Tested

Bishop Wright: 0:00

Hope takes courage, because what you’re risking is being disappointed by God, and hope feels like a bridge too far for most of us, especially when situations are dire. We wonder if we’re just being silly or childish to even want to have hope in difficult circumstances. I understand it, and yet that is the journey, right? You know, for us, in our tradition, easter doesn’t come before Good Friday, right, easter comes after Good Friday.

Melissa: 0:42

Hi listeners, 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 For Faith and a link to subscribe in the episode’s description. How’s it going, bishop?

Bishop Wright: 0:56

Yes, yes For yes, here we are.

Melissa: 0:59

You named this week’s devotion, tested based off of Hebrews 2, verses 14 through 18.

Bishop Wright: 1:07

That’s right.

Melissa: 1:09

And really I’m reading it. It’s about suffering. It’s about all the things that Jesus exemplified in the ways that he suffered. So I’m curious what’s kind of the big broad stroke that?

Bishop Wright: 1:25

he suffered. So I’m curious what’s kind of the big broad stroke? Well, we always try to use this podcast as fodder for people’s reflection and thinking and I hope that people experience this podcast as an effort in care. And so when I think about this word tested and I think about suffering as it appears in the second chapter of Hebrews, I’m aware that a lot of people have left the church because they are church hurt, and I’m aware also that there’s a lot of people who, because they have been church hurt and been away from the church for a long time, some people are coming back to church and trying to find churches where they can be helped with some of these words and ways that have been foisted on them as younger people, foisted on them as younger people. And so you know, part of what I think, I do or hope to do when I’m writing and then when we talk, melissa, is just try to invite people into a graceful space. You try to use this platform just to invite people to think and to affirm them and encourage them.

Bishop Wright: 2:39

And so you know, as I start off this meditation, I say some people believe that human suffering is either God-ordained punishment or it’s God testing them. And I just want to think about that with people. You know I go on to say you know, people get to those conclusions in my experience, either through shattering pain, the shattering pain of life, or bad theology that oversimplifies Bad theology, that’s looking for a one-to-one cause and effect explanation of everything in life. They want to do that and I understand it. They want to do that because for some people it’s easier to understand that oh, there’s a God sitting on high who’s putting these burdens on my back to test and see if I will be a good follower. It’s easier for some people to think that than it is for them to understand that suffering is tragically random. Some people are suffering right now just because of what part of the world they woke up in.

Bishop Wright: 3:51

Some people are suffering for lots of different reasons. Some people got diseases just because it was just genetics. They didn’t do anything wrong. Their mother or father didn’t do anything wrong. They’re suffering. Some people are suffering because they live under, born in certain places where there are unjust legal systems and unjust sort of predatory economic systems. They’re suffering.

Bishop Wright: 4:19

And then there’s another genre of suffering and that is sometimes there’s suffering that comes as a result of our own personal choices. There’s suffering that are just the consequences of saying yes or no to certain things, but the bottom line here is that suffering, by and large, is part of the human condition. It’s what it means to be human. It’s regrettable, and certainly some of us maybe want to give God some advice about how to proof us from suffering. But suffering in one form or the other ultimately even we all suffer. Death is just what it means to be human, and so I want to talk about the ways in which Jesus made his way through that, not that God forced him or us, but the ways in which suffering and testing show up in life. I hope that it gives people a grasp, a handle on perhaps some suffering that they themselves are going through, which we could call testing.

Melissa: 5:28

Yeah, I love that you point out here his suffering. It was his suffering. That quote tested him, not God, but that his suffering came because he was upright in a crooked world. So that was like the world causing the suffering that he chose because he was standing upright. So I guess there lies the test. But that it wasn’t God doing it to him.

Bishop Wright: 5:52

No, exactly right. So if you go out and run a marathon right at the end of that marathon, you’re going to suffer some version of exhaustion.

Melissa: 6:03

Or blisters.

Bishop Wright: 6:04

Right, blisters, maybe dehydration, et cetera, et cetera, right, but it comes as a consequence of what you have decided to do, right. And so what I want to say about Jesus’s suffering is that did God sit on high and need Jesus to suffer? I don’t believe that God did. I think that to the world in Jesus, wanting to live with integrity, upright, truthful, purposeful, that had consequences. He was upright, as I like to say, upright in a crooked world.

