For People with Bishop Rob Wright
For People with Bishop Rob Wright
Release
Prison takes many shapes and forms. The size of an individuals home or investment portfolio pales in comparison to true spiritual release - a freedom of purpose, clarity, and belonging that transcends physical limitations. This God given release is true freedom!
In this episode, Melissa and Bishop Wright delve into Acts 16, reflecting on the story of Paul and Silas. Imprisoned yet singing joyfully after freeing a slave girl from demonic possession, their experience serves as a powerful metaphor. The conversation explores themes of oppression and freedom, highlighting a recurring pattern in human history: the tendency to define freedom as "keeping a foot on someone else's neck."
Bishop Wright contrasts this with the radically different model offered by Jesus—liberation that lifts others rather than subjugates them. He emphasizes that before we can transform societal systems, we must first confront the "prisons" within ourselves: the grudges we cling to, the biases we perpetuate, and the wealth we hoard while others are deprived of life's basic needs. Listen in for the full conversation.
Read For Faith, the companion devotional.
I want to know the God that can bring joy to a dingy dungeon right? I want to know that God that is. The genesis of the Christian story is that when we were supposed to be crying we were praising God. Prisons look lots of different ways. I mean, when I was a little poor kid, growing up in public housing, it never dawned on me that you could live in a 6,000, 7,000 square foot home with all the amenities and feel like you were in prison.
Melissa:Welcome to For People with Bishop Rob Wright. I'm Melissa Rau and this is a conversation inspired by Fosr Faith, a weekly devotion sent out every Friday. You can find a link to this week's Four Faith and a link to subscribe in the episode's description. Good morning, bishop.
Bishop Wright:Morning morning.
Melissa:You called this week's devotion Release and it's based off of Acts, chapter 16, verses 16 through 34, which I have to say there's a lot going on in this overall passage right.
Bishop Wright:It's huge.
Melissa:For sure. So do you want to set the setting for us?
Bishop Wright:Well, yeah, I'll give it a try. I mean, it's a lot to say and I would really recommend to folks to just pick up your Bible or your phone or your tablet, whatever it is, and turn to the book of Acts. It's a book right after the Gospels. It's where we find Paul's missionary journeys, et cetera. It's how Paul then begins to sort of go then through the known world, he and others, and sort of tell the story of Jesus and demonstrate the power of faith in Jesus. And so, by the time we get to the 16th chapter of the story of Jesus and demonstrate the power of faith in Jesus. And so, by the time we get to the 16th chapter of the book of Acts, we have this wonderful encounter Right, paul and his companion, silas now are wandering around trying to trying to tell the story of Jesus, the risen Lord, and and they come upon a little town, and and they come upon a woman, a girl, apparently, not a little girl, but a girl, young girl, who according to Scripture, was demon possessed.
Bishop Wright:But this demon possessed, the particular nature of this possession, was that this girl had a gift Now she could tell the future. She was a fortune teller. Right, the girl had a gift. Now she could tell the future. She was a fortune teller, right, and the people who owned her. She was a slave girl and the people who owned her were making a lot of money on this gift. I mean, just imagine that people were just lining up to pay their nickels, right, to be told you know palm reading and fortune telling and all that, and you know.
Bishop Wright:And so somehow this girl latches on to Paul and Silas and starts following you know them around and she says, interestingly enough, hey, paul and Silas, I know that you're a slave of God, and you know. And she starts shouting at them and so on and so forth. And then it says Paul, annoyed by the spectacle and annoyed by her following them around, casts out her demon right Now, we got a problem, right, because now her newfound freedom, her newfound release, has changed an economic model model for these folks. And now they're upset. And what they don't say is, hey, we're all for freedom and we're all for religion, as long as they don't impact our ability to make a buck. They don't say that. What they say is, hey, these Christians are causing a problem, right, and so they're not exactly honest about the whole thing. Anyway, the story goes on. Paul and Silas are thrown in jail for all of this, so they set her free and then become captives themselves.
Melissa:Right. Well, I'm fascinated by the whole thing. Because this whole entire passage it's problematic for me? Well, because there's lots of holes in it, like how do we know certain things and how do we get to the end? And you know, because we also talk about Paul and Silas being jailed because of it.
