For People with Bishop Rob Wright
For People with Bishop Rob Wright
Growing Up in Christ! | Empathy
Empathy is not just about intellect. Empathy is about putting flesh on Christian ideals. It's about compassion enough for everyone. The story of The Prodigal Son is one of Jesus' parables thats reaches beyond the Christian faith. In the story, Jesus stretches empathy wide for everyone involved.
In this episode, Melissa and Bishop Wright have a conversation about empathy, focusing on the story of The Prodigal Son. Using the story as inspiration, they discuss how God calls us to make community from the very things that cause divide. In the words of Bishop Wright, this is perhaps the best story Jesus ever told. Listen in for the full conversation.
This episode is based on part 4 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.
Jesus stretching everybody in this story wide with empathy. I think that was his actual point. You know, this is the story that I would have to say that, over my 61 years, has continued to live with me. Empathy is not just about intellect. Empathy is about putting flesh on Christian ideals. It's about compassion enough for everybody. That's what makes this story perhaps the best story Jesus ever told.
Melissa:Welcome to For People with Bishop Rob Wright, I'm Melissa Rau and, over the course of this season of Lent, bishop and I are having conversations 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.
Melissa:So week four in your Growing Up in Christ series is titled Empathy and it's based off of Matthew 22, when we're reviewing the great commandments of loving God and loving neighbor. There's also prodigal son theme in here for this week of Lent.
Bishop Wright:Oh goodness, Well, I mean, you know there's the Webster's definition, but I really just understand empathy as being able to understand and come close to how people are feeling as they travel. You know the contours of life. Right, it's, it's, it's. It's an experience sort of based. It's not just intellectual, but it's an experience, authentic understanding of what the pains in life are. St Paul says we ought to be able to weep with those who weep and rejoice with those who rejoice. So empathy is really about being fully human right.
Melissa:So, bishop, you say in your reflection that empathy is the capacity to imagine what someone else might be thinking or feeling, and when I think of that, I think of like taking the time to go upstream and ask the question why?
Bishop Wright:Yeah.
Melissa:Yeah, so Christian maturity and empathy. How do you feel like empathy? It comes out in the greatest commandment is to love God and love neighbor. Where does empathy come into play with that?
Bishop Wright:Well, I mean, it's what helps me to do that right, it's what helps me to love neighbor as self, is that, as I understand the contours of my heart's desire, my wants, my needs, my pains, that puts me closer to you.
Bishop Wright:I don't have to project on you, but it does give me some data about what it must be like to.
Bishop Wright:You know, I have a house, I have a roof over my head, I have food for my belly, and so, because I have those privileges and gifts, it's not hard for me to imagine what the lack of that must be like, what the hardship of that must be like, and it pains me to think about people who don't have the things that we, so many of us, just sort of take for granted. And so I think, you know, empathy can come out of a deep appreciation of the benefits of life that we enjoy and then begin to appreciate the lack of what that must be like, right? I mean, I think that God is always calling us down into humanity at its fullest expression. And so if I enjoy the benefit of all these things, then, conversely, maybe I can have a deep appreciation of the lack of those things and then maybe I can move towards my neighbor, at least in understanding that and hopefully in trying to relieve some of that burden.
Melissa:Yeah, that, and hopefully in trying to relieve some of that burden. Yeah, I love this quote. The takeaway is there is no godly reality that permits our indifference to our neighbor's well-being. That is a huge, bold statement. And, bishop, I just went to a demonstration standing up for immigrant rights and I'm shocked at the level of vitriol from professed Jesus followers for immigration rights in America. And to me, it's just an empathy thing. Right, it's not about legality, it's about a person, and so I don't know how you see it coming out, but it's like bold and I can't help but feel critical toward people who maybe practice empathy in a different way to be, you know, sort of impacted by our empathy, right.
Bishop Wright:And so I think we can, you know, in this particular issue, as I've said before, I think we can maintain strong borders and deport dangerous criminals and, at the same time, treat people with dignity and, at the same time, be creative in organizing something like work permits for people who can work and meet our labor shortages, et cetera. I think what you know, the way the debate goes around immigration right now demonstrates a profound lack of imagination and sort of a resentful and aggressive, you know, sort of you know approach. I think we're better than that. I think you know how this echoes in this story that we're looking at today.
Bishop Wright:The prodigal son story here is that you know the older brother who doesn't run off, who stays and is dutiful, right, he feels like part of his entitlement, right is indifference or even contempt for his brother and his father. You know we call him the loving father. His father is really trying to chip away at this sort of calcified, you know, enmity that he has for his brother. I mean, you know we understand hurt feelings, we understand that legitimacy, but it seems like the father is working on something more. You know, it's interesting that the older brother says your son.
