The Unexpected Jesus
Introducing our upcoming series
Hi friends,
In our recent survey, you all shared with me that you do still love a series around here AND you’re kind of tired of the Church calendar focused devotionals for Lent/Advent/the usual fare. Quite a quandary, n'est-ce pas?1
So, after giving it a good think and - me being me - also praying and over-spiritualizing the decision as is wont, I have decided that this year, instead of doing a typical devotional around the church calendar, I will write through four of my personal favourite and surprising stories involving our Jesus. It’s called The Unexpected Jesus.
Yes, Jesus.
If you’ve been around my work for even a minute, you know that I’ve had a lifelong fascination with Jesus.2 I just can’t seem to relinquish or outgrow Jesus … and trust me, I tried a few times.
As I wrote in my second book, Out of Sorts: Making Peace with an Evolving Faith about my family’s conversion story:
“Jesus was real to us in those early days. Instead of calling our habit of reading the Bible “morning devotions” or “quiet time,” we called it “spending time with Jesus.” We spoke easily of Jesus, as if He was there with us, in our midst.
“What is Jesus telling you about this?” we would ask each other during times of conflict or confusion. The songs that rose to the rafters of the school gymnasiums and the community centres where we met were almost all simple love songs to Jesus. To us, Christ was the cord that bound us together, the reason for our resurrection, the north star, the centre, the foundation. Some churches focus on memorizing the Bible, some on learning the finer points of doctrine. Others gather for the cause of justice and mercy, others for political purposes. Our simple centre was the man from Galilee.
So yes, Jesus was part of our family, but at the same time, Jesus placed demands on us. Our lives changed thoroughly and completely. We adjusted our sails for Jesus, changing our habits, our thoughts, our words, our entertainment, our opinions to better fall in step with Him. We had no illusions; we knew we desperately needed change. And we wanted our lives to look like His life somehow.
… It makes me glad to remember those days now, however others might disdain them. We were earnest and sincere with our homemade felt banners that hung on our walls and extolled the names of Jesus: Lion of Judah, Lamb of God, King of Kings, Alpha and Omega, Lord of Lords, Mighty God, Prince of Peace, Emmanuel, Messiah, Redeemer, Wonderful Counsellor, Saviour.
Our Jesus walked among us with ease and constancy.
Sure, that’s part of my own origin story but of course as that chapter unfolds, I also write about how Jesus was replaced by the Industrial Church Complex and how, ultimately, I felt like I lost Jesus within the Church. I became so disenchanted with organized religion as I had experienced it up until then, that I just stopped attending church and stopped claiming the label “Christian” for myself anymore.
I figured I’d outgrow Jesus eventually which devastated me, to be honest. I’d always loved Jesus: was this deconstruction going to mean that I lost Jesus altogether?
Maybe.
But then: Jesus surprised me. That unexpected Jesus.
“I could not longer reason away or gloss over the systemic abuses of power, the bitterness, the bigotry and hypocrisy, the sexism and racism, the consumerism, the big business of church that was consuming people and spitting them out for the ‘greater good.’ Church became the last place I wanted to be, I didn’t trust Christians. And I was tired of pretending that those things were not real.
But through it all, I somehow knew one thing: this wasn’t Jesus. Maybe it’s because of my childhood foundation but I instinctively knew that this Industrial Church Complex wasn’t the stuff of the Prince of Peace. Even as I grew more disenchanted with organized religion, I was still hanging on to the hem of his garment, begging for healing.”3
Why this series?
So there are a few reasons this series prompt has been rattling around my brain for a while now. In the past few years, I’ve had well-meaning people encourage me to stop mentioning Jesus in my books or public work because it could alienate people (it definitely can and does, for good reasons) or because they want me to steer into the more-lucrative “wellness space” in publishing, with references to spirituality, rather than the specificity of Jesus. Nowadays, it can be considered detrimental or even just limiting to a career to name-drop Jesus. But then other people think my continued relationship with Jesus is a signal that I am a secret evangelical with an agenda to convert folks and therefore, not to be trusted.4 And of course, most progressive writers/faith leaders don’t lean all the way in on the Jesus thing these days because there are many different and valid ways to understand Jesus.
Perhaps some part of me is sad that those of us who are often described as progressives or liberals (or my fave, heretics…) don’t talk more about Jesus. Sad, and maybe even a bit lonely.
The honest truth is that my own evolving faith experience is deeply rooted in my love for Jesus. I could point to my love for Jesus as the origin story for almost every opinion and belief and practice that I’ve had to change or adjust.5 And, for better or worse, my attempts at following Jesus are still the centre of my own faith experience and understanding.6
I think there are real-life implications for this - there certainly have been for me. So one big reason for this series right now is that I still believe following Jesus matters deeply for our current moment in time. It impacts how we show up for our neighbours, how we move through our lives, how we heal the world, and how we see one another and even how we experience God.
And the final, maybe quieter reason is that I’m so tired of Jesus being co-opted as a good luck charm for whatever political or social nonsense is underway. Sometimes, when I witness certain folks talk about Jesus or Christianity, I think to myself, yeah, that is NOT the Jesus I know. Jesus is not your mascot. And so perhaps this is my way of sharing the Jesus that I know and love, as an antidote for the toxic versions being flag-waved around these days. They don’t own Jesus anymore than we do.
