For People with Bishop Rob Wright
For People with Bishop Rob Wright
Magnificent
What if faith could topple the mighty and elevate the humble? The Magnificat, Mary's timeless song of hope and defiance, holds the key to addressing today's inequities and injustices.
In this episode, Melissa and Bishop Wright have a conversation about Mary's visit to Elizabeth and how Mary's decree inspires us to hold fast to hope even in the world's brokenness. Listen in for the full conversation.
Read For Faith, the companion devotional.
I love how the prophet says that we are prisoners of hope. And so we are prisoners of hope. I read the newspapers and yet at the same time I understand and do believe with all my soul that God is real, able, good and generous. And when I see some of these terrible things, I don't see the absence of God. I see the presence of broken people lashing out at other broken people.
Melissa: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. Good morning, bishop.
Bishop Wright:Morning.
Melissa:You called this week's devotion magnificent and of course, it's based off of the Magnificat Mary's poem. You know, I don't know about you, but I kind of hope that one day I'll be able to like, I'll say something or write something down and someone turns it into a song, right? So Magnificat, we're in Advent. Mary is kind of a badass. What's hitting you?
Bishop Wright:I think that has never been said anywhere for public consumption, that Mary gets called a badass. I mean Well, look, I mean well, set up the scene right, set up the scene. So Mary is basically in her first trimester scene. So Mary is basically in her first trimester. Her cousin, elizabeth, is in her second trimester. Gabriel announces to Mary that she is highly favored and that God has regarded her low estate and that she will be the mother of our Lord. She takes a road trip, goes to Elizabeth's house, two bellies bump at the doorway. They have an exchange.
Bishop Wright:Elizabeth and her husband Zechariah have struggled with infertility for decades. Husband Zechariah have struggled with infertility for decades. How to believe in God when your prayers go unanswered for decades. I mean, before we even get to Mary we could stop by Elizabeth and have her bless us, but nevertheless Elizabeth holds on. She's pregnant with John the Baptist. Mary shows up and then Elizabeth's baby John prenatally jumps in her womb. At the closeness now of Mary and the prenatal Jesus, of Mary and the prenatal Jesus.
Bishop Wright:And in response to all of this, I mean if you can just imagine two pregnant ladies agreeing together about how wonderfully blessed they feel to be with child Mary, breaks out in song. Right, my soul magnifies the Lord and my spirit rejoices in God, my Savior, for God has regarded the lowest state, my lowliness. Generations will call me blessed. So I guess you know you got to just sort of get down into the story and look around. You know I always tell people you know, walk into the story, don't just sort of read it or keep it at an intellectual distance.
Bishop Wright:Walk into it and bring what you know about pregnant ladies into the story and bring what you know about people who have waited a long time and who've had a lot of faith and who've been so blessed that they also bear a sense of disbelief. You know this surreal thing is happening. Walk into the story with all that and then you know you get to see Mary just sing this song. I mean it's like those old movies when I was growing up where you know all of a sudden there's a plot and there's dialogue and then people just break out in song and it's an inspiring song. It's a song of faith. There's a wonderful affirmation about having faith and about the random nature of being blessed. That's all in the story. But then also the Magnificat Mary's song is dangerous.
Melissa:That's what I and that's my next question. You used the word it's so dangerous.
Bishop Wright:And that's my next question. It's so dangerous.
Melissa:We have talked about the Magnificat before I know you're a huge fan of Mary. I know you're a huge fan of the song I love the subversive, like you deem that. And so what, specifically, bishop, do you think is most subversive about this passage?
Bishop Wright:Well, a couple of things. So it's inspiring and dangerous. So it's both at the same time, right. So here's what's dangerous about the Magnificat that God is wide awake and God is acting, and that God is wide awake, acting and God is seeing, and God is seeing all the inequity that perhaps we don't want to see, don't want to acknowledge or don't see. You know, honestly, and then God is about the business of doing something about it that God is a God of reversal, and so this God that shows up in Mary's song is a God who has a contempt for inequity and injustice, and so, in as much as God is close and loving and regards Mary's lowliness, this is also an affirmation of the poor, the powerless, that their day is coming and that their day is on the horizon, they are not forgotten by God, and that those of us who are fat and happy and who are satisfied to leave the world as it is, with its inequities, there's a reckoning coming for us. And so, you know, the empty God will fill, but the rich and the full, they will be sent away empty. And so this is a God of reversal. And so, if you look at it from the perspective of the poor, well, this is mercy, right and mercy, and God's seeing the poor and the left out and the left behind is the medicine for misery.
Bishop Wright:But if you come at this poem, this song, from another perspective, then it becomes ominous. Have plenty, and if you have too much and if you've not been on the side of the poor in your own life, then you find yourself, in this poem, at odds with God, and that's a problem. The main message of this poem is that God keeps God's promises and that God's strength is in God keeping God's promises and that God is God's promises, god is God's patterns, and so when we say we have faith, do we mean that we only have intellectual assent to the idea that there's some creator being who is benevolent? And if that's where you start, then hallelujah, that's a great thing. But if you dig deeper into the stories and you listen to Mary and Elizabeth and John the Baptist, and later Jesus and Paul and the whole cast of characters, now you have to understand that God has a pattern and that that pattern is pretty consistent throughout scripture and you might find yourself at odds with that All right.
