Bishop Wright: 0:00
It was Jesus’ habit to pray. He had this wonderful rhythm of action and reflection, you know, and part of that practice, you know, part of the way to live in rebellion, to empire right, which wants to commodify humanity, is to make sure that you use time right in constructive ways which affirm human dignity. A part of prayer is also understanding that eternity is in every moment.
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 For Faith and a link to subscribe in the episode’s description.
Melissa: 0:58
You called For devotion this week Time and it’s loosely based off of Luke 9, verses 28 to 36, but inspired by Abraham Heschel’s the Sabbath, a book. Now, I haven’t read this book, it’s actually on my to read. I’ve read about the book, but I really appreciate the fact that you’re bringing in something about Sabbath based off of and this is a fancy term transfiguration is when Jesus went up the mountain right, and so I don’t know, man, this is kind of a big leap for me, and yet it makes so much sense.
Melissa: 1:38
All right, so tell me where you landed the plane with this.
Bishop Wright: 1:43
Well, let’s see. So I don’t know if I can tell you how I land the plane, but I can tell you where we sort of we attempted to take off right. So you know, Luke tells us that Jesus took his friends, his executive committee, and they went up the mountain to pray. It was Jesus’s habit to pray. He had this wonderful rhythm of action and reflection. There’s a sermon right there about, you know, what is the balance of life? It’s action and reflection. What is the balance of health? It’s action and reflection. And so this was Jesus’s habit, this was his practice. Practice, you know. And part of that practice, you know, part of the way to live in rebellion, to empire right, which wants to commodify humanity, is to make sure that you use time right in constructive, you know, ways which affirm human dignity. So prayer is not just going up somewhere or to church or walking the dog and, you know, sort of talking about your wounds and your wants with God. That’s important to do, that’s part of prayer. But a part of prayer is also understanding that eternity is in every moment, Right. And so a mature life with God is to become attuned to the God who dwells in time and not just space, Right. So this is, this is these are. These are really Heschel’s ideas that I’m sort of paraphrasing Now.
Bishop Wright: 3:22
Rabbi Abraham Heschel was a great friend of Dr King’s. He marched with Dr King, you know. When asked you know, why is a Jew walking with Dr King? You know, in these protests for human dignity, he said I’m praying with my feet, you know. And so he wrote this book called the Sabbath, in 1951, and it is as relevant, perhaps more relevant now than ever, given the fact of the way that modern people do time and we don’t have an expansive sense of time. What’s interesting is that we dwell in space with things quite robustly. We have been reduced to consumers, not just people who are consumers or exercise that practice of being consumers, but who have been reduced to consumers. We are marketed to more than any generation ever before. And so Heschel, in 1951, and then, echoing down the hallways of time to us, say now, be careful.
Bishop Wright: 4:24
Even Kendrick Lamar at the Super Bowl said turn off the TV. I don’t know. You know, a lot of people didn’t understand what he was saying, and I am among them. I didn’t understand every word that the fellow said, but I did hear him say that repeatedly Turn off the TV. I did hear him say that repeatedly. Turn off the TV and I think that is what Heschel would agree is maybe a starting place to turn off the social media, to turn off things for a certain time, to develop that discipline so that you can be in time differently. Right, I can catch up with myself, I can catch up with God. I can catch up with God, I can process adequately emotions. And so when he’s talking about the Sabbath, his first point is is that God dwells in time and in every moment there is eternity.
Melissa: 5:15
Well, that’s huge right there. And when I think of time, you know time is linear, yes, and it’s also cyclical, right. One of the things that I love about the Episcopal Church is how we honor a rhythm in our liturgy, and one of the things that we will honor is the season of Lent, and that’s coming up Bishop. I think that’s just next week.
Bishop Wright: 5:43
Yeah, it is Absolutely.
Melissa: 5:44
It’s wild, and so I think one of the things that strikes me about this passage specifically is that I recently read Bishop Marianne Edgar Buddy’s book how we Learn to Be Brave, and one of the things that stood out to me was she was talking about Jesus going up the mountain in this verse, and when Jesus comes down, he sets his face towards Jerusalem, in that he knows that he is going to die, and yet is resolved in that to die, and yet is resolved in that.
Melissa: 6:22
And so, bishop, when we talk about prayer kind of being the backbone, I think you said action and reflection, action and reflection, you know, I think that’s where we get our resolve.