Bishop Wright: 6:38

John the Baptist came to speak truth. John the Baptist came to speak truth to his own religious tradition and their response was to collude with then government and have him beheaded. I mean, there are consequences when you know, in our own nation’s history, when women stood up and said that women ought to have the vote in this country, those women suffered as a consequence of their vision about a democracy that embraced the other 50% of its population, women. There were consequences to that. They were labeled, they were written off, they were castigated. So that’s what I want to say about this particular, particular kind of suffering. Jesus suffered as a result of his actions and he suffered in a particular way that the headline in this whole text is. He suffered and therefore we have a friend who knows suffering. Therefore, we have a resource when our time comes.

Melissa: 7:48

Ah, and therein lies the gold right, when our time comes.

Bishop Wright: 7:54

Yeah, well, look, that’s the whole point. So if we say, the logic flows this way. So if suffering whether we’re talking about stage four cancer or whether we’re talking about I’m suffering from some poor choices that I have made, the consequences of those choices, whatever my genre of suffering am I left alone to suffer? Are there no resources for me? Well, the good news is there is a resource, whether it’s the cancer ward or my own choices, right? And it is number one, that suffering can be generative. When we look at the way Jesus handles suffering, it becomes generative. Jesus locates us in our suffering, comes alongside us in our suffering, encourages in our suffering, and not only that, invites us to then give our suffering, our journey to other people, right, in other words, as a resource to other people who come behind us to suffer. So what does suffering mean? Well, we would say, in the faith community, suffering means that I have an opportunity in these particular circumstances. Right To number one know something of God. There’s something of God that is revealed to us in suffering. That’s the good news.

Melissa: 9:38

I hear you 100%. I’m also struck by the idea, or the notion of the perpetual need to heal in order to have said resources, to continuing to continue in suffering. If and when there’s something for which we need to suffer through. Does that make sense? Well, say more. Well, I’m just, I’m curious. We can’t give that which we do not have.

Bishop Wright: 10:05

Right.

Melissa: 10:05

And so where, then, is the resource, so that we’re not just completely, just annihilated in our suffering? Yeah, yeah, no, that’s great.

Bishop Wright: 10:14

No, that’s great, A great question. So we would say in the Christian community, we would say our resources are first one another. So if I am empty, I’m in fellowship, I’m in community with you, right, and you are a resource to me. We would say that our faith, tradition is our resource. We would say our 66 books of the Bible are our resource. We would say in our church, we would say the sacraments of the church are our resource, the body and blood of Christ, we would say sacred music, inspirational music, is a resource, all those things that, when turned toward us and ingested by us, strengthen us. We would say just, community, this notion that I am not alone, is a resource.

Bishop Wright: 11:04

Sometimes, so many of us, you know, compound our suffering by isolating ourselves, and I understand the temptation to do that. But the better practice in suffering is to have someone you know. Bill Withers’ song comes to mind. Lean On Me, right, and I’m not trying to be cute here, but what Bill Withers does is he names something so important in that old, wonderful standard song which is when you’re not strong and I’ll be your friend, I’ll help you carry on. I mean. So there are lots of resources.

Bishop Wright: 11:39

So what we’ve got to not do is give in to self-pity, right? What we’ve got to not do is just think that you know, I’m I mean, look Jesus. Even Jesus flirted with the idea of being am I forsaken? I’m overwhelmed by my suffering and so. So, therefore, does that mean I am forsaken? And I think even Jesus gives us wonderful permission then to just say that to those of us who are faithful, that we don’t have to be stoic in all our suffering, we can even say something to God, we can wonder, we can cry out to God hey God, where are you even now? So yeah, I think there’s like a we are enveloped by resources as we suffer, and I think that’s sort of the best possible scenario, isn’t it? You know? And what’s interesting to me about that is, I mean, I’ve been on the you know the hospital wards and the ICUs and all that, and it’s amazing, this companionship and suffering that we can give to each other. It’s the handheld, it’s the back padded, it’s the listening, it’s just. It’s standing beside somebody as they cry. It’s allowing them to confess that they are overwhelmed in our midst. It’s not trying to fix them or give them a Bible platitude at the wrong time, right, it’s just to be.

Bishop Wright: 13:03

And you know the fact that we have as a symbol of our organization the Christian church, the fact that we have as a symbol of our organization the Christian church, jesus, who knew suffering, who was not a sort of elite spiritual superhero, a friend who saw his cousin decapitated, his big cousin, who had actually encouraged him to live his life with a one-word sermon called repent. I mean, he is a friend we talk about. Oh, what a friend we have in Jesus. But he is a friend in joy and a friend in suffering. And so what we want to say to people is that is God testing you?

