For People with Bishop Rob Wright
For People with Bishop Rob Wright
Dangerous Oddness
“Love your enemies, do good to those who hate you, bless those who curse you and pray for those who abuse you.” Those are Jesus’ directives to us who call him lord. What a dangerous oddness! The concept of "dangerous oddness," a unique term by Walter Brueggemann, paints a picture of Jesus' countercultural call.
In this episode, Melissa and Bishop Wright have a conversation about redefining society's norm and loving your enemy. They discuss Jesus' guidance, his own response to loving those that curse you, and how we can apply his teachings to our lives. Listen in for the full conversation.
Read For Faith, the companion devotional.
So then, ultimately, we're brought to this intersection, which is this, and this is why this is a dangerous oddness and an extraordinary difficulty and a beautiful struggle. And all that, and that is Jesus is saying will you follow me, Because this is where I'm going. I'm going into enemy love. You know, from his own cross he's being lynched in front of his mother right and he says forgive, Forgive them, Father, for they know not what they do.
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 devotion and a link to subscribe in the episode's description. Hey, hey, Bishop, hey, Melissa. Today's devotion you called Dangerous Oddness.
Bishop Wright:Yeah.
Melissa:And it's based off of Luke Luke 6, verses 27 to 38. And it's Jesus talking about loving our enemies and doing good to those who persecute us, and so this is kind of a bit of a fiery devotion. You want to say what's kind of hitting you most with this passage.
Bishop Wright:I think, just to sort of open with a big punch to the tummy. I think that the church oftentimes is guilty of trying to fit Jesus into sort of mainstream, acceptable behavior and I think that that does violence and damage to Jesus's actual words and actual way to be. And so what I'm aware of in and this, this whole business in Luke six about loving enemies, is just one big, gigantic sort of, you know, flashing sign that I think Jesus is saying we are different and that's why, you know, we entitled it dangerous oddness, dangerous oddness is a phrase I'm borrowing from Walter Brueggemann, who says that Jesus is the alternative to the empire. Right, jesus is the alternative to the status quo. And if you start to look at Jesus in Matthew, mark, luke and John through that lens, jesus is not trying to make you a good American, trying to make you something that causes your workplace, culture, society to really look at you like what is this odd person? Who is this odd person?
Bishop Wright:I'm looking at Jesus in many ways lives perpendicular to the culture of his day and of course that is why we had to get rid of him. And of course that is why we had to get rid of him is because he was inspiring people to also live in alternative ways, to take up alternative practices. Count people who were counted out as siblings, you know, deserving dignity, you know respect, et cetera. And so, yeah, that's, you know that's what it is. I mean, jesus is not here to help us just sort of punctuate our version of life. Jesus is here to help us to find the courage, you know, to live truth and not popularity.
Melissa:Wow, okay. So when I read this I was like, oh okay, here we go yet again, bishop, where your words are very relevant for the very here and now, and there is a lot of concern amongst the populace. And sometimes I wonder at least the way I see it is when often the church and the empire align Right. Well then, we got some problems.
Bishop Wright:If we are really going to be, or attempt to be as much as we can because we all fall short I know I do but if we're going to be as meticulous as we can about trying to bear witness to Jesus Christ as we understand Jesus Christ in Matthew, mark, luke and John, and not the Jesus of our own, you know, our own making then we are always going to be, or often going to be in living in tension with a culture, with our culture, and it's not anti-American or anti-status quo necessarily. To say that, as the lawyers say them, is just the facts. Jesus comes with this way to be, in these words, to help us understand that the way in which we've configured ourselves oftentimes is upside down from what is actual reality, that we have engineered a world that ultimately is unsustainable, where the powerful and the wealthy dictate everything and the people on the margins are in a perpetual sort of cold winter with only a modicum of their needs met, and that the earth is here for us to just abuse, and that the earth is not a co-equal partner, and so is everything created equal partner, and so is everything created. We just decide as human beings. It's part of our failing, it's part of our own engineering flaw we call it sin in theological circles that we will design ways to be that ultimately hurt us.
