For People with Bishop Rob Wright
For People with Bishop Rob Wright
Authority
Authority comes in many forms, but as Jesus entered Jerusalem on the back of a donkey, he modeled an understanding that may transform how we view our empowerment. While crowds waved palm branches and shouted "Hosanna!" one day and "Crucify him!" shortly after, Jesus remained steadfast. Neither public praise nor rejection sways him from his purpose. This spiritual maturity stands as both a challenge and an invitation to us – can we remain faithful to our calling regardless of external forces?
In this episode, Melissa and Bishop Wright have a conversation about Jesus' authority using his return to Jerusalem as the backdrop. Bishop Wright distinguishes holding positions of leadership and living into God-given authority. "Jesus never said 'come and sit in a building and hear words wash over you,'" he reminds us. Rather, being authorized by Jesus means joining him in active ministry – what Bishop Wright calls Jesus' "never-ending, ever-unfolding neighborly campaign." This reframing challenges each baptized Christian to recognize they've already been empowered to serve, rather than waiting for ordained leadership to act. Listen in for the full conversation.
Read For Faith, the companion devotional.
The crowd, they welcome him, Jesus, hosanna, and then, just a little while later, the same group cries crucify him. And I think what we need to talk about as we talk about this is Jesus' differentiation big word Jesus' ability to not need either the group's praise or be controlled by its condemnation. I think that's a mature understanding of living into one's authority.
Melissa:Welcome to For 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:Good morning.
Melissa:So you named this week's devotion Authority and it's based off of Luke, chapter 19, verses 28 to 40. It's really about Jesus's instructions to the disciples entering Jerusalem, asking them to go get a donkey, and you had something to say about that.
Bishop Wright:Yeah, I mean we, you know, of course, in the church we call this Sunday, Palm Sunday, right, and where we gather and have a fairly long service, starting off with, you know, the distribution and blessing of the palms, palm branches, the way in which people sort of line the entrance to Jerusalem, way back when, as Jesus rode a donkey into town and they waved those palms and, you know, cried out Hosanna, and we call it the triumphant entry into Jerusalem. But you know, I was captured this year as I thought about this, about how Jesus got the donkey and what is required for Jesus to get a donkey. He didn't have a donkey, didn't keep a pet, so what's up with the donkey and how did they procure the donkey? And I think there's a lesson there for us.
Melissa:Yeah, so you tie it to authority. Yeah, I find that to be really compelling, especially when sometimes we get caught up in the nuances between authority and power. But you didn't go there, you didn't go there. You're really talking about authority.
Bishop Wright:Well, I spend a lot of time thinking about, just in my work as a clergy person, a lot about the distinction between leadership and authority. Right, so leadership can be exercised by anybody, anytime, anywhere, right? I mean, that's the better definition of leadership. It's activity, it's not a role, right, but authority, like the authority conferred on me to be an ordained person, or authority conferred on me to be an ordained person, or authority conferred on those baptized by water and the spirit in Jesus name. Well, that's, that's a power, that's an authority conferred, you know, by a body, by a group, and in this case, by Jesus of his disciples. And I just want to think about what it means to be authorized by Jesus these days.
Bishop Wright:You know, I hear, you know, over the years I've heard a lot of people tell me that they struggle, you know, really occupying either personal or professional authority right. And, as I've said in the meditation, either people, in my experience, shrink from it or abuse it. They shrink from it, they don't want to fully occupy it right, because, you know, they have a lot of apprehensions and a lot of times it comes out of their own personal putting on the authority and wearing it well. Or people, you know, get the authority from some system, body or individual and then really it just ends up being cover for their own megalomania, right? And so they abuse it. Right, they control and command and lord it over people, and both, I think, are not what Jesus would call us to do and be. Both of it are not using authority for the tool that it can be to get some things accomplished, and certainly abuse is not where Jesus wants us to be at on the spectrum.