Melissa:He doesn't say my brother. Right.
Bishop Wright:And I think you see this showing up in the way that we're talking about others. You know those people rather than our siblings. You know it's interesting in the Bible that you know, as Israel is coming into its own, a new nation state, et cetera you know they are reminded. Remember that your ancestors was a wandering Aramean. In other words, remember that time when you were vulnerable, that time when you didn't have enough food, that time when everything wasn't sorted out. Remember how vulnerable you were. Remember that God was your only hope. Remember when you were refugees. You know, in the Pope's letter to the US bishops some time back, he reminded us that Jesus, joseph and Mary were refugees.
Bishop Wright:And so I think we can thread the needle between law and legislation that makes sense and what can make us truly great as a nation, and that is our Christian heritage, and part of Christian heritage is empathy. If there's no empathy, then the Christian heritage is a fraud, right, and so we've got to, I think, seriously, look at this and this story. You know, the sort of takeaway in this story, for me at least, is is that you know it's abounding in empathy. It's, uh, it's the empathy that the son who ran away and now comes home finally, after abusing it, finally understands that his father has tried to be empathetic to him and now he wants to come home and depend on his father's empathy right.
Melissa:And so, where does lack of imagination, or how does imagination complement empathy? Bishop.
Bishop Wright:Well, I mean, what do we say with one another? I can't imagine what it must be like to have a child who has cancer. I can't imagine what it's like to not have enough food for my family. I can't imagine what it's like to not have healthcare. I mean, we're talking in terms of imagination, right?
Bishop Wright:And so I think that this neighborliness that Jesus teaches us in this story, and this imagination that Jesus is asking us to bring to the idea of repair a profound family riff, I mean, it's all about imagination. And so I think part of living and loving God is about offering God our imagination, sort of submit to God, our hermetically sealed conclusions about ourselves, about other people and about the way the world should be, rather than to seek God's counsel and say God, let me just put that to the side for a second. Let me just de-center myself and wonder with you about what is your preferred way for us to be human community. And I think that is also part of worship, right Worship being. You know, god first, right? So if God is first and God has some ideas about how we ought to be together. And so here we are at this intersection again with you know, am I? You know if I'm an American citizen. If I'm, am I an American Christian or I'm a Christian who happens to be American? You know, where is my ultimate allegiance right, where is my first order of loyalty? And I think this is what Jesus is working on resisting, you know, with these stories, you know our default, you know, in putting him in boxes that really are largely unimaginative, right, and he is persisting with this. You know, sort of dangerous oddness that he brings to things, this persistent gentle boldness that he brings to things, especially these stories about how life could be.
Bishop Wright:But what we've got to do is, you know, and let me confess, what we've got to do is we have to let these stories erode our pride. I mean, because there's pride also in this prodigal son story. It's the sons, the older son's pride, sons, the older son's pride, it's the younger son's pride and asking for his inheritance and then traipsing off, you know, to the nightclub and to God knows what, and ultimately I would say it's the father's pride at the end, because he has to hear from the son who stayed the ways in which this father, as loving as he is, has missed the mark right to his son, his eldest son, who stayed. And so it's all about empathy. It's about empathy eroding pride, right, and it's about, you know, and it's about growth and you know, and I think that's why it's a really good reflection, you know, for it's about growth and you know, and I think that's why it's it's a really good reflection, you know, for for Lent this year.
Melissa:Yeah, well, when I think of the word you said it a number of times. You said the word remember and I haven't done a word study, but I know enough that re means you know again, right, and I like the member part like re-member. To me, that's all about wholeness is becoming whole again and remembering re-member as in like putting back together again and keeping things real. So when we talk about community, when we're a member of a community, we're honoring one another, and so I don't know where that goes, bishop. But I feel like wholeness matters here, and sometimes I think in our pride, in the way that our ego rears its other ugly head and that we want to stand out from the crowd, we often forget that we are just one of another.
Bishop Wright:Well, remember, the Bible tells, I mean the Bible says, again and again you know that the versions of wholeness that we are willing to accept are terribly inferior to the invitation to wholeness that God holds out right. And so we are always willing to settle for a lot less than God is inviting us, you know, towards. You know, we're willing to settle because of pride, sometimes because of lack of faith, sometimes because of lack of faith, sometimes because of lack of courage, sometimes because of blindness. We're always willing to accept some sort of Spartan notion of life. And here's God holding out these stories to us in the person of Jesus, saying you know, there's repair that's available to you, but it does have a cost.
