Bishop Wright: 0:00
This is what Jesus is doing. He’s recentering the fact that, look, the purpose of this thing was so that you can know the radicality of what it means to give yourself to someone and for that person to give themselves to you. That is what I intended. You know this deep knowing of one another. That is what God has intended. And do we fail to deliver on that? Yes. Do we fail to receive that? Yes. Do we break that Sometimes? Yes, yes, yes, yes, yes.
Melissa: 0:40
Welcome to Four People with Bishop Rob Wright. I’m Melissa Rau and this is a conversation inspired by For Faith, a weekly devotion sent out every Friday. You can find a link to this week’s devotion and a link to subscribe in the episode’s description. Hey, bishop.
Bishop Wright: 0:55
Hey Melissa. For
Melissa: 0:56
This week’s devotion you named Recenter and it is based off of the Gospel of Mark, chapter 10, verses 2 through 12. And really, in a nutshell, it’s all about divorce.
Bishop Wright: 1:10
Yeah, maybe.
Melissa: 1:12
All right, well, so let’s get to that maybe. Why don’t you kind of frame it for us and what really jumps out at you most by reading this passage?
Bishop Wright: 1:20
Well, you know the religious authorities, when they encounter Jesus, it seems they’re always trying to check his credentials. You know, is he conversant in the law, right? They want to know, has he read the book? You know, does he have academic chops? Does he understand his tradition? And so they always ask him lots of things about the tradition. They ask him the things about the law of Moses, which was the law, the Torah, right.
Bishop Wright: 1:49
And then what’s fascinating about Jesus is is that, like you know, I like to call Jesus a fantastic jazz musician. What’s really cool about Jesus is is that Jesus, he knows his scales, if you will Right. He knows his scales, if you will right. But what he does with the scales are, you know, instructive, is not enough. I mean, jesus shows a spiritual imagination. Jesus always stays tethered to something that is above the law in many ways, that the law is hoping to describe but can’t quite describe, right.
Bishop Wright: 2:39
And so they ask him about divorce, right. And to see what Jesus does with it is amazing. And that’s why I call it recenter, because Jesus re-centers us. Life with Jesus is a re-centering enterprise, and we think we know and we endeavor to know and we bring good intentions, to be faithful and to know. But then, where life with Jesus is always dynamic is is that, just as soon as we think we know, just as soon as we think we’ve got command, just as soon as we think we know, just as soon as we think we’ve got command, jesus moves the goalposts and it’s always towards the heart of God. Right, wherever we start is fine. We start in lots of different places, we’re different kinds of learners, if you will, but Jesus is always moving us closer to the heart of God and he does that here. Yeah, divorce, yeah, I understand divorce. He basically says. But there’s something else.
Melissa: 3:31
Yeah, well, okay, so that’s something else, what you just named, how Jesus kind of ups the ante a little bit and then also points out where we’re missing it completely.
Bishop Wright: 3:40
Yeah.
Melissa: 3:41
Because I think at first read it’s almost like Jesus doubles down and says actually whoever divorces his wife and even marries another commits adultery against her period, full stop. So it’s almost like he takes divorce and even goes beyond, a little bit more legalistic, and yet we often forget that God’s grace is lavished on us all the time. I don’t know, bishop, where are we with adultery Right and divorce Like where? Where is that coming to play here for you? What, would you say, jesus cares about most?
Bishop Wright: 4:19
Thanks for the easy questions. I appreciate it. So I think, yeah, so, what Jesus does and people really have got to read this for yourself. And I would invite you to read the 10th chapter of Mark right, verses two through 12, you know, read it for yourself and sit with it. But I think, if you, if you do more than just do it, if I think you go on a study journey with Jesus, if you go on a study journey with scripture, here’s what you’ll find out.
Bishop Wright: 4:43
Jesus, yeah, jesus goes farther and he tells you that he knows the law, he tells you that he understands the law. But then what he does, which is genius, is that then he says, well, here’s the law, but here’s the law of creation, right. And so then he starts quoting Genesis and according to scholars who are way smarter than me, that’s not often done where he pits the law, scripture, against itself. Right, and I think that that is to yield the higher learning. So Jesus says, yeah, yeah, some of us, it is true, part of the human condition is we harden our hearts. Sometimes In Georgia, we call one reason for divorce irretrievable brokenness. We understand any of us who have been married or remarried or continue to be married with the same person. We understand resentment, we understand resentment, we understand disappointment, we understand, you know, these gut punches of heart of let me do that again these gut punches of lived experience in a relationship. Right, marriage is the best of times and the worst of times simultaneously. Yeah, for those of us who’ve been married for a long time, and for those of us who’ve been married to one person for a long time, we would say we’ve had several marriages within that one sort of wedding day thing. Well, jesus goes further. He says but what was God’s intention in generating and creating this institution called marriage? And that’s when he centers the radical nature of marriage. I like to call it the one fleshness, and the two shall become one flesh.