Bishop Wright:Yeah.
Melissa:Right, and so they were able to make a case to the court and say, hey, these people are saying things and it's causing us to do things that are unlawful for us, which is wild, because I'm pretty sure that the message of Jesus was all about love and freedom, and so really, what this is about is liberty. To me, and I'm struck I don't know if this is a human condition I'm struck by the fact that sometimes it seems like certain people who need to be free in order to be free or experience liberty in their very limited way of thinking, need to oppress other people. So we have to enslave and jail other people in order for us to be or exercise the freedom whatever that's really, that's, that's, that's a conundrum to me Bishop.
Bishop Wright:Yeah, you got it, you nailed it. That's the conundrum, right that that you know. History tells us that oftentimes the quest for freedom by a certain group requires the bondage of another group.
Melissa:Well, and here's the interesting thing. So last week we had a great conversation about speech, yeah, and it doesn't escape me that this week we're talking about release. And it doesn't escape me that this week we're talking about release. And I went immediately to the First Amendment, our First Amendment right, which is freedom of religion, freedom of speech, freedom to about the Bill of.
Melissa:Rights says, the civil rights of none shall be abridged on account of religious belief or worship, nor shall any national religion be established, nor shall the full and equal rights of conscience be in any manner or on any pretext infringed. And so I feel like right now, in this time of Christian nationalism, I think some folks would rather be free by subjugating or oppressing other people's belief systems, which is antithetical to even our founding documents of our country. I don't know what to do about it.
Bishop Wright:Bishop documents of our country. I don't know what to do about it, bishop. Well, I mean, I think what you're doing, if you dig down deep, is that you're articulating what we would call sin, which is our ability to write out ideals Right, and then, because of commerce or because of other considerations superiority complexes, ego, arrogance, the propensity for abuse of those who are weaker we end up living at odds with the ideals we espouse, right. And so you know, it's like what St Paul said you know the good I ought to do I don't do right and the evil that I do do, and I know I shouldn't do. Well, there I am, and so it is this ability to know better but not to do better. You might also say it's this notion of competing priorities.
Bishop Wright:Right, so it may have been normalized to hold slaves in the Roman colonies, uh, and it was um. And so these gentlemen, uh, who were uh, basically using this little girl and her possession, her malady um, thought, hey, what's the problem? This is normal for the society, but there is this thing, and, even though Paul and Silas don't come to it in a sort of a dignified and, you know, in sort of clear fashion, they back their way into setting this girl free, right? I mean, paul just sets her free because he's annoyed by her shouting out. But, you know, they take us to this intersection where we're going to always stay in tension with God, because for us, you know, freedom really only means to be able to choose the captivity of our own sort of heart's desire, and religion, in many ways, for many of us, is only the spiritual resources to help us maintain what is already beneath what God would define as freedom. And so what we find ourselves at again is this intersection, is this pinch point, is this tension about? You know, what are our actual priorities? Lived priorities, lived reality.
Bishop Wright:And yeah, do we all fall short? Of course we do, but it's one thing to sort of fall short and then just sit there and you're short falling. It's another thing to continue the quest right. And so our faith, the word of God, sacraments, all the instruments of Christian maturity in the church, the resources for Christian maturity in church are supposed to be moving us, along with our own appetite to please God more than we please the culture, the society, etc.
Bishop Wright:And occasionally those people come along, and that's the whole point of it. And what do we do to those people come along, and that's the whole point of it. And what do we do to those people? Well, when they come along and bring us a freedom that we didn't dare to dream about and perhaps Devin never really wanted, we castigate them, incarcerate them or worse, and that's what human history says right, when we really what we really want is a hierarchy, and the hierarchy goes commerce, freedom and service to commerce, religion and service to commerce, and that, frankly speaking, has been the American model from, you know, 1619. And what we have done on our best days is begin to question that On our worst days, we act like that wasn't our reality.
Melissa:right. Is that not like a free thing to do, like they're practicing their freedom because in Christ they are free?
Bishop Wright:They believe that.
Melissa:It causes an earthquake and the jailer was going to kill himself.
Bishop Wright:They stopped the suicide. That's right yeah.
