Bishop Wright: 0:00
What bothers me sometimes is that you know we go to church and we get sermons and they basically can be summed up is that be nice? But the thing about nice is is that nice is really made of nothing. If you look up the word right, it just means insipid. There’s no strength in it. Kindness is different. Kindness provides room for candor. Kindness provides room for boldness and courage, and so you know, the message is not be nice. I did hear Paul say that we ought to tell the truth in love. This is Four People with Bishop Rob Wright.
Melissa: 0:45
Welcome to For People with Bishop Rob Wright. I’m your Melissa Rau, and this is a conversation inspired by Bishop Wright’s For Faith weekly devotions sent out every Friday. You can find a link to this week’s For Faith and a link to subscribe in the episode’s description. How’s it going?
Bishop Wright: 0:57
Bishop, Good morning. Good morning from Jackson Wyoming.
Melissa: 1:01
Yes, I’m so jealous I want to go Good morning.
Bishop Wright: 1:04
Yeah, from all its beautiful nature, the Tetons, yellowstone, I mean, nobody has imagination like God.
Melissa: 1:14
I love that. Well, based off of the first two verses of Ephesians, the fifth chapter, you named this week’s devotion Imitators. First, I have to say this is one of my favorite verses. As cliche as it may be, I have walk in love tattooed on my arm.
Bishop Wright: 1:32
Right, didn’t you know? I know.
Melissa: 1:36
More so than wearing a cross To me. I feel like it’s a charge to us Jesus followers to walk in the way of love, to imitate Jesus and reflect the love God has for us to everyone we meet. So, before we dive into some of the specifics, bishop, I’m hoping you can share something about this popular passage and maybe what stood out to you in a new or surprising way. After reading this for what’s likely the millionth and tenth time, yeah, well, I appreciate that.
Bishop Wright: 2:04
You know I love Paul, St Paul, the Apostle Paul, I love that. He’s a guy who had an experience, and his experience of God, you know, set his feet in motion and his mouth moving and governed his actions and he struggles, going forward on, trying to get his arms around what has happened to him and then how it changes his life. So I like him, I get him, I think I get him and I like that. You know, the two thirds of the New Testament we have is because of this guy and this experience that he had. You know, this letter from the, you know letter to the church in Ephesus, Ephesians, is Paul’s letter from jail.
Bishop Wright: 2:49
And you know Dr King said when he wrote his letter to the Birmingham jail, he said when in jail, what is one to do but to think long thoughts and write long letters?
Bishop Wright: 3:00
And so Paul writes us a letter and you know there’s some clarity in the quiet, and so he’s trying to, I guess, give this Christian community, this brand new fledgling community, sort of the guardrails and point them in the direction of thriving. And, and so that’s why we land on the word be imitators, be imitators of God. And then of course he backfills that with well, what does it mean? But I like it because, at least in the United States, we find ourselves heading into what looks like is going to be a very fraught and volatile political season, and I always like to say that you know, when it’s darkest, this is the time for the stars to shine. And so I think, if we’re imitators of Christ, now’s our moment, when everybody else is mean and bitter and malice is abounding and there’s contention everywhere. Are we different? Are we being persuaded or do we have something to say to a culture? Can we persuade a culture, our own sphere of influence, to live differently? Paul seems to think so.
Melissa: 4:11
Well, you know, one of my favorite lines out of your devotion is the Tutu quote. You quote Tutu, who said a person is a person through other persons, and you know the word the fancy other persons. And you know the word the fancy, the fancy word. I think our church uses a lot is formation and so it is kind of a fancy term and I think a lot of people would define it differently. Do you have a definition of that word?
Bishop Wright: 4:35
Well, I mean, let me try to answer that this way. You know, none of us is a complete original. I mean, we like to think we are right and we’re told we are, but we’re actually not. We’re made in the image of God. So there’s a pattern and we look like mom and dad or we look like siblings, we resemble others, we share speech patterns and inflections. I’m noticing, while I’m in Wyoming this week, that there’s a uniform, an unofficial uniform, that is a plaid shirt with pearl buttons or at least it looks like pearl buttons and jeans and boots. There’s a uniform that seems to be sort of the message of how we dress here. Our clothes come to us with the fingerprints of Milan and Paris, and so you know, we are a porous entity, we human beings, we learn from each other, and you know. So this is what I think St Paul is doing. He understands that this is our design feature right, that we want to and will be like others.