Bishop Wright: 13:59

I don’t like to use that language. I think life is a test. I think being human is a test, and the test is revealing what is actually primary for us. Life tests us in a way that it showcases our gaps. Life tests us in a way that we now have some sense of how I can strengthen myself.

Bishop Wright: 14:23

We talk about in our tradition that my infirmity, my weakness, might invite me to know Christ in deeper ways right.

Bishop Wright: 14:34

And that my infirmity right now might fortify my faith, which is countercognitive, right.

Bishop Wright: 14:41

So I’m not being just absolutely diminished here that there is some part, even as my body is weakened, there is some part of me that can be strengthened, which will hold me. And, of course, look, if you’ve ever had the blessing of meeting someone who sort of defied self-pity, who moved through those seasons, who moved through the seasons of questioning God and then, even as they battled, let’s say, disease or something, had this upsurge of confidence in God and faith in God, then you’ve had a great gift. If you’ve ever met those people and those people are the people that I remember and you want to be like them that’s this infectious thing that happens with faith is that when you meet heroes and sheroes in the faith, you want to be one, because you know that there are people who are behind you, looking at you. And it’s not about performing faith. It’s about finding something in our faith that is authentic, that allows me to cry and be strong all at the same time, and then to extend that to someone else.

Melissa: 16:01

Wow. Well, you just said a number of things and it’s like you picked them out of my brain, only not necessarily in the order that I had them. You said about authenticity. I was thinking about something about powering through, and sometimes I feel like people have to put on a brave face, and they do, and that’s wonderful. I’m curious how we can be authentic. You also said authentic. How can we be more authentic with one another so that we don’t have to be fake about our suffering, or is there a way to be, or not?

Bishop Wright: 16:40

Well, yes, of course, so authentic is. I’m afraid. I got a diagnosis and I’m afraid, right, I mean there’s no performance necessary, right? No religious entertainment will do right. I mean there’s no performance necessary, right? No religious entertainment will do right. What we’re looking at is I’m human and I’m afraid I don’t want to leave my marriage by death. I don’t want to leave my children, you know, motherless or fatherless. I mean that is a part of being authentic and I live in tension with faith. I’m also afraid and I also have faith and I’m just trying to work with both of those things which are authentically who I am.

Bishop Wright: 17:15

You know I love to see these. These, these videos sometimes will pop up on my social media where some, some I saw a firefighter who was diagnosed with cancer and had to have his head shaved and everybody in his fire department shaved their head so that they could be alongside of their brother, and I’ve seen that. You know, with children, you know that family members, you know there is a way to be human and I think that is what is really rich and that is what is the gift, and I think this is the gift that Jesus gives us, that he was in fact human. I mean, you know and walked through all these things that we know. I think that makes him a reliable conversation partner and I think that makes him someone who is trustworthy.

Melissa: 18:03

Yeah, I guess my greatest lament for Jesus fellow human beings suffering is when they suffer so, so deeply, and maybe because of their theology, they blame God for it and they just like completely give up.

Bishop Wright: 18:20

Life is a crapshoot. And and look people in my business, they’re not. We could be more honest about that. And and loving God and living for God does not guarantee, does not entitle you to a sort of a fence around your life, right, it does not save you from what it means to be human. People love God and have been absolutely faithful and they will get cancer Right, will get cancer right. People will love God and serve God with their whole life and they will get you know, alzheimer’s, right.

Bishop Wright: 19:03

And so the invitation is right to live our lives and understand that this faith in Jesus Christ in its best form helps us to live with the randomness of life. It doesn’t protect us from the randomness of life, right, we live with it. We live with it. And, to be honest, which would you choose? I’d rather have resources if life is random than to have no resources at all and have to deal with this of my own power and my own understanding. Look, what Jesus does and perhaps it’s his greatest gift is he helps us to find meaning, even in suffering.

Melissa: 19:45

Yeah, so how is that a resource for us, bishop? How do we connect the dots between our relationship with God and God being a worthy resource for us?