Melissa:I love this so much because I'm thinking of patterns that I've recognized in the Bible, and I recognize and my lived experience is like what's happened in the Bible is not very different than what happens in real life, which that's why it's so applicable, right yeah, in real life, which that's why it's so applicable, right yeah. I wonder, like I think God, god is God, is God unchanging? And oftentimes it's the people who are crying out, who see injustice and are saying help me, help me, help me, and God's like, I'm here, I'm faithful, all the things. And sometimes I wonder if the people who are writing their greatest laments long for revenge or a comeuppance of the people who are other. Rather, it were the weak and the poor and the oppressed telling the people who have the halves, the corrupt, that they're going to go to hell. And then you've got those people who are up here who are saying, oh well, they're kind of like victim shaming the poor and the weak. I'm just curious where do you think God is with the leveling and the equity? Where?
Bishop Wright:No, that's a great question. So what you're sort of asking at base is is that, is the Magnificat, sort of a partisan, you know, sort of treatise, right? So it's the have-nots in the story who have the pen. And so is this just about we're going to make God the way that we want God, and God is going to take care of us. The lowly God is going to lift, and those who are high and mighty, god is going to put them down. And I guess you could wonder that. I think it's a legitimate question.
Bishop Wright:But Mary is probably very influenced by the song of Hannah, right? And so, you know, if we think that individuals are sort of making things up as they go along, then I think you know the likelihood that you know this can be sort of batted back and forth. Like you know, partisanship makes sense, but there's a thread that runs through. So when Mary is speaking, it is highly likely that Mary can hear the song of Hannah in her head, right? And so as we speak in faith to right now, we also speak of a faith that predates our present circumstances, and so faith in this song is come on, god be who my ancestors said you were, and not only that, with the benefit of hindsight, when Moses and the Hebrews get across the Red Sea, it's Miriam who gathers the women and they sing the song and they say, wow, god, basically you have triumphed. You brought a people who's not even a people, a gaggle of ethnicities. You brought a people who's not even a people, a gaggle of ethnicities who had a common bondage history. You brought them out and, wow, aren't you worthy to be praised. And so this is the thing about faith.
Bishop Wright:I think that needs to be heard nowadays, you know, I'm worried about a faith that's not tethered to the faith of our ancestors.
Bishop Wright:Right, because maybe we take too much license. Sometime I want to be in the company of Miriam and Hannah and Mary and Elizabeth. I want to share my notes of my lived experience with God with other people who've had lived experience with God. Lived experience with God with other people who've had lived experience with God, and I want to see that thread. That thread is what actually gives me some hope, because now I get to know who God is. But if I'm making this all up by myself, then I could see how a real profound doubt could set in, because one could wonder to themselves hey, haven't I just made this all up. But when I stand beside Paul and Silas and Timothy and so on and I'm noticing my experiences and what they're saying some thousands of years ago actually has resonance and finds me, locates me now. Now I think I have a better understanding of what faith is. Faith is this shared gift over generations that God has enabled.
Melissa:This Magnificat an incredible song, inspiring for so many people and accessible for again. Partisan or not, that's what I like about it it's accessible for all people. I am wondering how we apply this in our everyday lives, Bishop we had another incredibly devastating shooting just occur in Wisconsin and how can we apply the hope or the messages of the Magnificat in our everyday lives, despite all of the just heartbreaking stuff that's going on today?
Bishop Wright:This is an excellent question because I think that you know, when we have these kinds of conversations, or even when people go to church or hear a song or hear some inspiring sort of address, they are captured, arrested for a moment, encouraged, even inspired, and then you know they get breaking news on the phone or you know there's some sort of gut punch in the news and then you know, things sort of fall apart. We should remember that, as Mary Mary was also, you know, a teenage girl, and we have found out this morning that the perpetrator of this school shooting 200 school shootings, by the way, in 2024, this most recent one was perpetrated by a teenage girl. So this, you know, one teenage girl. This morning we're talking about a singing about the glory of God and one took her own life after taking lives on a school campus, a Christian school campus called the Abundant Life School, right. So I think what we have to remember about Mary is that, as we think about these characters in this book, these people have faith in the midst of really dire circumstances. We shouldn't forget that Mary is a subject of Rome, she's colonized, she's oppressed, she lives and breathes at the pleasure of Rome on the ground, or an occupying police force who can take life, who can take life if they choose to. So you know. And they're in bone crushing poverty. Because you know, rome and some Jewish people who participate with Rome are extracting, you know, terrible taxes from people. Violence is all around. People are being crucified from time to time, all around. This is a public lynching, and this group of people has had to have faith for many centuries, having been occupied by lots of different occupying forces.