Melissa:But they also could have. They could have been free, but they were already free, so they didn't flee, but actually helped this person not kill himself.
Bishop Wright:That's right.
Melissa:Who then became a believer and I guess maybe this is why I don't like the story, because there's so many holes. It's like okay, well, that was easy. He became a believer pretty quickly.
Bishop Wright:Yeah, well, I mean, well, just go slow here. I mean, think about it, right, think about it. I mean we saw this also in Dr King and all of those freedom riders and civil rights leadership. You know, think about it. Now You're being incarcerated, but you're going to jail, happy, right, because the freedom is to be finally living life on purpose, as I like to say, it is to have your mind and behind in line. Right, that's peace, that's joy, right it's.
Bishop Wright:You know, we find ourselves, you know a lot of us, in perpetual states of lament, right, and anxiety, and maybe even depression. And you know, that's one great definition of depression. Right, it's a very intense anxiety about one thing or the other, about just about this ominous cloud of anxiety. But how do we begin to chip away at that? Well, we take steps toward that thing. We say our heart wants right, and this begins to cause joy in us, which is counter cognitive. So I can just imagine that the jailer is like wait a minute, wait a minute, wait a minute. You guys are free walking around, everything was cool. All you had to do was collude with a system of captivity and everything would have been cool. No, but you decided not to. You ended up now behind iron bars. You sound free even though you're behind bars, right? And all the guys who are participating in systems of abuse, you know, maybe they look free but perhaps they don't. I don't see as much joy in them as they pursue, you know, commerce and abuse and service to commerce. I see joy in you characters. Now, that's got to confound the guy who, let's say, is a career, a corrections officer. That's got to, you know. You know he's got shackles on their feet, they got shackles on their hand and they're having a party man, they're having a good worship party, right.
Bishop Wright:So, yeah, I could see how that might prick up a person's conscience and imagination and say I want to know that God, right, I want to know the God that can bring joy to a dingy dungeon, right, I want to know that God. And you know, the truth of the matter is that is the Genesis of the Christian story, is is that when we were supposed to be crying, we were praising God, right? And? And uh, you know, I mean that is the story of Easter, right, the good Friday thing, okay, the movement's over, they lynched. And uh, you know, I mean, that is the story of Easter, right, the good Friday thing. Okay, the movement's over. They lynched the um, they lynched the leader, but wait, oh, this just in folks. You know he's not dead, you know life goes on, and dramatically so, and you don't even have to fear death.
Bishop Wright:Now, that's release, that's release, right, and so release, that's release, right. And so you know that's this emancipatory way that God is in the world, right. And so you know prisons look lots of different ways. I mean, when I was a little poor kid, growing up in public housing, it never dawned on me that you could live in a 6,000, dawned on me that you could live in a 6,000, 7,000 square foot home with all the amenities and all the beauty and conveniences and feel like you were in prison. It never dawned on me. And I have met people on death row and people who are incarcerated and people who are in dire circumstances, and they feel like to me as they talk and speak to me as the most free people I've ever met, and so there's a great irony I think this story brings us down to.
Bishop Wright:But it brings us down to this other thing what's fundamental about God is God wants to cause release in all God's children, right, and so not just some of God's children, and so, and God seems to want a release that is not predicated or doesn't need the subjugation of others.
Bishop Wright:Now, that's proprietary, especially in human history, because we've got a lot of one group up while they have their foot on the neck of somebody else We've got a lot of that in history Seems like that's the only way we know how to be free, right, whether it's the Pax Romana or the Pax Americana, right, that's the only way we know how to be free is to have our foot on somebody's necks, is to have our foot on somebody's necks. But Jesus is offering this freedom of purpose, this freedom of clarity, this freedom of belonging, this freedom of knowing and being known to us, and it's beyond circumstances and that is what blows the mind. So, yeah, they end up rescuing the jailer, like the dude who's in charge of their incarceration now has become a beneficiary of their wacky Christianity which says, oh, jail is just an opportunity to sing.