Bishop Wright:So, yeah, it's about authority, because Jesus authorizes, he sends his disciples up ahead of him to get the donkey. Jesus knows where the donkey is. Jesus may even have a relationship with the guy who owns the donkey, but nevertheless Jesus doesn't do it himself, right? He invites people to join him, he authorizes them. They go in his name, and that is not unlike who we are. We go, and we do now, 2,000 years later, in Jesus's name, if we have a real good experience, a good understanding, rather, of what it actually means, right?
Bishop Wright:Jesus never said come and sit in a building and hear words wash over you. He never said that. Jesus never said hey, y'all come to church. So church has got to be the place where we hear the authorizing voice of Jesus in worship, in the word, in the music, in the sacraments. It's got to be authorizing us to do something right, to believe, belong and become right. And so these disciples are invited, in Jesus's name, to go and to do something, to accomplish something, to join Jesus in his purpose, and I think that's what's compelling right. We are authorized to join Jesus in his purpose, and that is still true.
Melissa:Okay, so I'm listening to you and everything you said. I'm like really I'm vibing with and in the church, though sometimes I wonder how do you feel? And I'm saying bishop, like because that with it comes a lot of authority- yeah.
Bishop Wright:So authority I mean authority has distinctions. I mean there are levels to authority. Some people are authorized to do X, some people are authorized to do Y. Right, all of us are ministering out of, you know, our baptism. So, whether we're bishop or lay person, all of us is just living out our baptismal vows, our baptismal vows in a different way. So, you know, the bishop is not better than anybody.
Bishop Wright:The bishop just has a distinct role, right, certain authority has been conferred upon him or her, as well as the priest, the deacon or the lay person, right? And so the best understanding of all of this is that we have different gifts, we have different talents, and then our system requires really the effective and collaborative use of authority right to accomplish the purposes, in this case, of Jesus's church. And so, yeah, I have authority as bishop. I'm not shrinking back from that. It's how you use it right and how you understand others' authority, right.
Bishop Wright:So if you're the kind of guy or the girl who has to sort of really wield authority over people, remind people of your authority constantly as you try to exercise it, then you're probably a poor steward of authority, right, authority just means that I have a specific piece of the pie. I don't have the whole pie right, and so here we come into collaboration. So you know, jesus is doing the Jesus thing, but he invites others to join him in the getting the donkey thing right. But the whole held together gets the work accomplished so Jesus can actually go into Jerusalem triumphantly.
Melissa:Yeah, and so Palm Sunday. You know, when I think of Palm Sunday, I think of a very fickle crowd and the way it turns, and Bishop. So, like when we talk about authority, we talk about power.
Bishop Wright:I'm curious what you can might. Crowds are more immoral than individuals. There's something about us when we get together that we do things that are more heinous together than we would do, excuse me as individuals. It's harder to hate individual to individual than it is to sort of get a mob all whipped up and to go out and to do some terrible act. So I think that is a truth, that is an organic truth, and certainly there are too many times that human nature and history demonstrate all of this. And so, yeah, I mean I see the crowd, they welcome him. Jesus, hosanna, you know, blessed are you. And then, just a little while later, the same group cries crucify him Right. Group cries crucify him right.
Bishop Wright:And I think what we need to talk about as we talk about this is Jesus's differentiation, big word. Jesus's ability to not need either the group's praise or be controlled by its condemnation. I think that's a mature understanding of living into one's authority. It doesn't mean that I'm indifferent, it doesn't mean that I'm rigid, it doesn't mean I'm not listening, but way down deep in us, we've got to ask ourselves, you know, because, look, authority is tied to, I would say, christian maturity how you handle authority, how you steward it, the way you live into it effectively or the way you abuse it is a commentary on, you know, your spiritual I would say your spiritual, even professional, maturity, and so Jesus demonstrates a lot of maturity here.
Bishop Wright:Jesus is solely guided by his purpose. You know, jesus is not taken off of his mission because of the celebrity he enjoys for an hour. You know, riding a donkey into Jerusalem, drunk on our celebrity, believing our own headlines, be persuaded to go and be Messiah in the way that the crowd wants us to be Messiah. It's an intoxicating kind of thing, right. The individual gets to feel like, you know, the big man or the big woman, and then the crowd feels like they have some bit of control, right. So it's a bit of a codependence type of relationship.
