For People with Bishop Rob Wright
For People with Bishop Rob Wright
Growing Up in Christ! | Curiosity
When Moses noticed a burning bush and decided to investigate rather than ignore it, he unwittingly set in motion events that would liberate an entire people from slavery. What might happen if we approached our faith with similar holy curiosity?
In this episode, Melissa and Bishop Wright have a conversation about remaining curious with our faith matters. They discuss how curiosity serves as the gateway to authentic worship and meaningful action. Our willingness to approach the unusual, to ask questions rather than settle for easy answers, often precedes our most profound encounters with God. Listen in for the full conversation.
This episode is based on part 3 of Bishop Wright's 5-part Lenten series "Growing Up in Christ!". Learn more about this year's series, watch the weekly videos, and download the reflection guides here.
When we're sitting across from people who see the world radically different. Maybe we shouldn't start with this question, "how could you? Maybe we should start with this question tell me about what you're afraid of. To be curious about God is to want to try to do and see the world as God does and sees, and that has to do with throwing dissimilar things together and trying to make community out of it. So that's why we need to be curious about who God is.
Melissa:Welcome to For People with Bishop Rob Wright. I'm Melissa Rau and over the course of the season of Lent, bishop and I will be having a conversation based on Growing Up in Christ, a Lenten curriculum and video series produced by the Episcopal Diocese of Atlanta. You can access the videos and accompanying material at www. episcopalatlanta. org. These resources are perfect for your individual Lenten devotion or small group study. Good morning, bishop.
Bishop Wright:Good morning.
Melissa:So this week's devotion you named Curiosity and it's based off a number of scripture passages, but you really hone in on Exodus, chapter 3, verses 1 through 15, where Moses is really curious about the burning bush which just is a domino effect and leads Moses into helping the Hebrew people leave Egypt. So tell me more about what your thoughts about curiosity are, because I am so curious.
Bishop Wright:Yeah, right, so well, I, I think, um, what we should acknowledge is is that it's, it's curiosity that leads us to, you know, wonderful open, you know, new open doorways in life and with God. It's wonder, being curious about that, how's that work, to hear the stories of Jesus, to hear the stories of scripture and to wonder a little bit. I started off my ordained life as a school chaplain, the, you know, the kids just ask the best questions and it's just amazing to see how their minds work. And you know, sadly, something we lose some part of that, I think, as we get older and go along. But you know, it occurs to me that you know Moses is going on about his life. He married up, he married a girl whose dad had a business.
Bishop Wright:Moses is a runaway from Egypt. He's a felon. He's murdered someone. He's on the run. He lands in Jethro's family and life is good. Life is good. He's got a wife. He's got a kid. He's got good work, wife, he's got a kid, he's got good work. Uh and uh, off in the distance, he sees this light, this bush on fire, and he's curious about it. He could have wrote it off in his mind. He could have said, hey, look, that's just maybe a lightning strike or, you know, just a brush fire. He could have wrote it off, uh, but he walks closer and him walking closer, him curious. Really. That is the moment when Pharaoh, over in Egypt, should shudder, because that is the moment that unleashes all the other moments that ultimately end up in Egypt's defeat.
Melissa:Bishop, you mentioned being a chaplain of children, asking the best questions, et cetera, and I can't help but wonder sometimes. I think society beats the curiosity out of us by warning us, and I think that is often the thing that gets in the way of following a curiosity that one might have is fear.
Bishop Wright:Yeah, yeah, I mean, you know, I think that you know we get life gets so flattened out for so many of us is that we get so busy. And you know, curiosity leads sometimes to inconvenient and impractical sort of it leads us in you know, impractical and inconvenient directions. You know curiosity is sort of maybe even is considered by some as the play thing of younger people or people who have the luxury of being able to entertain those sorts of things. I took a class some time ago, actually at the beginning of COVID, at the Sloan School at MIT, and loved it so much. It was about the inquiry, it was about inquiry, it was about the inquiry, it was about inquiry and it was about leadership and inquiry. And basically what they were saying was that you know when you've reached, you know as far as our knowledge can take us, and certainly we experienced that in COVID. Right, only asking better questions, only being curious, is going to serve you going forward. And it was one of the best. Even though it was, it was meant to sort of be leadership. Continuing education is one of the best classes I ever took because it it reminded me that to create a space where people can ask good questions and be encouraged to ask questions. That really is good spiritual formation work, Right, and it, you know, it's curiosity, uh, that leads us down into our authentic questions about who we are and about who God is and what the nature of life is.