Melissa:Yeah, and and maybe, maybe that's another rub. For me is like even going back to the slave girl. You know they didn't ask her if she felt jailed, so I'm like, oh, they blundered. They didn't ask they just did it and it's like how do you know that she didn't think it was a gift? You know, it was actually called a gift by the way, yeah, the gift of divination right.
Melissa:Right, by the way, in the scripture. Yeah, the gift of divination, right, right. And so it's like, okay. Well, that aside, I just wonder how much jail or being bound is an illusion.
Bishop Wright:I think there are literal jails and I think there are figurative jails, for sure, right, the only thing that seems constant in that for me is that an abiding, generative life with God begins to help us to see the kind of jail cells that we're in. Some of us are in tragic jail cells of fear, you know, and fear comes in lots of different flavors. You know we're in, you know, lots of different jails about. We feel like we are assigned to a life which is flat and mean. We you know so. So you know, jail cells come in a lot of ways. We see a lot of parts of our life as death sentences rather than opportunities.
Bishop Wright:You know, my son, my son, our youngest son, is dyslexic and struggled immensely. His other brothers and sisters didn't weren't dyslexic and really struggled to find his own educational sort of joy.
Bishop Wright:And by the grace of God, my wife and I had discretionary time and resources to get him in a school the Schenck School, frankly here in the metropolitan Atlanta area.
Bishop Wright:And then they did the most miraculous turnaround in that kid's life and to other kids, and thought was going to be a lifelong sort of sentence to him was now a superpower and they gave him the keys to figure out how to parse, you know, reading, in a way that made a lot of sense to the way that God sort of made his brain, and it was transformative for me to see how people could develop these kinds of forms to give release to kids and release to a lot of us who looked on, and to help us to see what we could only see as limitation these folks saw as a way to give kids real freedom, real confidence. And it's just, it's extraordinary. Now I'm not equating dyslexia with what this girl's malady was, but I'm simply saying if you ask my kid, he'll tell you that that was release, that was a life changing release for him and if he didn't have that kind of stewardship of learning from that school, I think his life would have felt a lot more like a prison, like limits.
Melissa:Bishop, you said something bold. You said it's release that God wants for us and for those we hold captive. And that was kind of like oh, who am I holding captive that I need to free or release? And gosh, that's big and complicated. How do we do that work?
Bishop Wright:I mean before we get to systems right, because systems are just made up of lots of individuals right Before we get to systems, you know we might want to interrogate, you know, the grudges we hold, the biases we hold, the uninterrogated stuff that we hold, the un-nuanced stuff that we hold about other folks. We might want to interrogate that because those are prisons sort of value ourselves and then value gifts and blessings that are in our life. We might look over to our left and our right and might see that our neighbor is also human and deserving of healthcare and pension plans and all the things we take for granted. It blows my mind as a practical matter. You know, the Episcopal Church is one church in what we call the Anglican Communion, and the Anglican Communion is 98.6 million Anglicans across the globe and of course, the center of the Anglican Communion is England, because, therefore, the Anglican Church was the sort of Church of England. Right, it was the church of the colonizer and the colonies were everywhere.
Bishop Wright:And so what's fascinating to me is that when we were all together as bishops in Kent in England, we spent a lot of time talking about bedrooms and human sexuality an important subject.
Bishop Wright:But it was not lost on me that the vast majority of the people who are represented there also did not have health plans, health care for themselves or pensions which means they were my peer in the work but didn't have the benefits that I had of sort of removing lots of wealth from lots of these places represented in the room that I was in and now sitting on piles and piles and piles of gold was not. We were not having the conversation about releasing that to the people who needed it the most. And so this idea about system really we can make it macro, we can make it micro, but it doesn't change the truth of it, which is that, you know, the very thing that we're holding on to oftentimes ends up being a prison for us and becomes the very thing that we really need to release, to know freedom and to begin to change the systems that we consciously, and maybe even unconsciously, collude with.
Melissa:Yeah, so I guess we just got to let go and let God.
Bishop Wright:Well, you know, let go, yeah, let go, let God and sing when you find yourself in the prison.
Melissa:Come on, bishop. Thank you, and thank you for listening to For People. You can follow us on Instagram and Facebook at Bishop Rob Wright, or by visiting www. for people. digital. Please subscribe, leave a review and we'll be back with you next week.