Many aspects of how I understand and try to follow Jesus have changed over the decades but it turns out that I still really love Jesus even if that looks different than it once did. Jesus Christ is the same, yesterday, today, and forever, sure, but our understanding of Jesus is always evolving. Personally, I have been changing and shifting in response to Jesus for almost my entire life. So perhaps this is rooted in my contrary stubbornness but I probably won’t ever shut up about the fact that it turns out that Jesus was even better than I could imagined.
So for our next series, I’d like to revisit four encounters with Jesus together.
The Plan
I have a loose outline for this written out but I’ll be writing these essays in real time as they arrive in your inboxes, week by week. I hope to tackle the incarnation, the wedding in Cana, his encounter with the Samaritan woman, and even his impact on Mary Magdalene. But don’t hold me too it - I’ll be following my nose a bit and this wouldn’t be the first time that I encountered something in the text that causes me toss out the plan for whatever the Spirit is whispering to me in the moment. I am under no illusions that this will tackle every question and concern we all carry here nor will it be the definite statement on Jesus. It’s just me, writing every week about something that I find compelling about Jesus and then sharing it with you through this newsletter and our little podcast.
My hope is to create something every week that will bring you clarity and goodness about our Jesus, ask a few good questions, disrupt some accepted narratives, and perhaps even encourage you in your quest to follow Jesus yourself if that’s still your jam.7
I’m calling this series The Unexpected Jesus, mainly because these four stories are ones surprised me personally when I thought I was actively separating from Christianity.8 These four encounters are one reason why I keep wrestling with this story. (Obviously, these four aren’t the totality of that experience9 but it’s a starting point for us.)
So let’s do this, shall we? Let’s spend the next month here and see where Jesus leads us together.
How it works
This special series, like every deep-dive series, is for paid subscribers. If you’re already a paid subscriber, you’re all set: you don’t have to do a single thing. Over the next four weeks, you’ll receive that new not-available-elsewhere essay from me along with the audio version from our Secret Field Notes Podcast. I’ll send it directly to you but it will also live here at Field Notes.
If you aren’t a paid subscriber yet, you just need to upgrade your subscription to access this series. It costs just $6/month CAD (which is approximately $4.50/month USD) or - good deal alert - $40/year CAD (just over $33 USD) for the entire year of Field Notes, which gives you about five months of content for free.
As always though, if you can’t swing a subscription, we have got you. Just email assistant@sarahbessey.com10 to put your hand up and we’ll hook you up with a paid subscription, no questions asked and no justification required. The paywall here isn’t meant to be a barrier, just a way to create a quieter corner for thoughtful conversations and to support me in creating this kind of more-time-intense content for you.
Okay, that’s it for this week! I’ll be back next week with our first essay plus the audio podcast for you.
There’s something about that name,
S.
My Books | Field Notes | On Instagram | On Facebook | SarahBessey.com
Like most non-Québécois Canadians, I have the unfortunate habit of using French words even though I haven’t spoken the language properly since high school. I mean, beaucoup is the fave, but n’est-ce pas is also in rotation because it’s so much better than saying, “is it not?”
I’ve had a half-outlined book about everything I love about Jesus in my Drafts folder for a literal decade. It will probably never see the light of day but there it sits, nevertheless!
This quote-section is from the second chapter of Out of Sorts: Making Peace with an Evolving Faith (2015, Howard Books/Simon & Schuster) which is an exploration of my own faith shifts in a dozen or so areas, including this one.
I have never self-identified as evangelical, but no matter. There are plenty of other reasons not to trust me, I’m sure! that just isn’t one of them. That reminds me: when we had our first Evolving Faith gathering back in 2018, we did a post-event survey of attendees and when we began to read through those responses, I remember my friend Rachel and I being a bit taken aback by the sheer number of folks who were baffled by how Jesus-y we were. They couldn’t quite understand how a couple of liberal ladies widely decried by the theo-bros and daughters of the King on Twitter could still be so centred on Jesus - not everyone liked it, then or now.
Most notably or infamously perhaps, is my assertion that following Jesus made a feminist out of me from my first book, Jesus Feminist. Boy, that made people mad. I love it.
I mean, don’t blame Jesus for my screw-ups though, okay? That’s on me.
If it isn’t, I understand that this might be a difficult series for you to follow but I hope to approach it in a way that keeps the door open for you, too. I never want you to feel unwelcome here, no matter what you think - or don’t - about Jesus these days. If nothing else, maybe this is just an insight into why people like me still find his personhood so compelling and it will create some understanding across divides? I hope. But if you need to take a break from Field Notes until this is done, please know that I get it.
That sneaky Jesus keeps pulling me back in.
One example that keeps getting me in trouble is from my essay Penny in the Air where I begin with a story about Jesus and the Syro-Phoenician woman.
My email assistant processes all these requests in the margins around her actual full-time job, so don’t panic if it takes a few days to be confirmed! It’s coming, promise.
YES. You know I'm all in. Your Jesusy-ness is an example and anchor for me. It's handy too, so when I explain where I land on Christianity, I can say "okay, first, do you know Sarah Bessey's work? That. That's the Jesus I'm talking about." 😁
Thank you Sarah. I read this while blinking back tears. I too love Jesus and wonder how it all fits together. Looking forward to learning together with you!