Bishop Wright:Um, you know, you know, remember, it's curiosity that gets Moses to the bush and it's, you know, getting to the bush is where Moses has his real encounter, you know, with God. And that changes everything. And God knows his name and God knows his past, and God knows that he has a physical impairment, he's a stutterer, and God embraces all of who Moses is. And curiosity unleashes that. And just imagine it unleashes, you know, the deliverer in him. It unleashes his most faithful chapter in life, his most selfless chapter in life. Chapter in life he gets to understand that he is co-creator with God in meeting his people's desperate need for freedom. So it's curiosity that unlocks all of this.
Melissa:Yeah, you highlight the pattern of to learn, know, grow and go. Yeah, and I think that's fabulous. You know, curiosity, I think, is what leads to learning, and yet sometimes I feel like the great questions that some folks will ask are cheapened by people's attempts to answer them.
Bishop Wright:That's right, that's right.
Melissa:You know, and so you know. I think I read the book Questions Are the Answer. I think that might have come out from talking with you, and it was a fabulous book. I just think sometimes we don't make enough space for others in the room to be curious, because we just want to give them the answer.
Bishop Wright:Well, yeah, and this is interesting about God, right? So when God has this conversation with Moses at the burning bush, you know, God says something really sort of annoying. You might say God says, well, I am who I am right, or I am that I am, I am what I am, you know. It's like what the hell do you do with that, you know? And so Moses's curiosity didn't turn into easy answers, right? Moses's curiosity turned into a relationship.
Melissa:So what does that mean for us, though, bishop, as teachers or people who might be forming the rising generations, who may not want to knock the curiosity out of our rising generations, do you have any wisdom for? The older people in the room.
Bishop Wright:No wisdom. I don't think I can tell you what I've learned over the years, and that is that I've had to self-manage. I have to manage my own need to have answers, okay, um, and create space for people who need to find their answers right. So, create a space for people to do the work and to do the due diligence right, with integrity, but not answer you know things for them. I mean, you know this is just the beginning of Moses and God's relationship.
Bishop Wright:You know Moses gets to learn a lot about God as he goes on the frustrating aspects of God, the tremendous, sovereign aspects of God, um, you aspects of God. You know God's timeline versus his timeline, so it ends up really being a relationship and so, yeah, I mean, we want to answer, we want to hold space for people as much as we can facilitate their learning and growth, but the truth of the matter is, when it comes to God, you know, the best of what we can offer each other is just a little bit of our experience, understanding that we know some part of it, but they have to, you know, do the work and to get to know God, you know, for themselves, and this happens over time, and so answers can only unlock. You know their willingness to continue the journey on, and that's what
Melissa:And so what about assuredness? You know, I think you might have said don't be so sure. I'm curious where that comes into play with authentic worship and how assuredness might actually get in the way, sometimes, of wonder and awe.
Bishop Wright:Yeah, I mean I think that assuredness I mean you know the way I would say assuredness is God confidence. Right, how do I have confidence that God is actually trustworthy? I mean the Bible points in that direction and we're blessed to meet some people who know God. Then we get a slice of that, a glimpse of that, that somehow God has shown up trustworthy in their lives, in their real life, not just a Sunday life. And so I think that what we do is we want to move towards God confidence. I think you know faith says, you know that it's the assurance of things you know, hoped for, the evidence of things not seen right. So I mean you know, when I say, when we say assurance, we have to be really careful about what we're talking about, right? So is God real, able, good and generous? Yes, that is my confessional answer. That is my experience over 61 years and I have earned that and I got the scars from all of that. I know what it feels like to feel the absence of God, the absence of answers, the absence of care. You know the absence of community. I know what all of that feels like. I know what it's like to wrestle profoundly with doubt. I know what it feels like to say well, I'm just going to believe in God, but I'm chucking all of this community notion. It's just going to be me and you, god, you know, I know what that feels like as well and I think any assuredness that we have any God confidence that we have.
