as juicy and encouraged those under her care to be juicy! Dryness of life was not to be sought, and she had sharp words for Bishops and others about their dryness. In the gospel reading we have the strange parable of the fig tree that has stopped producing fruit and what should be done with it.
It is a reminder to us that this Lenten journey isn’t about being dry or malnourished, it is about cultivating juiciness and flourishing. What stops me being juicy? Either physically or spiritually? Do I honour my body enough that I feed and water it well? Do I allow my body to be a source and recipient of the joys of life? Is part of the journey to Jerusalem learning to do just that in a way that honours God, myself, and others as an LGBT+ Christian?
Prayer: God of juiciness and fruitfulness, I bring to you the areas of my life and faith that are dry and arid, either because of my neglect or the ways in which I am starved by others. Send my roots rain, feed me, restore me that I may grow and flourish as the unique person you have created me to be in your goodness. Amen.
20th March – Bodily Safety (Psalm 27)
This Psalm speaks to the heart of our fears and our need for refuge. The psalmist cries out, “The Lord is my light and my salvation; whom shall I fear?” In a world that can often feel hostile, where our bodies are so often violated — whether through words, actions, or systems of oppression — we need to know that there is a place of safety. For so many LGBT+ people, particularly trans and gender non-confirming people today, that place of safety can feel distant and hard to find. We are often met with rejection, misunderstanding, and violence simply for living in the fullness of who we are.
Yet the psalmist reminds us that God is our refuge. This refuge is not just a spiritual promise, but a tangible reality. We are invited to know that our bodies, in all their uniqueness, are sacred, no matter the pain or fear we face. For LGBT+ people, Psalm 27 is an affirmation that, even in a world that fails to recognize the beauty of our bodies and our loves, we are known and cherished by God.
This psalm reminds us that God sees us. God sees our gender, our identities, and our stories. God sees us when the world chooses to turn away. And in that seeing and truly knowing, there is protection through validation. It is a divine presence that even the strongest of those who oppose us have no power to remove, taint, or destroy.
The safety God promises does not erase the real dangers we face, but it calls us to find courage and strength in the knowledge that we are held and honoured. In God’s love, we might come to know safety. And in that safety, we are empowered to resist in the most outrageous way possible: the resistance of living in our divinely created glory.
Prayer:
God of refuge, we trust in your love. You are our light, our salvation, our stronghold. We face a world that often seeks to harm us, to deny the sacredness of our bodies, to tell us that we are not worthy of love or understanding. But, God, you declare otherwise. You see us as we are — beautifully, fully, perfectly made. We come to you, seeking shelter in your arms. We pray for safety for all LGBT+ people, especially mindful of those who are trans, for the strength to stand firm in our truth, and for the courage to live without fear, knowing that in you, we are nurtured, we are whole. Amen.
13th March – Christ’s Temptation (Luke 4:1-13)
Jesus, led into the wilderness, confronted temptations of both his body and soul, his mind and his spirit. He was offered shortcuts — a path of immediate gratification, power, or protection — but each temptation was a distortion of God’s call upon his life.
Whilst he experienced the vulnerability of his human nature was, he embodied a path that was deeply faithful; this was not about defeating external enemies, but about staying true to the deepest calling — the call to love, to live authentically, and to trust in God’s guidance, even when the world around us might ask us to take a different path.
For many LGBT+ people, there is a temptation to hide, to shrink, to pull away from the world, in fear of rejection, fear of harm, or fear of being misunderstood. We may be tempted to isolate, to conceal our true selves, or to slip into patterns of harm — towards ourselves or others — to try and reclaim something akin to control. But those temptations, much like Christ’s in the wilderness, ask us to let go of what is true: that we are beloved and worthy of wholeness, of dignity, and of safety.
Jesus resisted the urge to reject his embodied self, his humanity, his identity. He stood firm in the full truth of who he was — the divine and the human in one. He did not retreat from the world. Instead, he lived his truth, embodied in every moment. We, too, are invited to resist the temptations of self-rejection and harm. We are called to live in the fullness of who we are, trusting in God's deep love and in the sacredness of our identity.
Might we also be encouraged that the wilderness is not just a place of testing; it is also a place of formation. In the quiet and sometimes harsh places of our own hearts, we are formed to stand in our truth, to walk in integrity, and to trust that we are never alone, no matter how daunting the temptation may seem, following in the footsteps of Christ himself.
Prayer:
Loving God, we are tempted to hide, to shrink, to reject ourselves in a world that does not always understand. Help us to stay true to the image of love you have created in us. Strengthen our courage to face the temptations that arise, to resist the lies that call us to self-rejection, and to walk in the freedom of your love. We trust in your embrace, and in the truth that we are seen, loved, and whole. Amen.
Ash Wednesday
We are very familiar with the journey to Bethlehem, if only because of the popularity of the ‘carol’ Little Donkey! We know that Mary and Joseph had to make a tiring journey, and it forms part of the Christmas story. Less so with the Easter story. We might see Holy Week as a journey to the cross, but we are less likely to think of Jesus’ journey to his death as beginning much earlier. Bishop Mariann Edgar Budde reminds us in her book How We Learn to be Brave, that “it is surprisingly easy to read all the biblical accounts of Jesus’ life and miss his most decisive moments.” For her, the moment that Jesus comes down from the Mount of Transfiguration is decisive in Luke’s gospel, because from that moment “he set his face to go to Jerusalem.” The journey begins.
The journey to the cross and beyond, starts here with Ash Wednesday. It is our opportunity to set our faces to go to Jerusalem. And like any journey we go on, our bodies are central, they will tell us when we are tired and need to rest, when we are thirsty and need to drink, when we are hungry and need to eat, when we are impatient and need to rush. Often our bodies are an unwanted accompaniment on the journey of Lent, a lot of our Lenten disciplines are aimed at controlling or ignoring our bodies. But this Lent we invite you on a different journey.
There is no need to leave our bodies behind or ignore or control them. In the Collect for Ash Wednesday we hear some of the most beautiful words we can, “Almighty and Everlasting God, you hate nothing that you have made.” That includes our bodies, the physical world we inhabit, the physical creation that Jesus transforms in his incarnation and transfiguration.
So, this Lent, your body is a VIP. That might not always be easy for us, and it may require some thinking and praying about how we inhabit and use our bodies but unless they come on the journey with us then we can go nowhere, not to Bethlehem nor Jerusalem.
Prayer:
Almighty and everlasting God,
you hate nothing that you have made
and forgive the sins of all those who are penitent:
create and make in us new and contrite hearts
that we, worthily lamenting our sins
and acknowledging our wretchedness,
may receive from you, the God of all mercy,
perfect remission and forgiveness;
through Jesus Christ your Son our Lord,
who is alive and reigns with you,
in the unity of the Holy Spirit,
one God, now and for ever.
Amen
