Sacrifice

Bishop Wright:

There may be some things I need to give up to make that experientially true. So, in other words, at some point I’ve got to say that I am not the author of my life, that God is the author of my life. And if God is the author of my life, god may have some better ideas about how I should live. And if that is true, then I have to subordinate my understandings to God’s understandings. And that act, that process, that evolution, is what I would call worship.

Melissa:

Welcome to For People with Bishop Rob Wright. I’m your host, 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 For Faith and a link to subscribe in the episode’s description. How’s it going, bishop?

Bishop Wright:

Yes, how are you?

Melissa:

I’m great. This week’s devotion you called you named Sacrifice, and it’s actually an excerpt from part of this past year’s clergy conference that you led for your diocese of Atlanta. And Sacrifice, so you say, rooting your sacrifice, is pleasing, or in pleasing God, is a sublime act of worship. And that’s a big, bold statement right there. I don’t know that I disagree, and yet I read the rest of it and honestly, bishop, what is sacrifice?

Bishop Rob Wright:

Right. Well, back up, what is worship Right? Worship is saying that God is the ultimate thing, ultimate thing, right, that is worship. It’s not the noise we make on Sunday. It’s not a reverence silence or a boisterous singing and clapping. That’s not what it is. Those are parts of it for some of us, but that’s not the thing. Worship is worth W-O-R-T-H, worth ship. What’s it worth? What’s it worth in your real life? Right. And so what we’ve got to realize, before we even get to the word sacrifice, is that if God is worth everything, right. Everything. If that’s the North Star for my life, right. Then there may be some things I need to give up to make that experientially true, right. So, in other words, at some point I’ve got to say that I am not the author of my life, that God is the author of my life. And if God is the author of my life, god may have some better ideas about how I should live. And if that is true, then I have to subordinate my understandings to God’s understandings, and that act, that process, that evolution, is what I would call worship. I may have some ideas about money, god has some ideas about money, and so if I decide to put my ideas about money to the side and take up God’s ideas about money, then I would call that worship. God has some clear ideas about conflict resolution at home, at work and everywhere else we are, and I have some ideas about conflict resolution. Now, if I put my ideas of conflict resolution to the side right at home, at work, wherever I’m at, and I choose God’s you know sort of process of conflict resolution, you see how it goes, and so what I would call that process of putting my stuff aside and taking up God’s ideas, right, I would call that sacrifice right, because what I am doing is I am sacrificing my approach, my need to be right, I am All those sorts of things that I would get if I did it my way. I’m putting those things aside and I’m calling that sacrifice. Now the writer of Hebrews simply says this through Jesus, therefore, let us continually offer to God a sacrifice of praise. So that’s the first point of the whole sort of clergy conference that I was sort of leading people in a meditation. If we ought to be doing a sacrifice of praise, continually offering God a sacrifice of praise, that means we’re going to have to give up certain kinds of speech in favor of praise, right, you only have so many hours a day, so many minutes a day. Right. And if we fill those minutes and hours with certain kinds of speech, to the neglect of praise of God, right, then there’s a gap between what we say on Sunday and how we live on Monday. But if we believe that the writer of Hebrews is on to something, then I have to ask myself, I have to do what I call a sacrifice audit, maybe of a speech audit. So if I were to make a pie chart, where is the majority of my speech? Right, it might. It might be in despairing speech, it may be in critical speech, it may be in self-loathing Speech, it may be in bigoted speech, it may be in all kinds of speech. Right, it may be an unnecessary speech. Right? The writer of Hebrew says is that we ought to be offering God a continual offering of sacrifice, of praise. And so for some of us, at least in my denomination, we don’t talk a lot about praise, even though the hymnal, our hymnal, our number one hymnal, hymnal 82, devotes 61 pages To hymn singing. That’s about the praise of God. So I would say to any Episcopalian who are listening, any Anglican who’s listening, this is exactly the very Anglican thing we can do, which is to praise God. And so it’s some. Some people think you know our music is, you know, tends to be sort of classical and maybe even in a dirge you know Of other places. But that is not actually what is Anglican identity. Anglican identity is Episcopal identity, is what’s in our Founding documents, and what’s in our founding documents is that we are the people who are supposed to be devoting lots of our breath To praise and so so sacrifice. So what do you need to give up to get in line with God’s program? And and I don’t think let me just say this, and I don’t think we talk enough about sacrifice In the church we seem to be suggesting to people that you can have your cake and somebody else’s cake too, and I do not understand that as a spiritual reality. What I understand is is that our life reflects the things we say yes to and the things we say no to, and that is how character and integrity ultimately is built. Hi listeners, thank you for listening to four people a space of digital evangelism.