Bishop Wright: 6:28
And so Jesus is simply saying yeah, I understand divorce, but is there something else going on with you? Can’t you hear Jesus as a therapist? Is there something else going on with you? What else is going on with you? And we should say we should say this too in the way that the law was constructed. It was patriarchal right. It was about the rights of the man to dismiss a woman that he was not pleased with for whatever reason. Right. And in that situation the woman had no voice and she had no resources and she was totally vulnerable. So here Jesus shows his womanist chops, right, he shows his womanist chops and he asks about the one fleshness of it all. He reminds us that there’s a part of marriage that lives beyond the law in its intention and in its successful sort of living out, and that is is that the promises that some of us have made on that? I mean, think about this for a second Marriage is a unique kind of situation.
Bishop Wright: 7:30
You stand up in front of God and a whole bunch of people and you say yes to a future that you have no clue about, right? So then, what is it calling out of us? Well, it’s calling out of us a certain elasticity that is developing as we go along, and it is one thing I mean. 27 years ago, I said, yes, you know, I will honor Beth with all my heart and with all that I have, et cetera, et cetera. I said all of that and I meant it as much as I could understand it at that time. Ask me now what I think that looks like, right? And if she was on this podcast, she would say no. Let me tell you what it’s like to say yes to this fella for 27 years.
Bishop Wright: 8:16
But that is actually the hardest part of marriage and the genius of marriage. Look, what marriage is is spiritual development on steroids. Nothing will call a deeper expression of love out of us than that and nothing will call all these other parts of our personality to the fore. And this is why Paul says in 1 Corinthians 13, that piece of scripture that we love to read at marriages when I was a child, I thought as a child, I spoke as a child, I understood as a child, but when I became a man, and I would say, when I became a woman, I put away childish things. And to some degree let me say this and give me a little room and to some degree, to continue to deal with one another only in a legalistic fashion is immature, and I think this is what Jesus is doing.
Bishop Wright: 9:11
This is what Jesus is doing. He’s recentering the fact that, look, the purpose of this thing was so that you can know the radicality of what it means to give yourself to someone and for that person to give themselves to you. That is what I intended. You know this deep knowing of one another. That is what God has intended and do we fail to deliver on that? Yes. Do we fail to receive that? Yes. Do we break that Sometimes? Yes. Do we do it for selfish reasons? Yes. Do we do it for psychological reasons? Family of origin reasons? Yes, yes, yes, yes and again right. So here’s what I’ll say before we get lots of emails and phone calls about this right. Sadly, divorce sometimes is the appropriate response to our brokenness. I’ve been a pastor for a long time. I know that, I know that and it’s a sad knowing, and yet I believe many more times when we resort to divorce, what we really are is stuck.
Melissa: 10:47
What does stuckness mean to you?
Bishop Wright: 10:50
Well, my gosh, stuckness means a lot of things, right. So we as individuals get stuck. We get stuck in ruts that are not life-giving, we get. I was watching a movie the other day and a person was confessing to his friend that he had gotten lost and failed to befriend over a difficult circumstance and in his heartfelt apology to his friend included I got lost. Sometimes stuck means I got lost. Sometimes it means that I didn’t refresh myself with any frequency with the vows that I made to my beloved. I strayed from those ideas that were so important on that day and maybe so important in the first iteration of that marriage. But then gets assumed by work and earning and lots of other things.
Bishop Wright: 11:50
Stuck can mean lots of things. Sometimes stuck means I have a lot of backed up. I have a lot of backed up. Let’s call it mucus, the mucus of resentment, the mucus of unforgiveness, the mucus of hurt, the mucus of disappointment, and I don’t know how to expel that stuff, that stuff. And so stuckness can mean that I have not deeply acquainted myself with the processing, the medicine of scripture, so that I know how to process very legitimate disappointment, very legitimate hurt, very legitimate need to forgive, et cetera, et cetera, need to forgive, et cetera, et cetera. So stuck can mean a lot of things. Stuck can mean I’m just stubborn, and so I have locked a door in my heart and I have decided that that’s the only way.
Bishop Wright: 12:50
And here’s what we know about love, if you’re looking at the gospel as an indicator of what love is, love involves and we don’t talk about this on wedding days and perhaps we should it’s sacrificial. And what I worry about as we look at the marriage rates these days among young people, I think that these young people perhaps are the most unprepared to process these ideas that are at the center of the notion of a healthy Christian marriage, and that is this sacrificial peace. You know, later scripture tells us to outdo one another. I love this, this competition. Outdo one another, what In what we earn? Competition Outdo one another? What In what we earn in our degrees? No, in honoring one another. And so we’re given a pathway forward, how to sort of embark on that day to day.
Bishop Wright: 14:03
And look, I’ve been married a while and I know viscerally the challenges that confront the average couple just sort of making it forward day to day, with busy lives and children, health issues, perhaps even a difference in libido. We hear that a lot when we talk to couples. All of these complicate the journey of going forward together, and yet Jesus calls us back. So the law gives us an out, but Jesus calls us back. He doesn’t do violence to us by saying shame on you that you didn’t do this, it’s not guilt-inducing, right. But what is the genuine article here? And it is this one fleshness that is mutual. Notice that also. It is mutual, whereas the law in this story is just affirming patriarchy.