Bishop Wright:You know, the father sees the young son who has, you know, been away, living, you know, in dissolution, blowing his family fortune. The father keeps his eyes on the gate. You know that's what's interesting in this story. You know, that's what's interesting in this story. You know, you can just imagine, and you can just imagine that father's whispered prayers. But he held out. He held out a hope for repair for his family, for the return of his son. And one wonders, you know, it's not in the story but, as Dr King said, if I use my spiritual imagination, my sanctified imagination, one wonders if the father is able to hold out empathy for this son and hope for the son, because maybe the father strayed from the straight and narrow at some point.
Bishop Wright:Right, you know, this story is about more than a narrow definition of righteousness and this is what the older son doesn't get Right. He has this righteousness, the older son does, but it's works righteousness, it's an entitled righteousness and the son comes. The young son comes back, as Desmond Tutu says, probably smelling like high heaven, everything wrong with him comes and the older son gets a clinic about a different kind of righteousness and what seems right to God is repair. And that changes some of us that if what is right to God is repair, then that's a different version of right than many of us know and uphold. A lot of us hold up something you know a lot less thick than that.
Bishop Wright:But the righteousness of God is about this repair for this entire family, and so that's why what I say at the very end of this story is that you know, in the story it's really easy to pick sides and whenever you preach it, you know the first. You know the first children in the room. You know they sort of immediately see and understand the. You know the elder son's perspective who stayed and worked diligently. And also, when you're preaching, you know the kids in the room who have been prodigal, who are straight off the beaten path, who took a far-flung journey and maybe even did a lot of wrong. They sort of take sides and of course the parents in the room are trying to figure out how to do this thing, how to thread the needle.
Bishop Wright:But I think Jesus, stretching everybody in this story wide with empathy, I think that was his actual point. This is the story that I would have to say that over my 61 years has continued to live with me, chew at it, live on it, you know, listen to what the father says and doesn't say, listen to what the sons say and don't say. And I think now and you know, hopefully it'll continue to evolve for me, I think now the point is is that empathy is not just about intellect. Empathy is about putting flesh on Christian ideals, it's about compassion. It's about compassion enough for everybody and I think that's what makes this story perhaps the best story Jesus ever told.
Melissa:All right. So, bishop, one of my favorite things about the church and this is going to sound really church nerdy, but in the back of our prayer book, on page 855, in what we call the outline of faith or the catechism fancy word, it says the mission of the church is to restore all people to unity with God and one another through Christ. So to me that's all about restoring, and I don't know if we could actually do that work. I feel like a mission is actually possible if we're doing what we need to be doing, and I can't help but wonder, listening to you, how much empathy is required in order for us to live out our mission as the church.
Bishop Wright:More than you want to give. That's the answer. More, more than you want to give. That's why the story is so important. Everybody had to do more, to do more. The son, in the midst of his tirade and tantrum in a foreign land, comes to himself, the Bible tells us. In other words, he realized there was more. The father realizes there's more. The older son realizes there's more.
Bishop Wright:I, I think that you know, when we're talking about reconciling the world to God and to one another, I think we also have to remember that you know we are responding to a God who is reconciling in us and integrating in us all those things that are at odds and that don't come together gracefully. And so anything that we take up, any mission that we take up, is first happening to us, is first God's mission to us and in us, and so that's what makes it authentic. So if I'm trying to produce something that is not happening in me, that is not alive and generative in me, then I'm some kind of car salesman, then I'm commending something I have no idea about, I'm commending a vacation I've never taken right. And so what the catechism doesn't say, but certainly implies, is that we take up this work because we're responding to what God has done and is doing in us and therefore we are a credible witness to other people about what the power of God can do, and I think that's what makes it real. Words on a page can help us, but they have to be fleshed out.
Bishop Wright:I mean, this is the point of Jesus coming among us, fleshed out. I mean, this is the point of jesus coming among us. Right, and so this is the point of, in fact, of these kinds of stories is this is so they can become real. Um, you know they can become, because we know what broken families look like. Right, we've been in them. Um, if we're honest, some of us have helped the cr to to break some of them. Um, and so is there any hope for us is the question, and that's why these stories again are so important. That's why this mission is so important, that there is medicine in the word of God, and there is medicine first coming to us and then pours through us into the world.
Melissa:All right. So to wrap that up, to grow up, we need empathy. Bishop, thank you, and listeners, thank you for listening 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.