Bishop Wright: 6:37
No, that’s exactly right, and that’s actually the last sentence of the meditation. So, no, that’s exactly right, and that’s actually the last sentence of the meditation. So you know, at the moment of prayer, jesus is up the mountain. You know he has just enough eternity in that moment for him to face his destiny Right. And so you know, what’s interesting about action and reflection is is that how will we know what to action, how to action? Reflection is is that how will we know what to action, how to action, unless we base that on some reflection? And so logic dictates that if the reflection is better, then the action might be better, right, or will be better, in fact, right. And so when we talk about leadership, this is what we talk about getting up on the balcony with our organization so that we can ask the hard questions of mission and purpose what is our why, what is our what, what is our how? And so if we get up on the balcony and Jesus is up on the mountain, then we can take counsel not only with the divine, but with our best self.
Bishop Wright: 7:38
It’s amazing, when I was a very young pastor, we had an evening meeting a week. It’s. It’s amazing when I was a very young pastor. Um, you know, we had an evening meeting, a weekday evening meeting, and I I observed that people with all good intentions were sort of racing in through Atlanta traffic, uh, to be at this meeting and to be punctual, et cetera, and and we were all a bit crabby and cranky and the quality of the meeting left a lot to be desired. And what we did was we decided that at that same start time, as people were rushing in, we would have a meal, a meal would be provided, and we got a chance to get a meal together and to be human before we launched into the work. And the quality of the meeting went, it skyrocketed. It was amazing. People were there, people got there, so to speak. I mean, their body had been there previously, but then there’s some better part perhaps of them that got there once. We took care of a human need, which is to take a deep breath, let the shoulders fall from the earlobes and get there with a laugh and a smile and a prayer and a meal.
Bishop Wright: 8:54
I think this is all Heschel is saying. Heschel is saying that the heart of our existence as human beings is time. Time is the heart of our existence as human beings is time. Time is the heart of our existence and what sort of begins to corrode life is when we fail to sense the grandeur of what is eternal in time. You talk about being refreshed. It’s having a glimpse of that, having access to that with some regularity, a regular practice that washes over us and it begins to bring a clarity to us.
Bishop Wright: 9:29
If I have any real big concerns about young people these days, it’s about how they do time. I wonder if they’re ever refreshed by some of the things I’m talking about, wonder if they’re ever refreshed by some of the things I’m talking about. Now. My hope is that they will continue to use nature and all those sorts of things as ways to be. But as I sort of experience a lot of young people the young adults and even younger I’m worried about how they do time.
Bishop Wright: 10:00
Heschel talks about season and the rhythm of season, but we have artificial seasons now because whenever you have your phone, that’s a dictate of time, right? How many characters can you get on? An X statement or a TikTok is just a matter of seconds, et cetera. And I wonder if Heschel isn’t right and didn’t he was sort of saw this out in the distance that that is the beginning of decay of our better selves.
Bishop Wright: 10:31
And so how we take charge of this and this is why I wrote this just before we enter into the season of Lent is perhaps in Lent this season, on the way to Easter, perhaps in Lent this season on the way to Easter, maybe the biggest tweak we can make this Lent is to do maybe a social media or a media fast. Maybe we ought to give ourselves just one hour and to say you know, I mean, think about it, the average American watches over five hours of television, and I don’t even know. And then, of course, those of us who have Apple phones. We get a report every Sunday letting us know how much screen time we had Right, and what if you gave, what? If you tithed, you know, or gave 50% of that screen time to your own self, to your own self, hearing your own voice, hearing the voice of the divine.
Melissa: 11:50
I don’t know if you’ve heard of Cal Newport. He wrote a book called Digital Minimalism and it gave me hives.
Bishop Wright: 11:57
Oh, my God.
Melissa: 11:58
Let’s back up. You know to up when we talk about young people and their passion, which is what I typically will associate with youth. I’m concerned about capacity and you used another C word clarity and I feel like that’s what Jesus was able to model is the act of praying gave him capacity to be able to get clear what needed to be done or how he needed to be. And one of the things that I love, I’m training to be a spiritual director and I’ve noticed that instead of just starting a meeting with prayer and then launching right into it, I’ve been trying to even mundane meetings. I try to do either a poem or a small snippet to get people centered and grounded and really reflecting what matters most to them before we get to all the doing. I don’t know, bishop, I don’t know how I think some folks believe that if they take time to pray, that they’ll have less time to do the things that quote really matter.