Melissa: 14:55
Well, and so that brings me, I guess, a burning question. I’m listening to you and I’m also imagining the different walks of life some of our listeners might be coming from. There might be a number of listeners who are maybe considering divorce or have gone through divorce and are listening and reading the scripture and might be feeling a sense of shame or guilt, et cetera, and so I’m curious, not so much what to do about this passage, especially when it comes to others, but how do we be about this Bishop?
Bishop Wright: 15:30
Well, yeah, I think one of the things, the ways we need to be about it I like the way you frame that is is that the church doesn’t do a really good job, frankly speaking, on teaching and talking about marriage, holding seminars about marriage, taking a teaching and a learning stance about all of this. You know, one of the most important things I ever did I sort of stumbled on it. I had a congregation with a lot of long marriages in it and then I had a congregation with a lot of young marriages. I did a lot of marriages and you know, some of us who are in leadership think that we should be doing all the talking all the time right, which is, you know, mistake number one. And so what I realized thank God for the lightning bolt here what I realized is that how about we have the people who’ve had five and six decade marriages to talk to the folks who are at the beginning of the journey? One of the most generative things I ever did, that created lifelong intergenerational conversations at important intersections, and so I would say to anybody who’s listening, whether they happen to be a clergy person or a lay person, maybe we get some of that going among friends or in a congregation or institutions or organizations that you’re a part of. I think there’s some real learning to do there. I think if we can create a space that is not about shame or guilt or finger wagging but just talks about the contours of the journey, honestly, I think that can be really a great gift.
Bishop Wright: 16:54
I think also, sometimes what we do in marriage is we wait for a long time before we go and seek help, right, and so, in other words, after three or five or seven years of what we call deferred maintenance on the marriage, right. Then we plop down in front of some little clergy person or some little therapist and say here it is, you know. Basically turn, you know, turn water into wine and you know. So we have to acknowledge that many of us should be getting to a third person sooner, really soon, and even if it’s only for a checkup, if there are no presenting issues, let’s get to a third person for a glass of wine or, you know, just a check-in. Every so many miles I’m supposed to change my oil in my car, and that will prolong the life of my engine. Can I run the car on old oil for a long time? Sure, will it have detrimental effects, absolutely. So why take better care of your car than you would take care of your marriage, right? And then I think also and this also goes to stuckness, and what can we do?
Bishop Wright: 18:06
I think one of the things that we can do is to make sure and this ends up being hard for some of us is that we’ve got to decide to develop a frequency of being away and only being couple. Sometimes, stuckness for us, which can accrue, sadly, to hard heartedness and distance and lack of understanding and unfamiliarity, frankly, is that we don’t spend any real time with each other and we don’t do it at any frequency. Look, my wife and I have five kids. We understand this. This is not a book I read. I’m telling you about real life here, and what we realized was is that, as much as we wanted, eager to be good parents and good providers and be professionals who were committed to excellence, that we had to decide that our vows to one another were among the very first vows we ever made, and so that has to be re-centered. I mean, that’s why I title it Re-Centered. Jesus does this, you know. And so we’ve got to re-center. And so let me also say something that we don’t nearly say enough.
Bishop Wright: 19:12
In the church, sexual intimacy is important. It’s good, it’s a gift from God, it’s good, it’s good that we can come together in this unique way. It’s good that we can be known and to know each other in this way. It’s good. In the Jewish tradition, sexual intimacy on the Sabbath day is twice blessed, right. In other words, it makes God smile that we are together and that we are got these connection issues, and they can lead to real brokenness and disorientation and disappointment, but they can be worked through. By and large they can be worked through. If there is willingness on both sides, there is a way to work ourself through even those difficult conversations and difficult interactions.
Bishop Wright: 20:29
And so I am not naive, not by any stretch of the imagination, when it comes to this. But I can say, as someone who’s been privileged to sit with couples for nearly 30 years and been married, you know, heading to 30 years, every once in a while you get this flash of the oneness of it, the one fleshness that is possible. And it’s funny that scripture is affirmed again, that you know, love can cover a multitude of sins, and so I think it’s what Jesus is trying to say. Is that? Yeah, okay, you can take your little self down to the court and you can get your little piece of paper. Yeah, we can do it. We know how to do it. We can start all over again, we can do that. But what we know, too, is that it’s you who will continue, even with the new person. And if we don’t work on this hardness of heart which all of us are prone towards, then we will be stuck and we will never really, I think, move into the deeper water of what it means to be one flesh.
Melissa: 21:43
It’s a good reminder, a good word. Thank you for that, bishop, and thank you, listeners, for tuning in to For People. You can follow us on Instagram and Facebook at Bishop Rob Wright. Please subscribe, leave a review and we’ll be back with you next week.