Bishop Wright:Again, curiosity is sort of the jet fuel for that, but it's lived out in relationship with God. And so what helps us? Well, worship and hearing the testimony of others, hearing the sermons of others, hearing the truth experience of others with God. But also as we make our way through the 66 books of the Bible, you know, we begin to accumulate friends on the journey. It's not just a sort of a book at intellectual distance, but we begin to wonder what it must have been like to be Elizabeth or Mary or Abraham or Sarah or Rachel, et cetera, and we begin to see some of ourselves in those stories and they become friends, and they become friends that help us to be strong along the way. They are friends. We can take our doubts and our consternation to right, but the upstream of all of that, I think, is this holy notion of can we stay curious? I mean, that's probably the worst enemy of faith I don't think is atheism or disbelief. I think it's a flattened out one-dimensional faith that just goes stale over time.
Melissa:Yeah, I like the idea of being foreclosed. If we figured it all out well, then there's really nowhere else to go. I love that. You said wonder became worship, and therefore what is the stance of worship that one might consider taking in this Lenten time? How might we worship differently, with wonder at the center?
Bishop Wright:Well, I mean, you can start with a question, right? So you know, when we travel to the mountains or we're down to the shore or wherever we find ourselves hugging the grandbaby, or you know in those moments that we know that, we know that, we know we can ask ourselves who is this God? You know this God who created this morning. Who is this God who created this mountain? Who is this God who knows, you know, every drop of water in the ocean. Who is this God who has this outrageous imagination that makes ants and blue whales? You know both. Who is this God, right? Who you know? When we look at our own biology, for instance, you know when we look at skin and flesh and we look at its resilience, right and its elasticity, and you know all those sorts of things, and we look at what's going on with our human body. I mean, all of that is about wonder. And who is this God? Who is this creative God and who is this God that is so high above us and yet seems, according to Scripture, to delight in finding ways to get beside us? So we can start off with questions. I just imagine that Moses walked away from that burning bush and said what the hell. What did I just see? You know this is God. Did God show up to me? I'm a little nobody, In fact, I missed the mark in so many cases. Right, I mean, I was put up for adoption, floated down a river, raised by people not my parents, raised in a foreign culture. I mean he could go on and yet here is this God showing up and asking me, inviting me right to be a representative ambassador. So I mean I think we can start with maybe who is this God? Kind of an audit. You know, who is this God that has given me the gray matter that I need to make it in this world? Who is this God who has kept me safe over the night, right, and give me a purpose and a privilege to serve in God's name? You know, in the morning, and on and on and on.
Bishop Wright:You know I say these kinds of things, but what I really just want to prompt is people's curiosity. I mean, that's another thing I've learned over years in ministry is to sort of bother people with the things, like I'm saying on this podcast, so that they can take it and, in their own quiet time, begin to make use of it like some sort of spiritual buffet, take the things that seem to make sense to them or seem to confound them, and chew on it and work on it. And you know, I think that's what God does with our curiosity. You know, remember, this curiosity is about us drawing near to God and God being so good that God can meet us at any of our questions. This is why I like the Psalms. I've said it again and again the Psalms have the curiosity there.
Bishop Wright:Who is this God who hangs the sun, moon and stars in the universe like Christmas lights? Who is this God and why did this God even bother with me? These are questions, I pray, that really move us from wonder to worship. And so if I work down that line, then at some point I have to say wow, which is the first word of worship, wow, right, you know, this is extraordinary. And whether I have all the answers about who God is and who God has been and what's this and what's that, I can say for myself that there is a majesty to this God. There is a majesty that people from all over the world have found in this God, and I can celebrate that. That's what worship is at its purest form. I celebrate the majesty of God, I want nothing from it right now. I mean, we can ask for stuff later, but right now I just want to celebrate the majesty of God.