Bishop Wright:I have said this before. You know, when I look out my window, you know during the summer and the fall, you know sort of all these great and wonderful garden spiders. But what's remarkable about garden spiders, as I have said, is that they don't get trapped in their own webs. They move, you know, deftly along their own. You know their webs. But human beings make webs that we get caught. We ourselves get caught in, and I think you know this is one of the great gifts of Jesus's words is that they come. They come to us and his example comes to us to try to give us a way of life that is sustainable, and it helps us to understand our own integrity and dignity in new ways.
Bishop Wright:It's just that we are so committed to the ways in which we've configured because of familiarity, because they serve us in lots of ways, and so Jesus then becomes a threat. His newness, his agency is a threat, and so what we try to do is we try to round off all his edges. In the church we try to round off his edges and make him less dangerous, and if we make him less dangerous, then we get to keep this idea of we're Christian without the content. And so enemy love is one of the best examples of that. Right, so am I a nice People, want to say nowadays, I'm a nice person, I'm a good person, that's great. We should aspire to be all those good things. However, jesus has some real clear ideas about what the deliverables are, and it wasn't about being nice or good. In fact, jesus said who is good? Right, none is good, but the father, jesus said. But Jesus did say, hey, you want to go my direction?
Melissa:Well, and you drop the big word here. You talk about Jesus and how he led into that. You say he said that to you who are ready for the truth, Right? That's kind of like the big one, right? And so I'm looking at the world and I don't know if you're following I'm sure you are, Bishop that President Trump is trying to appeal to the Supreme Court to give him ultimate power and make him above the law, and I think there are a lot of people who are hurting and afraid. And if they're not directly impacted by some of these most recent decisions, I know there are many people who love people who are hurting and who are afraid, and so I guess I'm wondering how do we be different? How do we set ourselves apart? What does love look like? Is it just coming alongside people? Is it a matter of talking to the government and government officials? What do we do?
Bishop Wright:That's a really good question. One pundit put it this way is is that when you boil it all down and you try to take as much of the you know sort of enmity and malice out of things you know, let's just say that the president has an expansive understanding of presidential authority, one that we have not seen in recent memory, perhaps ever, and that has to get worked out in the courts. So so there's that, and that's a bigger conversation, you know. I think what is interesting, though, is is that that I'm always on guard for is is that, while I think it's part of my duty as a citizen to be well-informed, to read broadly, to read the news in sort of different political parlances, what's interesting about Jesus is Jesus wants us to work locally, and so it's not an abdication of my larger responsibilities, but when you read Matthew, mark, luke and John, when you read Luke six, there's nothing more personal and local than an enemy, right? And so, while I may have philosophical and political disagreements with people who I've never met, who live at a great distance from me, right, jesus seems to spend most of his time thinking about the people. You know three, 10, you know 25 feet from us, and so you know, when he says love enemy, do good to those who hate you, bless those who curse you and pray for those who abuse you. He's talking about people we know, people we interact with, perhaps people who are our bosses or our employees. He's talking about perhaps even our spouses and our children. And so I think that while we have to spend a lot of time thinking about the direction of our nation, and for those of us who have the ability to advocate and to do that kind of work, then we should, in the causes of neighborliness, in the causes of sort of charity and equity, we should do those pieces of work and at the same time, jesus again is preoccupied with what's happening. You know what's that phrase that Al Roker says on the Today Show. You know that's what's happening nationally. You know what's happening where you are right. And so how are you handling neighbor and how are you handling the neighbor that is your enemy.
Bishop Wright:And and what I love about that line that precedes this in the message version, I like to look at lots of different versions of the Bible and I would remind people, please do that. And so in the Episcopal Church we usually use the New, revised, standard Version. But I'm old and I like the King James Version. You know where Jesus' words are in red right. And then, of course, eugene Peterson's version, the Message which you can Google or you can purchase or whatever it is. What I like about it is, every once in a while, the way he does his interpretation really brings it home and it's conversational.
Bishop Wright:And so before Jesus launches out into this sort of proclamation declaration love your enemies directive in fact he says uh, there is this truth.
Bishop Wright:To you who are ready for truth, and for me, that just unlocks in a new way this whole idea.