Bishop Wright: 5:50
I remember some years ago, when Michael Jordan was playing basketball, the slogan was to be like Mike, right. But Paul says be like Jesus, right. And so formation is all about that. It’s all about deciding that Jesus is somebody. I want to look like. Jesus is somebody I want to imitate. Jesus is somebody I want to consult. Jesus is somebody I want to follow.
Bishop Wright: 6:15
That’s the Christian journey, and it’s about choosing. It’s not about perfection, it’s about getting up every day and deciding that my North Star is Jesus of Nazareth. And I think this is what Paul is saying. And then you know, formation also is saying not only what I’m choosing but what I am refusing. And so St Paul says refuse bitterness, refuse malice, refuse speech that tears down. You know, choose forgiveness. And so you know I appreciate his clarity. He’s trying to help this community see that life with Jesus ought to make you different. One of the things I say, sort of time in cheek, but I believe it is that the worst thing that anybody can say to a Christian is you ain’t changed a bit. If we live with God, if we’re aspiring to be like Christ, it will change us, and it doesn’t really matter our age 8 to 80, right it is that I am taking on the mind, the behavior, the ways of Christ. Will I succeed? Will I be a perfect replica?
Bishop Wright: 7:30
No no, in fact, some would say you know well, that’s too high a bar, and then they would just refuse it altogether. I think that’s wrongheaded. I think it’s not to be a perfect replica. Nobody can be a perfect replica of God or of Jesus Christ but we can aspire right and we can choose to continue to aspire, especially in these areas of how we speak and how we interact with one another. And we can choose this behavior, particularly when things are most trying. We can refuse to give ourselves permission to abandon our core values just because the temperature gets a little hot. I hear people all the time make the excuse and I’m sure I have too. Well, look what they’re doing so as to give myself permission to abandon what I said was my North Star, and so that is immature, and St Paul is always trying to call us to maturity, right?
Melissa: 9:03
Welcome back, bishop. We were talking about formation, and then the word community came to mind also when I read the Tutu quote, and so I heard this really funny quote from someone. They were saying what the mamas and the papas do in moderation, the kids do in excess. And I always then refer to Crosby, stills, nash, young Teach your Children. I love that song, and so I’m wondering what you have to say, maybe for people who don’t really even realize that their lives are being imitated if they have young people around them and how this passage might inform what we need to do or think about as we’re living our lives.
Bishop Wright: 9:49
Yeah, I think the temptation in modern life is to think of ourselves as these little hermetically sealed sort of things, and that’s just not the nature. I mean, as I said about clothing et cetera. I mean we are porous, we rub off on each other by our behavior, we give permission to other people to do other kinds of behaviors, and so I think that the Christian, at least as St Paul imagined, was always supposed to be leavened right, though numerically perhaps, you know, outnumbered we can be, we don’t have to be outpowered, and the power comes from in who we choose to imitate, right. And so, yeah, people are watching, people are listening. What we do has influence. What we type on our and send out over social media matters, it contributes to how coarse the society is, it contributes to how mean the society is.
Bishop Wright: 10:51
You know, I think one of the things that, with St Paul’s invitation to be imitators of God, he’s trying to accomplish is to put us and not to put too fine a point on this, but to put us as the adults in the rooms wherever we find ourselves, and not in a paternalistic way or smug way, but in terms of our ability to nuance right, grace, to provide grace, forgiveness, to give people a little room, some elasticity, for us not to be so brittle and so defensive, for us to be able to be curious in the face of hard situations and even disagreement.
Bishop Wright: 11:29
I mean, what we’re talking about is what the world calls soft skills, what St Paul would say would call it following Jesus right. So as we watch Jesus move through Matthew, mark, luke and John, again and again and again, jesus finds a way to thread the needle and to give these words and these stories and sometimes these amazing actions to include, to provide cover for people, to allow truth to get in the room in ways that are really, really phenomenal and that build up and that don’t break, and I think nothing less is being asked of us that was like a mic drop comment right there that’s, that’s it.
Bishop Wright: 12:15
I think I think you know, one of the things I like about paul is paul. You know, there’s there’s truth in paul’s advertising, right? I mean, I think what, what bothers me sometimes is that you know we go to church and you know we get sermons, and they basically can be summed up is that be nice? Right, and so the thing about nice is is that nice is really made of nothing? Right, it’s really, it’s it’s. You know, if you look up the word, right, it just means insipid, right, there’s no strength. There’s no strength in it, right, kindness is different. Kindness provides room for candor. Kindness provides room for boldness and courage, and so you know, the message is not be nice.