Bishop Wright: 13:18
We’re afraid of time, melissa. We’re afraid of time and we’re afraid of quiet, and I don’t know how many philosophers could we quote here who have articulated the fact that we’re afraid to be alone with ourselves. There are things that we bear, there are contradictions that we hold that we know that we have suppressed. Um. There are addict, there are, there are rooms in our inner, in our inner mansion, uh, that we have locked and chained um because they’re too scary or they would cost too much, uh, to address Um, and that is one of the reasons why we have engineered our lives, the way in which we’ve engineered them.
Bishop Wright: 14:06
You know, jesus is the other C we could say letter C would be companionship. I mean, jesus goes up the mountain to pray. He brings human companionship, but they fail him. They fall asleep right, probably too bored. But then, in the moment of prayer, in this glimpse of eternity that he gets in his quietness with himself, elijah and Moses show up, and so there is this, and this will sound a bit mystical to some people, but there is this cosmic companionship that is our inheritance. We are not alone In the hardest parts of our life with God, we are not alone. There are men and women who have traveled this road before us. We are not superior spiritual athletes, and neither were they. They were people who were attempting to live a life of integrity and who made mistakes and got up and kept walking, and we are numbered with them in prayer, in solitude, in eternity. That we get that glimpse we get in prayer, time collapses and we are gathered up with the saints who went before us.
Bishop Wright: 15:25
In the Episcopal Church. Our service does not climax with the sermon, and thank God and I say that even as a preacher our service climaxes with the Eucharist. That’s communion a fancy word for Thanksgiving with the Eucharist. That’s communion, fancy word for Thanksgiving.
Bishop Wright: 15:39
And what I love about that is is that what we believe in that moment, when we are doing as Jesus told us to do, to break the bread and to drink the wine and to share it liberally with everybody, we believe that time collapses. We believe that heaven and earth are gathered together in that moment and we believe that our strength is not only doing the ritual and not only being together, but that even heaven is attentive to that moment and present in that moment. And so when we look at this text in the ninth chapter of Luke, in this moment of prayer. This is what happens and it’s this cosmic companionship that gives Jesus. I believe that gives Jesus the courage he needs to do what he needs to do, because now he’s looking at people who have gone before him, who also were courageous in their day, and he takes strength from them.
Melissa: 16:42
Bishop, one of my favorite Howard Thurman poems is Life Goes On. Are you familiar with that one?
Bishop Wright: 16:49
Yeah.
Melissa: 16:50
It’s my favorite, but it starts out with during these turbulent times, and so I know we’re talking about times, but we’re also this I mean, friends, if you’re not familiar with the poem, it’s definitely worth looking up. But he talks really about some of the stuff that we’re talking about being able to recognize what actual evil is and what evil exists to do the times that we’re in. You know he talks about being turbulent back when. Howard Thurman, what was this like middle of the 19th century?
Bishop Wright: 17:24
Well, you’re given such a good image here you really are. And Howard Thurman talked about turbulent times. He also talked about the traffic of our minds, and so when I think about that idea turbulent times I think about you know, we have all these beautiful streams and rivers in North Georgia and you know I’ve just taken up trout fishing as a hobby, and what’s interesting to me is standing out in that fast moving water because there are rocks and places, that sort of push back against the turbulence.
Melissa: 18:01
They create these wonderful little pools, and the pools are unusually more quiet, right and less turbulent than all the water rushing around them, and so I think this is what prayer is yeah, and I’m going to say the end of the poem says this to drink in the beauty that is within reach, to clothe one’s life with simple deeds of kindness, to keep alive a sensitiveness to the movement of the spirit of God, in the quietness of the human heart and in the workings of the human mind. This is, as always, the ultimate answer to the great deception that’s fire there, right there, bishop that that’s.
Bishop Wright: 18:45
That. That is fire, that is fire, that is fire, and I I hope what it is is a great invitation as we head into lent, uh, or or, if you’re not a person who practices Lent, a great invitation to go to that reliable source. Right, that is calm and strengthening, no matter what’s happening around us.
Melissa: 19:14
May it be so, bishop. Thank you and thank you, listeners, for listening 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.