Bishop Wright:So there is a truth, jesus. If we take Eugene Peterson's interpretation to heart, then when Jesus says, love enemy, do good to those who hate you, bless those who curse you and pray for those who abuse you, jesus is not only giving you sort of directives and a prescription. Jesus is not only giving you sort of directives and a prescription. He's trying to tell you that, if you want to follow him, that there's a truth that lives beyond retribution. There's a truth that lives beyond indifference to people, all the ways that we try to handle people. There's a truth that lives beyond bitterness. He's trying to tell you that there's even a reality that lives beyond you know, just sort of walking around perpetually in pain. There is a way. There is a way to address these very legitimate things that happen to us, where we have enemies and we have been hated on and we have been cursed and we have been abused. That is still legitimate for Jesus, but it's how you handle them which can be grace-filled.
Melissa:So maybe there's a truth even beyond opinion, and that we can get caught up in a trap of just having an opinion rather than showing up to the people that are very much in close proximity to us.
Bishop Wright:Of course, of course, of course. That's absolutely true. Well, think about it this way. Think about all the learned behaviors that we have right. So when you come back to this point I was trying to make earlier about Jesus, sort of disrupting the status quo, what is the status quo way to handle people who hate you? What is the status quo way to handle people who hate you? What is the status quo way to handle people who are your enemies? What is the status quo way to handle people who curse you? I mean, you don't need me to point that out, but I mean, if you really want to go slow just to see the genius of Jesus, think about it that way.
Bishop Wright:So how are we taught, whether verbally or tacitly, to handle these type of difficulties in life? We shut them off, we become indifferent. You know what's that old saying. You know we sort of do unto others as they've done to us, and then we run like hell is the way that usually finishes right. And so we have all these strategies that we have devised, and while they may give us momentary peace and while they may give us some sense of one-upsmanship over people who have done us wrong, jesus is here to say there's another way that might yield some better long-term benefits.
Bishop Wright:And I can almost hear Jesus saying now, if you're looking for the easy fix, I'm not the guy. You know, when Beth and I have been doing some things around the house, you know you usually get three bids on a roof or three bids on some landscaping or whatever it is your project is, and there's an unbelievably cheap sort of contractor who's probably not going to do a good job but you'll be happy because it's cheap, but you'll have to probably redo it again. Then there's the middle of the road, middle cost person. And then there's this other contractor who said you know, this is going to be expensive and it's going to be time consuming, but we're going to do it right and you're going to have the confidence of standing in that. It's going to cost a little bit more, it's going to take a little bit more time, but ultimately it'll be done and done well. And so in some ways, jesus is that kind of spiritual contractor.
Bishop Wright:Right, he's like now you can do it cheap if you want. Right, you could do vengeance if you want. I mean. I understand you might want to do vengeance. That's cool, right, but what is the long-term effect of that right? I mean, will you actually process the injury? Will you actually process it and not only process right, because that's just kind of consumerism, right, our spiritual consumerism? I have processed my emotion. That's great. Jesus always is interested in more Right. How will you positively contribute right to that great bank account of love?
Melissa:Wow.
Bishop Wright:How will you help to change the temperature on the planet? One enemy at a time. So again, you see why we had to kill Jesus. Jesus comes up with all these hard things that cost us something, right? And the fact of the matter is we don't want to pay the price, and I understand it. I'm not talking as someone who's been delivered from any of this. In fact, if I'm making any sense today, it's because I know what it feels like, right? So you, you, you. Then we get into conversations about fairness. Well, that's not fair. Yep, it's not fair. And the cross was not fair either. So we can't really come to Jesus and talk about fairness, because Jesus could say yeah, man, I get that.
Melissa:Yeah, it's a bad word in our house.
Bishop Wright:So then, ultimately, we're brought to this intersection, which is this, and this is why this is a dangerous oddness and an extraordinary difficulty and a beautiful struggle. And all that, and that is Jesus is saying will you follow me? Because this is where I'm going. I'm going into enemy love, I'm going to find the capacity, I'm going to increase my capacity to bless those who curse me. You know, from his own cross he's being lynched in front of his mother, right, and he says forgive, forgive them, father, for they know not what they do right. And so it's not just about being magnanimous, right, such that we can generate, you know, magnanimity ourselves, such that we can generate, you know, magnanimity ourselves. It's about tapping into this underground again, this ocean of love and shalom that you and I have opportunities to make deposits in. You know, look, we should go back to all these wonderful expressions in history where people decentcentered themselves and centered the cause of love and neighborliness, and those instances have changed the world.
Melissa:Bishop, thank you for all that great reminder and listeners. Thank you 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.