Bishop Wright:Jesus, you know he fends that off. He stays clear about his mission, he's clear about what he wants to deliver. So their hosannas and later their crucify hymns don't sort of seduce him away from who he is. We've seen him do this before. As he encounters the devil, he is differentiated, he doesn't go for, you know, the devil's solicitations. We've seen him again and again do this when people want him to be Messiah in the way that they want him to be Messiah, therefore controlling him. And so Jesus, as he invites other people to join him in authority, he himself is living out a very mature version of authority. It's a listening, but clear, purposeful approach, right, and so Jesus, again, his work is to reveal the mind of God, to reveal the purposes of God, to enflesh them. That is his purpose.
Bishop Wright:And you know, I think we could take a, we could take a page out of his book, because we are so easily sometimes persuaded this way or that way. St Paul says, tossed to and fro, like little children. It is true, and I worry a lot about that these days because we're so distracted. You know, I'm a little older and I have young adult children and I think about the amount of distractions that they have. Relative to the distractions that I had as a kid, you know, when I was growing up. Growing up we had like four TV channels and the television went off at midnight with the national anthem. These kids have 24-hour computing power in their pocket with a never-ending sort of stream of wonderful know and terribleness. To use that Um and so uh, differentiation may be one of the most difficult things that that we can do or even attempt these days Um that kind of maturity and spiritual maturity specifically.
Melissa:Yeah, you know I was thinking about just that word differentiation and what that means, and you know obviously it's different and I think Jesus was just altogether other. And you said something really interesting, bishop. You said something about the mob mentality and you know being immoral. You quoted Niebuhr and you know I can't help but wonder if the inverse is also true. You know we can do so much better and so much more good together too. It's that.
Bishop Wright:Christian maturity thing? Oh, absolutely, Absolutely, and there's evidence, there's evidence abounding of that. You know when, when we dispatch, you know, first responders and rescue workers to Myanmar from all over the world. When you know, when we have floods like we're having now, you know, in Kentucky and Tennessee, and neighbors take care of each other. You know, I mean you know, there are so many examples of sometimes, when a catastrophe happens, we band together across. You know differences and divisions and we take care of each other differences and divisions and we take care of each other.
Bishop Wright:I think the only thing I would point out here is is that why does it always take a catastrophe to bring this out of us? You know, and you know, I think you know, when we think about the Bible and we think about the best expression of our faith, I think you know we should understand that in worship and everything that we talk about for worship, we're being authorized to be the good neighbor all the time. Right, To expand our understanding of neighborliness all the time, I like to say, to join Jesus in his never ending, ever unfolding, you know, neighborly campaign. So, yeah, I think that's. You know, that's an indicator for us, isn't it? For, you know, being authorized by Jesus right now, and that is it should look like neighborliness increasing. We should be surprised, I think, as we go along, that divisions become increasingly less significant to us and that we find ourselves beside lots of different kinds of people, or goodwill toward lots of different kinds of people, or not so easily persuaded by the media to vilify anybody, but to bring our human compassion in seeing the circumstances of people who perhaps are very different from us.
Bishop Wright:I think those are the indicators. And so what are we authorized to do really, is the question. Well, we're authorized to join Jesus in Jesus's friend making campaign, Right, and so I've noticed over the years, just in talking, unworthiness that I've heard people to talk about. And you know, I guess what I want to say and it'll sound perhaps simplistic is I want people to really believe what God says about them more than what the world says about them, and maybe even more what God says about them than even our own minds tell us what God says about them, than even our own minds tell us. Yeah, that, I think, is a great opportunity for growth.
Melissa:Yeah, I completely agree. You also mentioned youth and you know the outside forces that they are dealing with more so than ever, and so we can unpack why it is the way it is. I don't know that that's worthwhile. I'm curious how we help our youth be differentiated and be entirely other.