Melissa:So, bishop, I guess this is where the rubber meets the road. For me, the hard part about remaining curious is not so much about God as the concept of God, because I always say like, yeah, god and I are good. What I sometimes forget is that God is in each and every one of us, including the people who, just I, cannot understand at all. And so how do we remain curious about the other?
Bishop Wright:Yeah, I mean, I think it's very natural to end up either really defensive in the presence of other, and certainly in the presence of disagreement. It's what makes us human. Um, I think it's also um very human to become indifferent or antagonistic uh you know to difference or in the face of difference. I think, here again, curiosity helps us. If we manage ourself and want to move into a more mature approach to all this, we can be curious. Um, you know, I I've heard people talk in terms of when we're sitting across from people who see the world radically different. Maybe we shouldn't start with this question. How could you? Maybe we should start with this question. Tell me about what you're afraid of. Tell me about what keeps you up at night. Tell me about what you worry about when you think about your grandchildren. I think that kind of curiosity helps us to build some solidarity with people that we might not, that we might sort of be amazed that we can find solidarity with. I mean, at the end of the day, human beings are pretty similar. I mean, we express ourselves sometimes very differently, but we're mostly afraid of things. We're mostly moved to tears, you know, by love and by compassion. Sometimes we can be selfish. Sometimes we can be magnanimous. I mean, we sort of possess lots of similarities wherever you find us on the planet, right? And so I think that to be curious about God is to want to try to do and see the world as God does and sees, and that has to do with throwing dissimilar things together and trying to make community out of it, and this is the genius of God. So curiosity, wonder, moves us to worship and worship moves us to praxis, to application, right. And so if I worship God and I say your majesty is mind-blowing God, then what that should do is de-center me just enough to where I can want to see the world from God's perspective, right? I mean, it's no small thing that we say as Christians that Jesus came among us as one of us, right, and lived among us, and he came to nobodies from nowhere, so to speak. And so it's interesting to then see if we can walk alongside the way that he tried to make community with lots of different people.
Bishop Wright:Now I'm working on an address to the House of Bishops, coming up, and it's not lost on me that Jesus spent time in the head of the Pharisees' home at a dinner party, and so you know, sort of an uninformed approach to Jesus is to think that he was always adversarial. Sort of an uninformed approach to Jesus is to think that he was always adversarial to the Pharisees and the Sadducees and those folks who were the religious formal authorities. But a closer read, right? A deeper, slower read, tells us he was trying to make community with all kinds of people, and it may be that he wasn't adversarial at all. It may be that he loved them so much that he kept trying to correct, right, because he could have just become exasperated and walked away, right.
Bishop Wright:But it seems like the purposes of God are trying to hold together for us and to us, what we see is radically dissimilar, and so that's why we need to be curious about who God is. I mean, think about what God tells Moses. You, you, little nobody. You're getting ready to be curious about who God is. I mean, think about what God tells Moses. You, you, little nobody. You're getting ready to be the tip of the spear here to defeat the world's most formidable empire. You're getting ready to do that, and you know I'm not sending you with chariots and horses, right. There's no technology coming from another nation to assist you. You're going to walk in there with a staff, right as an outlaw, and you're going to tell this culture that you know because you were raised up in it, right in Egypt's finest schools. You were raised. You're going to walk into that milieu and you're going to say, all right, guys, you know the economy of extraction and abuse and oppression is over. Right, we're going a different direction. Thus saith the Lord.
Melissa:Oh, praise be to God for that.
Bishop Wright:You got to just see the cure, you just got to be curious about wow, god just sets up scenarios that seem so impossible that only God could pull it off, and that has to make us curious. And, as I like to say, I'll just bet when his people eventually walk out of Egypt after 400 years of bitter bondage and chattel slavery, I'll just bet Moses was glad he was curious that day about that bush on fire.
Melissa:Indeed indeed, bishop. Thank you and listeners, thank you for tuning in to For People. You can follow us on Instagram and Facebook at Bishop Rob Wright, or by visiting www. forpeople. digital. Please subscribe, leave a review and we'll be back with you next week.