Melissa:

You can keep up with us on Instagram and Facebook at Bishop Rob Wright. And now back to four people. I’m mindful, though, of some people’s idea of sacrifice, and I’ve really gotten behind what you’re saying, and you know I love to sing bishop. Yeah and there’s absolutely no hardship whatsoever for me to sing, and I could sing day in and day out, all day long and be so filled. Sometimes I wonder if people think the only type of sacrifice worth having are the ones that hurt.

Bishop Wright:

Yeah, I mean, I don’t know. I mean, you know, let’s start with the, with the Bible. Uh, you know, the author hebrus starts, right, you know we talk about the sacrifice, of praising god, Right, because we know that scripture tells us a reality, that you know that the, the power of death and of life, live in the tongue. So how you talk sort of determines, sort of, what you give life to and what you condemn, the death. And so let’s, let’s start there. Um, and so I think you know whether we’re talking about what hurts or what doesn’t hurt. I think there’s an intention about Forgoing some things, and if you want to call that hurt, okay, or pain, that’s, that’s fine. I think that some of us could miss a meal, and I think it would be an inconvenience, right, and it would be unfamiliar. I don’t know if it would actually move to pain or to hurt. Um, you know, and we are should be talking about, fasting is one of those sort of core Disciplines where we don’t fast just to prove that we have willpower, and it’s not just about the number on the scale, it’s about replacing food With quiet meditation, reflection, study, maybe even service, and so what I’m actually ingesting In my fasting is, you know, and a time of intimacy with god, rather than sort of just, you know, shoveling, shoveling food into my mouth, uh so. So there is a sacrifice, and again, one of the things about sacrifice in god, you know, in scripture lays out all these particular ways is it’s generative for us. These sacrifices, in some ways, in many ways, don’t do us harm, right, and so there’s a building up of the soul, there’s a building up of what Um, you know, Rabbi Abraham, Joshua Heschel, calls the inner cathedral, um, and so that’s the goal of sacrifice. I mean, isn’t god a wonderful god that god says go this way, right, and you will be fortified, I will provide you nutrition that you otherwise cannot get. How we talk, how we sing, that we sing, that we have a song on our heart through difficult days, and isn’t God a good God that we could have a song on our heart, even if we struggle with depression, right, so I can say back to my depression the Lord is my shepherd, I shall not want. I could say back to my struggle with being bipolar, I can say back to these things, I don’t have to give them the last word. I can say back to them that, even though I walk through the valley of the shadow of death, I’ll fear no evil. We have things to say back to God if we fill our mouths with those things about God. But that’s just one act of it. I mean, I think what we move on to, what may cause us some pain, emotional or intellectual, is to forego vengeance. Right, so vengeance is mine, sayeth the Lord. Right, and how we wish that we as individuals at home or at work. Right, church or even nation states, like we’re seeing now in the Holy Land, they would take, they would endure the pain of foregoing vengeance. Right, so that would be a sacrifice. That would be a sacrifice, that would be a sublime act of worship. It would be a differentiating act, right, I mean, when Dr King talks about this, when CT Vivian talks about this, when John Lewis talks about this, when Diane Nash talks about this, when Mary and Wright Edelman talks about this, what they are saying is there’s something more in my mind than if you hurt me, I’ll hurt you back. They’re saying that there is some divine driver in my life that allows me to move past. Right, the temptation to do to you as you’ve done to me. Right, I’ve got a bigger goal, a better goal in mind, and that is to make the Kingdom of God, you know, to represent the Kingdom of God in the here and now. Those people have always made the difference. They’ve always made it, and it’s never been a big group, it’s always been a small group. I’m reminded of this wonderful quote by what I call a prophet. You know James Baldwin, and here’s what Baldwin says about this Love has never been a popular movement and no one’s ever wanted to ever really be free. The world is held together, really, it is held together by the love and passion of a very few people. Wow, right and so, and so you know, the invitation here from the writer of Hebrews is to be one of the very few people, not from an elitist mindset, but just. Is it true for you that you have, and you want to have, an appetite for God and you want to live it out in the real world? Is that true for you? Do you even want it to be true? Because then we can make a very dangerous prayer if we want it to be true, and perhaps it’s not true for us today, and that is, lord, I want to more than I’m acting right now. Will you help me? No, lord, I have faith, but help my unbelief, add to my faith. Right, and so those people, wherever you find them, those people make the difference. Some of those people you know take up this genre of prayer that we talk about I’ve talked about it before called Oblation. Not my way, god, but your way. You know, I’ve come to the limits of my intellect, I’ve come to the limits of my compassion, I’ve come to financial limits, I’ve come to all my limits and I see now you’re the best answer. So, lord, I’m with you now I’m on your boat. I’ve jumped off of my little boat. I’m on your boat now, you know. So off we go, and that’s what we’re talking about in terms of sacrifice. Now let me make a movement, can I? Because I think what somebody’s got to be wondering, and maybe you’re wondering too, is that so? How do I differentiate sacrifice? Ah, such a good question.

