
Debie Thomas
Writer, Seeker, Wonderer
AVAILABLE NOW
“He was a disrupter and a peacemaker, a rebel and a rabbi. His friends were the riffraff, and his enemies the religious elite. He was the wounded man who healed the sick, the homeless man who fed the hungry, the convicted criminal who released the captives, and the dead man who conquered the grave. The stories he told were scandalous, and the stories he lived changed the world. To reflect on the Jesus of the Gospels is to reflect on paradox, mystery, wonder, and messiness. It is to find God in the shadows, the tensions, and the ambiguities of life on earth as it is. These essays on the stories of Jesus are invitations to faith in all its complexity and untidiness. The Jesus who emerges here is not the sanitized Christ of piety and platitude, but the Christ of complicated joys and transcendent sorrows. The Christ who weeps, wonders, loses, learns, and seeks. These are the stories of the Incarnate God who finds and loves us in the messiness of our lives.”
Into the Mess and Other Jesus Stories: Reflections on the Life of Christ
TESTIMONIALS
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Debie Thomas cracks my heart wide open. She writes as midwife to Jesus’s invitation for vulnerable wrestling towards a beautiful and costly way of following. It’s worth it. Her words are tender, gorgeous, and brave, and they have replanted me in a more robust faith—one better equipped to evolve and weather what storms may come.
LIZ TICHENOR
Author, The Night Lake
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While most Gospel commentators offer you information, when Debie Thomas speaks of the text, she offers you insight. Into the Mess is just the kind of honest, grace-soaked, beautiful, heartbreaking view of Jesus that makes me want to believe.
NADIA BOLZ-WEBER
Host, The Confessional with Nadia Bolz-Weber
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A lot of religious writing is devotional but not particularly thoughtful. Some is high on scholarship but low on personal engagement. Debie Thomas brings head and heart together. Her beautiful new book will help you understand Jesus better, and yourself too. Highly recommended!
BRIAN D. McLAREN
Author, Do I Stay Christian?
BIO

I’m the author of Into the Mess and Other Jesus Stories: Reflections on the Life of Christ, a collection of essays that explores the life and teachings of Jesus. I’m a columnist and contributing editor for The Christian Century, and from 2014 to 2022, I was a staff writer for Journey with Jesus: A Weekly Webzine for the Global Church. I studied English Literature at Wellesley College and Brown University, and earned an MFA in Creative Writing at Ohio State University. Currently, I serve as the Minister for Lifelong Formation at St. Mark’s Episcopal Church in Palo Alto, CA.