Bishop Wright:And so I think that what we get from Mary and others in Scripture is that violence in our midst and tragic days and terrible days did not prove the absence of God, right, and so it's messier than we want it to be. It's messy. It's very, very messy. And the messiness is that somehow we are to believe in God, to trust in God and to stretch that over time and circumstances. And is that easy?
Bishop Wright:No, but what we find when we look back into the Bible 66 books of people trying to hold on to God's hand and God holding on to people's hands in the real world is that we find out that nobody is exempt from trouble, hardship, heartache, and that, nevertheless, god is real. And so we are caught in that tension. I love how the prophet says that we are prisoners of hope. And so we are prisoners of hope. I read the newspapers and yet, at the same time, I understand and do believe with all my soul that God is real, able, good and generous. And when I see some of these terrible things, I don't see the absence of God, I see the presence of broken people lashing out at other broken people. Right, and so God did not make us robots, and so we have something called free will, and the high cost of free will is that, you know, the hand that can squeeze a trigger can also caress a face, and that's where we live.
Melissa:People often lash out at other broken people. Sometimes I feel like it's religion itself that often drives people to tear down and cut up other people, and so I'm reminded of that. I don't know if it's a fable, a myth or based on true story. During World War I think it was one or two it was Christmas Eve and there was a ceasefire and people started singing Silent Night. You know, I don't know. That image comes to mind.
Bishop Wright:I believe it was World War. I yeah.
Melissa:Yeah, I just. How can we be better at being God's people, holding intention what we believe and not vilifying or atting at people Like? I don't want to happen to people based upon my belief. I want to be able to protect mine without running roughshod over others.
Bishop Wright:Well, you know, one of the things we've got to take a look at is you know, what is Jesus's definition of strength? Right? And so I think, when I look at the media nowadays and I look at you know, various groups laying claim to, you know, christian identity, what I what comes to my mind is is that so, even as they say, yeah, I'm a Christian, then they go sort of take a left turn and then begin to define strength which looks much more like aggression.
Bishop Wright:And so I you know, if all of us and all of us fall short, but if all of us would do a better job at trying to live out the strength as defined by Jesus, I think this may help us immensely, jesus, I think this may help us immensely. So strength is not how we look. One of the big cautionaries, even in the Magnificat, is how are you doing power? How are you doing power? How are you doing power? And I think there's nothing more sad than those of us who do power the way the world says we ought to do power, and then sprinkle some Jesus talk over top of it. Right, I think that hypocrisy, that hypocrisy has caused many people to walk away from the whole Christian enterprise because they see the hypocrisy. So you can't have your cake and eat it too. Either you're going to follow Jesus down the road that he lays out, which looks like strength that the world doesn't really understand and that the world actually calls weak, or you're going to sort of say I'm going to live out strength and power the way the world says, but then I'll just I'll label it Jesus. Right, that's called Jesus.
Bishop Wright:Identity theft is what that's called. Right, that's called Jesus. Identity theft is what that's called right, that's called bleeding switch, that's called falsehood, that's called BS, is what that's called right. So we, you know, and Jesus's idea of strength is to trust God, to trust God's promises, to use God's power in the form of mercy, to forgive, to share right, and so I think you know you brought me back to the story. So I think what we've got to do is really absolutely wash ourselves regularly in Jesus's version of strength, in God's version of strength, which is time tested. Remember, god is God's pattern, right? This is what we have to stop and think about a minute. God is God's pattern. So do you have faith in the pattern God, in the pattern of God that emerges in scripture, or are you making stuff up on your own Right?
Melissa:We're patterning ourselves after the people who God, yeah, yeah.
Bishop Wright:What's the old line? You know, in the beginning God made us in God's image and ever since we've been returning the favor right. So I mean, it's funny until it's tragic, it's funny until it's tragic, and then, when it's tragic, it's absolutely tragic. And when it's tragic, it's absolutely tragic, and what we end up doing is really committing idolatry, heresy and blasphemy all at the same time. We end up being at odds with God, we end up being the enemy of God For today's purposes.
Bishop Wright:What the Magnificat says, what Mary says, is go ahead, god, be the God that you have always been, see the lowly and raise them up, fill the hungry. You know, for those who are on thrones, I mean, it's not lost on us that when Mary's talking about thrones, people being cast down from thrones, she's probably thinking of, you know, the governor Herod. She's probably thinking of, you know the governor Herod. She's probably thinking of you know the emperor. She's probably thinking about all these folks who she has firsthand knowledge of and the way that they wield power.
Bishop Wright:And she's saying God, you know, we know that you're a God of equity. The ancestors tell us you're a God of equity, of justice, and so come on, god, be that God of equity of justice, and so, come on, god be that. And she believes this so much that she talks about the future like it's already been settled, and that's the Christmas faith. The Christmas faith is that we just get to celebrate it every year, but we believe the matter is settled. It's settled, and the working out of all of this is just the death rattle right of sin and brokenness and hatred, on the way to a foregone conclusion, which is we are siblings and one day all the isms will be dead.
Melissa:A magnificent thing, for sure.
Bishop Wright:A magnificent thing.
Melissa:Thank you so much, and, listeners, thank you 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.