Lent: What Is it?

We are in this season of Lent, the season when we ponder the journey to the cross, to the death of the one we call Jesus of Nazareth.

This Year’s Lent Theme

This year, we immerse ourselves in our theme, “Freeing Jesus” based on Diana Butler Bass’s book, Freeing Jesus. 

What is it that Jesus needs to be freed from?

In the book our theme is based on, Dianna Butler Bass tells this great story about sitting in the National Cathedral, praying, and not really feeling it. Looking up at the great stained glass windows with one depicting Christ, and trying to pray. And asking, “Where are you God” and then hearing this voice answer her saying, “Get me out of here.” 

She can’t shake it – this idea that God, speaking from the stained glass doesn’t want to be there, in that cathedral – trapped in all our ideas of who God is, what God looks like, and what it all means. 

And so, in this book, and throughout this season of Lent, we’ll be doing that: Asking who is Jesus for you, and what ideas do you have about what role Jesus plays in your life, and perhaps expanding our ideas about each of those roles. 

It is a question of a lifetime, to be asked and experienced over and over again throughout our lives, as our experience of God changes with our own life stories. 

We’ll be exploring ideas of Jesus as savior, the Way, presence, and Lord.

Who is Jesus to you?