Bishop Wright: 12:57
I never heard Jesus say that one time. Maybe I missed it, but I’ll keep on reading. I did hear Paul say that we ought to tell the truth in love. I did hear Paul say we ought to forgive and that if we bear malice in our heart. I did hear Jesus say we ought to work on our hearts and pray for those who curse us and despitefully use us, and so. So there’s a big strategy that’s alive in Matthew, mark, luke and John and certainly in the letters of Paul, and that sometimes, unfortunately, we’re being invited into something that’s not sustainable and that doesn’t bear any resemblance to Jesus’ ministry, which is this notion of being nice. And nice won’t hold you in marriage, nice won’t hold you in relationships, nice won’t hold you in disagreement. Kindness can.
Melissa: 13:44
Yeah, I completely agree with you. And yet I’m also very aware we’re in an election cycle.
Bishop Wright: 13:49
Sure.
Melissa: 13:50
And I don’t even know that nice is has been a target lately.
Bishop Wright: 13:56
I think some people are trying to approach these, the volatility of now with nice, and so that’s sort of my cautionary tale about that. No, but I think we’ve got to lean in, right, and I think the lean in is that we’ve got to say we’ve got to remember again and again we are an American family, we’re an American family and we’re in a tough spot. There’s economic complexity, there’s all kinds of complexity. The velocity of life has increased. There are large segments of our population I mean, I’m out here in the mountain time zone there are populations here who believe with all their heart that this nation has forsaken its values and is moving in the wrong direction. Great, decent, lovely people, but there’s a lot of fear in the system. There are other folks, there’s a lot of lust for power in the system. There’s a lot of falsehood in the system.
Bishop Wright: 14:53
Paul says in another place that we’re not supposed to be tossed to and fro like little children, right. And so what anchors us right now in this you know, complex, high velocity time, right. It is that we know and believe, having tried Jesus, that Jesus works. And so you know, this is not novice, this is not one-on-one stuff here. This is, you know, entry level for everybody. But for some of us who have been trying to practice for some years, we should now know and not simply believe. It should go deeper than belief.
Melissa: 15:26
So it’s a good word then. So how do we integrate that belief into our being? How then, Bishop, do we walk in love?
Bishop Wright: 15:32
Practice, practice, practice, practice, practice and again practice. I failed yesterday. I’m going to get up and do it this morning. I may have gone wrong with someone. I’m going to get up and get on the phone and say hey, melissa, I missed a mark yesterday in our conversation. Let me tell you, I was hungry, didn’t have enough caffeine, or just wrongheaded. I just want to see, can we do that again? Great therapist advice many years ago you can restart any conversation. It’s not about what others are saying or doing, it’s about what we do, right, what is our commitment. And so if I’ve missed the mark, you know I have to find it within myself to reach out to you. Scripture says it again and again, and so I think that’s the practice. Practice, practice, practice. It’s to be self-aware, right? What are my motivations, you know? Are they pure and godly? Probably not. I need to interrogate my motives. So again, paul here is asking us hey, if you want to be imitators of Christ, know this, you’re going to have to be growing up, actively growing up.
Melissa: 16:38
All right. Well, friends, I guess the last thing is then just to like For in love. Walk in love as Christ loved us. I don’t know Bishop Rob Wright bishop. Any final thoughts? Why do we say that at the time, right before Many Episcopal churches will say that phrase walking in love, as Christ loved us and gave to himself an offering and sacrifice to God? We say that before we prepare the Eucharist, typically.
Bishop Wright: 17:05
That’s right. We say that it’s called an offertory sentence walk in love. And this is where we grabbed this bit from the fifth chapter of Ephesians. I mean because I think what we you know what I would like to say, I mean we choose lots of different offertory sentences. That’s been one that’s been stock and trade, but I think what we’re trying to say is is that love requires action, it’s not a sentiment, and so it ought to call generosity out of you. That’s one example. So a generosity of heart, a generosity of the wallet, a generosity of the calendar, it ought to be calling that out of you. You ought to offer that to Christ in response to the goodness received by Christ.
Melissa: 17:48
Excellent. Well, thank you, bishop, and thank you listeners, for tuning in to Four People. Walk in love and follow us on Instagram and Facebook at BishopRobWright. Please subscribe, leave a review and we’ll be back with you next week.