Bishop Wright:I think the magic answer, if there's any magic, is to be it by example. I mean, I think we ourselves have got to model this and we ourselves have got to encourage it, right? I mean, I think one of the great gifts of youth young people, teenagers in particular, certainly young adults is that they see the gap between what we say on Sunday and how we live on Monday, right? And so I find that, you know, the best way to sort of interact with these, with young people who are really struggling, is to demonstrate your love and care by being, you know, exemplary, not perfect, but being an example, an example of the very best parts of who we say Jesus is and about what Jesus called us into. And so you know, and also I find that and I have certainly been, I think, changed really by people who confess to me their struggles right and so to know that you're not alone, to know that you have struggled over the same sort of intersections in life, to know from people who have sort of moved along in life and grace and age that you know, insecurity is a real thing, but you can make your way through it. Fear is a real thing, but you can make your way through it. Uncertainty is a real thing, but you can make your way through it. These are the resources. This is what I've used. I commend it to you. I mean it's a real communal approach.
Bishop Wright:And again, here we are back at you know, the title of today. We're authorized to do that to encourage one another, to be candid with one another appropriately, to enjoy fellowship. Fellowship is just not standing around the coffee pot asking one another where are you going to vacation at. Fellowship is me strengthening you and you strengthening me, me listening to you, you hearing me, etc. Etc. That makes for real fellowship. And I think if we're going to really support young people, then we are really going to have to up our game. You know there's no microwave popcorn in the Bible. It's all about what are you willing to give your flesh and blood for right To join Jesus in his real flesh and blood ministry?
Bishop Wright:And so, while that may sound pretty serious and heavy, some of the people that I know in the world who have the best senses of humor are people who do this all the time. Humor even becomes a part of being able to look back at my own life, see my struggles, be able to meet them with good humor and then be able to bring that good humor into conversations with other people so that their burden can be a little lighter. And so, wherever we are in the spectrum, I think that's the work. Some people I know they have a great gift of writing encouraging cards or texts to people that find people at intersections problematic, difficult, troublesome intersections, and they encourage them through those intersections. So all of us have the authority to do this.
Bishop Wright:And that takes me back to the point I really wanted to make earlier, and that is sometimes, when we talk about authority in the church, some of us use that as an excuse to wait for the ordained person to do something, and I don't think that's what Jesus has in mind at all. I mean, in some ways Jesus could have said look, y'all wait here, I'll go get the donkey. After all, I'm the Messiah, I can do it all. And they could have said look, y'all wait here, I'll go get the donkey. After all, I'm the Messiah, I can do it all. And they could have said great, we didn't want to do it anyway, we didn't want to endure the risk or the inconvenience. Go do it, jesus, we'll be right here.
Bishop Wright:But he doesn't. He shares his authority. He confers authority to go and join him, and I think that's another indicator of a real mature relationship with Christian authority and, you know, and our own spiritual maturity. And that is am I sitting around waiting for the ordained person to do something? Am I sitting around waiting for God to do something or do I understand that I'm incredibly gifted? I'm an incredibly gifted person. We all are. All of us are. I mean, that's what's so wildly majestic about God that God has created all these gifts in all of us and no one person has all the gifts. And the best expression of getting the work done is when we throw all the gifts in a hopper together and we go out and accomplish the thing.
Bishop Wright:You know, one of the things I've learned as bishop here for the last 13 years is that in no way can I account for all the gifts that are present in middle and north Georgia in 120 worshiping communities and beyond. Right, and that some people think that's daunting or scary. I'm excited by it. It's a demonstration for me that the Holy Spirit is working. You know at work that I can't even imagine all the things that we could accomplish together because I can't. I don't have a full accounting of all the gifts, and there's no way to have an accounting of all the gifts. But the invitation to everybody is right to bring your gift right and join Jesus in his purpose. And we have all been authorized by virtue of our baptism. Nobody is worthy, right. That's not the way that God works. It's not about your worthiness, right. God calls all of us right and then he makes us worthy in the calling. But all of us are called.
Melissa:I love that, Bishop. We're authorized to exercise our worthiness and giftedness. Thank you for listening to For People. You can follow us on Instagram and Facebook at Bishop Rob Wright, or by visiting www. fourpeopledigital. Please subscribe, leave a review and we'll be back with you next week.