Melissa:

Well, you took the words right out of my mouth.

Bishop Wright:

You ask it, you’ll ask it better, no no, no Go, I like this better, please. Well, in the meditation, what I think we’ve got to do, I think sometimes, is what I call a sacrifice audit, because sometimes we’re making sacrifices in our lives and they really are not of God, right, they are of some other things. They are some generational stuff, there’s some family of origin stuff, there’s some self-worth issues, there are some stuff that have been foisted on us by other people. And this is why, again, Jesus is so exemplary. He’s such a great example for us, because when Jesus is bopping around Galilee, you know doing the Jesus thing right, he encounters the devil, and we know it very well, we talk about it in the season of Lent and the devil, the Satan, the tempter, right, he gives Jesus three sacrifices to make, but Jesus, you know, wildly, you know, decides that these are not his sacrifices. He knows that his sacrifice is important, it will be important, but he knows that the sacrifices jump off of a steeple, you know kneel down and worship me. You know turn stone into bread. He knows that those are somebody’s sacrifices but those aren’t his sacrifices. He knows that his sacrifice is Calvary, right. And so I just want to make sure, if we’re going to really talk about sacrifice, like grown-up people who are sort of looking for a grown-up spirituality. What is your sacrifice to make right? Not your mama’s sacrifice, not your grandmama’s sacrifice, not mine, not yours, but what is their sacrifice. And that comes through a season of prayer and discernment, conversation, interaction with Scripture. So I know what my sacrifice is, because when I know my sacrifice, what my sacrifice is, then I can be present to it. Life is not arbitrary, it’s purposeful.

Melissa:

Okay, one final question, though, Backing up a little bit though you talked about, you know, family of origin stuff and all that kind of stuff, and yet sometimes I do believe that God is calling us to sacrifice or shed, shed some of that stuff that’s holding us down or keeping us from Relationship. So can you just kind of clarify that a little bit?

Bishop Wright:

Yeah, no, no doubt about it. I mean shedding, I think, is that I would differentiate. I would say shedding is a great idea. I think shedding is what we need to sort of be doing, because shedding is it’s molting, right, it’s it’s that when you know when crabs get a new shells, because the crab is growing right and the shell can no longer contain him. So I think that’s what we’re talking about. The funny thing about it is is that when you start choosing God’s way, you know, in the bits and pieces of your life, you will grow and some of the old things you used to say about yourself and about others, they will fall by the wayside. Look, there’s a wonderful prayer that the old people pray Lord, take the taste out of my mouth for X. Right, sometimes you’re talking about drinking or cigarettes or cursing or whatever. But Lord, take the taste out of my mouth for for words that are self-loathing. Take, take the words that I may have learned as a child in my environment a bigotry. Take those out of my mind. So I’m shedding, I’m growing, right, what I’m talking about sacrifices as I am growing. There’s this other piece, and this other piece is is that now? What do I need to give up Right, so that I can get in line with God’s program. And it always shows up in the big things of life how I spend my time, how I handle neighbor, how I handle money, what I prioritize, who am I serving, who do I see, who do I need to see again. It always shows up in those ways and you know, this is why Jesus’s stories are so important, right, because they get in you and they get through the bloodstream and they begin to pop up in all kinds of parts of your life. And you know, and this is why I would say, if we’re going to grow Right with the Genesis, the seed of the growth really is to embrace and ingest the stories, because it’s in the stories where we see how we’re living Versus how Jesus is inviting us to live. And when we see that gap, sacrifice is, the is the bridge we build across that gap.

Melissa:

Well, bishop, thank you for sharing all that, and, listeners, we’re so grateful for you for tuning in for people. You can follow us on Instagram and Facebook at Bishop Rob right. Please subscribe, leave a review and we’ll be back with you next week.