Writing "Facing Jerusalem"

In this Q&A, Terri Hord Owens, author of Facing Jerusalem: A Lenten Journey with Jesus and General Minister and President of the Christian Church (Disciples of Christ), shares the title's Biblical roots, how she hopes Jesus' reliance on prayer and scripture can inspire us today, and her love of outlines.

What inspired the theme of Facing Jerusalem? I have always loved the scripture in Luke (9:51) when it says “he set his face toward Jerusalem” —  that's the King James version. But over the years, as that has come up in the lectionary, to me it indicated a sense of determination. When you look at what happens to Jesus on his way to that final Holy Week, there's no way that he could have done or faced everything that he did without a sense of purpose and determination.

What are you hoping that readers will take away as they work through Facing Jerusalem? What I've tried to do is provide, through the Lenten text, examples of the things that Jesus dealt with and tried to lift up how he faced questions and challenges, the work that he did, the healing that he did, the teaching that he did, and how he responded to a lot of different situations. I’m hoping that’s the lens people will use if we believe, as I do, that Jesus understood his mission and that he knew he was going to be betrayed and crucified and that he told his disciples he was going to rise again. He understood what was happening, so he was very intentional about it. I think that's an important element of who Jesus was that we need to remember. He understood what was happening, therefore he was very intentional in what he said and did.

So how are we to incorporate it into our own faith lives? There are so many times when Jesus is questioned or challenged either by people who really need healing or a word from him or by those religious leaders who were critical of him. Jesus had a pattern of both prayer and scripture. He always responds with scripture. We get to celebrate that and hopefully model ourselves after that. We also get to celebrate the Jesus that was human. There are times when he's even a little snarky with the Pharisees and scribes, and I think we get to celebrate that, too.

What is your writing process? I outline. It was a skill that I learned from my high school English teacher. She taught you that if you outlined your ideas, even when you're taking an essay exam, even if you didn't get to go back and actually write the prose to go with it, she would give you full credit for your outline. That's something I carried with me in high school. I am an extemporaneous speaker. I outline everything, and because I outline and I don't really create formal manuscripts, even when I preach, that helps me organize my thoughts.

I've spent time with all of the lectionary texts, and I read the text aloud for the devotional work to feel how they sound and think about what they're saying. Since I’ve become the [General Minister and President], the lectionary is part of my own devotional practice. I study it every week because I know so many of our churches are lectionary churches, so I'm always in the lectionary.

The hardest thing has been blocking off time to write. I can really get in a zone once I get going—I can sit and just go. I don't necessarily write in dribs and drabs; I'm always praying for the big flow, because when it comes, I can sit for hours.

What was the biggest surprise to you as you were working through Facing Jerusalem? I think the biggest surprise quite honestly was how long Lent is. You don't really think about those 40 days (plus Sundays), but it's not necessarily a short period of time. You even have to go back to say, “oh I have to be sure all those days are covered” and “where do you fit those things in.” When we go in deeper, we may find we take a particular practice for granted. To be responsible for producing something that will guide people through that time, you are paying more attention to how someone might move through it because you've had to work through it in a different way yourself. 

What are you reading now, for work or for fun or for personal growth? It's a very nerdy thing called America’s Constitution: A Biography. It’s a classic history and law-school textbook on the history of the Constitution and what was intended. And there are things that I'm always going back to. I've been rereading Brueggemann's Truth-Telling as Subversive Obedience.

How is Facing Jerusalem different from Imagining a New World, the Advent devotional you wrote in 2020? When I wrote the Advent devotional for 2020, my thinking was not just the mystery and the magic of the baby in the manger. I tend to lean more towards a prophetic lens. I always joke with God and say, “God, you never give me the warm and fuzzy sermons.” I was concerned that people would be looking for more “sweet baby in the manger” kind of devotionals, and I chose to look at it being inspired by scripture. Those texts, particularly the Hebrew Bible texts, talk about not only what the Messiah will be like but what the world will be like because of him, and that's where Imagining a New World originated.

In thinking about Facing Jerusalem, I was trying to find a different angle or a different road into studying these texts for Lent and leading up to Holy Week. There's a whole section in the Gospel of Luke that people know — this is the moment when he starts heading towards Jerusalem, and only Luke has it, so I hope I've lifted that up and tried to give us a different way to think about what Jesus said and did in all his complexity. We know he flips tables. We know he cries in Gethsemane. But there are other ways in which his heart was probably broken, other ways in which he said hard things to people. But it’s also all the people that touched him, all the teaching that he did. Trying to find a different way into the text and a different way into Jesus is something I always try to shoot for, even when I preach, so I asked, “what hasn't been said about this” or “maybe what has been said is exactly what needs to be said right now in this moment.”

 (This interview was lightly edited for clarity and length.)