Diana Butler Bass - Freeing Jesus: Rediscovering Jesus as Friend, Teacher, Savior, Lord, Way, and Presence

Who do you say that I am?

Matthew 16:15

M y knees hurt. The cushion at the marble altar almost did not matter. I could feel the cold in my legs, the ache of unanswered prayers. Where are you, God? I asked.

Silence.

I looked up at Jesus in full triptych glory, surrounded by angels, robed in cobalt blue against a gilt background, shimmering sanctity. The small chapel in the great cathedral was one of my favorite places to pray, mostly because of this Jesus. Today, however, I was restless as I gazed intently at the massive icon of Christ. Usually, the image drew me deeper toward God, and the railing where I knelt was a place of awakening and wisdom. Where are you, God? I asked again. Silence.

God? A quiet plea, really, the most incomplete of prayers.

Get me out of here, a voice replied.

Was someone speaking to me? I looked behind, around.

Get me out of here, the voice said again.

I stared up at the icon. Jesus? Is that you?

Get me out of here, I heard again, more insistent now.

But Lord...

The chapel fell silent, but I know I heard a divine demand for freedom. I was not sure what to think, but I also did not want to tell the priest who was wandering up the aisle. I doubted the Washington National Cathedral would take kindly to the Son of God looking for the exit. And I was not sure what to do. Smuggling an altarpiece out of the building was not going to happen. Instead, I got up and nearly bolted out, all the while envisioning how I might rescue Jesus from the cathedral. I felt bad leaving him behind.

* * *

Jesus spoke to me almost a decade ago. It was not completely unusual, as I have heard whispers from the sacred in prayer, walking along the beach, in the wind, or while meditating. Having God or the universe or my own inner voice speak to me in such ways is really no big deal. Until that day at the cathedral, however, I had never heard an out-loud, clear God-voice arising from something other than my own spiritual intuitions, especially one issuing a completely unexpected directive like Get me out of here. My husband still laughs about that time Jesus asked you to spring him from the slammer. I rarely share the story because, well, you just never know how people will respond to a voice from heavenor a talking paintingrequesting parole from church. Truthfully, I did not know how to respond.

It makes a bit more sense now, however. During the intervening years, millions of Americans have left church behind, probably many more have left emotionally, and countless others are wondering if they should. One of the most consistent things I hear from those who have left, those doubting their faith, and those just hanging on is that church or Christianity has failed them, wounded them, betrayed them, or maybe just bored themand they do not want to have much to do with it any longer. They are not unlike novelist Anne Rice, who in 2010 declared, I quit being a Christian. Im out. I remain committed to Christ as always but not to being Christian or to being part of Christianity. She was not the first to make this negative confession, nor was she the last. It is a common refrain in these times: I dont consider myself Christian anymore, but I love Jesus, and I still want to follow him or Im not a church person; I follow Jesus.

The theologically trained and professional religious types roll their eyes at comments like these. One of the main tenets of faith is that the church is the body of Christ and that Jesus cannot really be known (at least fully) outside of the life of the church. Ecclesiastically approved theology will not let you separate Jesus and the church. But the millions of those who have done so beg to differ. They are more than content to have fled institutional Christianity, deconstructing their faith and disrupting conventional notions of church. Even while exiting the building, however, some of those religious refugees seem to have heard the same voice I did at the altar, Get me out of here, and are trying to free Jesus that he might roam in the world with them.

There are, of course, those who stay within church and hear Jesus pleading for release from the constraints often placed on him. During a recent Christmas season, a Methodist minister actually put the baby Jesus in a cage on her churchs front lawn. This congregations point was political: by identifying Jesus with refugee children being held at the border, they were attempting to pressure authorities to release them. It was a dramatic illustration equating the captive Jesus with the poor, the weak, the voiceless, all those held in bondage.

Those Methodists wanted to free Jesus too, as both a political and theological point. The story made national news. Many people came to the display, leaving notes, ribbons, and signs of support: Set the prisoners free! But the church and the pastor also received death threats saying it was irreverent, even blasphemous, to imprison Jesus. I commented to my husband, It is odd that the physical fence bothers them. If only they noticed the invisible fencing theyve already placed around him.

What does it mean to set Jesus free?

The Jesus of History and the Christ of Faith

The question of freeing Jesus was first posed to me in the early 1990s. Then, the question did not come from those fleeing church; rather, the query arose in a group of friends who were returning to church. They had left church oncethey had grown up with religion, but stepped away in the 1970s as teenagers or young adults. They were among the first leavers, what one sociologist of religion dubbed a generation of seekers. Although those seekers never returned to church in the same numbers that they left, some portion of them made their way back to Christianity in the 1990s, filling pews long empty and bringing new energy to declining churches.

These were not fundamentalist or evangelical congregations, but mostly liberal mainline churches finding new life. I was a parishioner at one such churchTrinity Episcopal in Santa Barbara, California, a congregation that went through a genuine rebirth in the decade before the millenniums end. On a sunny Sunday afternoon, I remember standing outside the building talking to a friend who had just returned to church; she was speaking of how glad she was to be back in faith community, how she loved the liturgy, and how grateful she was to speak of God.

But, she said in a confiding tone, I dont really know what to say about Jesus. Hes important, the center of everything. But I dont know how to think about him, how to explain him. Who is he, really?

She was not alone in wondering about Jesus. As the 1990s unfolded, Jesus topped the religion book charts, including several blockbusters that landed on the New York Times bestseller list. This was the heyday of the Jesus Seminar, a group of scholars who were dedicated to uncovering the historical Jesus and whose work was communicated to millions through television, radio, national magazines and newspapers, and a vast network of churches and conferences. They looked at Jesus in new ways: as a rabbi, prophet, teacher, miracle worker, itinerant mystic, political rebel, and rabble-rousing Jewish peasantnothing like the Jesus surrounded by angels at the altar in the Washington National Cathedral. Who is Jesus, really? proved a powerful question as Western society moved toward 2000, his biggest birthday celebration of all time.