Bishop Wright: 19:56

Because I am not alone. I am not alone, and even Jesus knew what it felt like to feel forsaken and to suffer, to be abandoned, rejected and abused. I am not alone, I have a friend I mean I hope it doesn’t sound so simplistic, but at some level it is and the resource is that not only do I have Jesus, but I have some of Jesus’s friends to come alongside of me, right, and I have a place we call it prayer to tell out all of my fear, to tell about all of my anger I mean, that’s the other thing I want to say. I think begs for us to say here and that is anger with God is a part of a life with God, and so we haven’t let God down and we can’t say, you know, we shouldn’t sort of be ashamed of that, it’s part of of life with God.

Bishop Wright: 20:51

Moving through you talked about authenticity Moving through all of those quadrants of life with God should yield for us an authentic relationship with God. Look at the Psalms, for instance. Every emotion you and I could have given any circumstances of our lives is already in the Psalms, arguably one of the most human books of the Bible. Right, it’s all there. And so there’s permission in the Psalms to say everything we need to. What I despise is when we tell people and religious traditions tell people that they’re letting down God because they have these very human emotions or they ask why? Right and so. That’s tragic to me, that’s insult and injury, that’s spiritual malpractice.

Melissa: 21:58

Bishop, not too long ago a friend of mine made a shocking statement and said it’s silly to have hope because ultimately, it’s hope that lets you down, because ultimately, it’s hope that lets you down. Obviously they’re going through a period of suffering and yet, wow, what a statement, and it just. I had a visceral reaction to it. I’m curious if you’ve got a response.

Bishop Wright: 22:22

Hope takes courage right, because what you’re risking is being disappointed by God. So you know, I understand the person’s sentiment and hope feels like a bridge too far for most of us, especially when situations are dire. We wonder if we’re just being silly or childish to even want to have hope in difficult circumstances, medical or other kinds of circumstances and relationships. Hope for our lives? I understand it, and yet that is the journey right For us. In our tradition, easter doesn’t come before Good Friday, right, easter comes after Good Friday. And so you know the very bottom right, the very bottom of it all, is part of what comes next right. And you know that whole movement, you know, I think, is really a cyclical movement for our lives. There’s a tragic down that is followed oftentimes by an up. There are resources to deal with the down so that we can find our way towards up, towards hope. And sometimes the truth is we don’t have any hope right now and so we’ve got to borrow hope. And again, let me just stress again, this is why we have each other Before know, when I, before I, was elected Bishop, I had a congregation in Southwest Atlanta, a marvelous congregation, and you know we had a hundred voice volunteer choir right, which is was extraordinary. Yeah, we grew from 15 people in the choir to a hundred voices and in the early days, before we got all big and fancy and maybe when there were only about a hundred folks showing up total, I was notorious as we begun worship and I would listen to them sing, I would stop them, I would stop the organist from playing and I would stop everybody from singing. And I look back now and think to myself oh my God, I can’t believe I did that, but I would stop them. And it became a little bit funny to some of them, annoying to others and I would say is that what we’re going to do this morning? Is that we’re going to mumble this morning? And then I would preach a little mini sermon right there and I would say don’t you know that somebody, all they can do today was just to get in this building. Life is so hard for somebody this morning that all they could do is get in this building and sit down beside you. You need to sing for them because they can’t sing, and maybe on next Sunday they’ll return the favor. And so you know, I heard a long time ago that one of the great indicators of congregational health is congregational singing, and so so I just beat that drum, beat that drum and finally it became quite the singing congregation, and I thought that was one of the best gifts that we could give each other, which is to sing hope into one another, is that there were days when not only did I only have enough strength to get in that building, but I also had to preach, and there were occasions where I thought to myself and did say to God hey, god, you better help me because I don’t know, I don’t have much today, and that choir would get to singing and they would sing.

Bishop Wright: 26:10

It’s almost like blowing air over embers and I and so when you, we talk about hope, that’s what I think about. I think about we’ve got to do that for each other. Jesus, the way he holds suffering, he does that for, for us. That’s what that the writer of hebrews is saying. Therefore, we have someone who has been suffered, who has suffered, and so we have someone who has suffered and so we have access to him, even as we are being tested by our suffering. But we’ve got to do that for each other, and it’s not contingent on agreeing with each other politically or about any issue of the day, it is probably one of the most human things we can do is to be an outstretched hand as another brother or sister is suffering.

Melissa: 26:54

Indeed Friends, if you’re suffering, just please remember you are not alone. You’re not alone, bishop, thank you. 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.