For People with Bishop Rob Wright
For People with Bishop Rob Wright
Treasure
How do we respond when the winds of division, uncertainty and despair threaten to blow us off our center? We go deep into what we believe! This episode introduces the new series "We Believe!". Bishop Wright chose this series title because belief defines us, consoles us and guides us no matter the seasons of life.
In this episode, Melissa and Bishop Wright have a conversation that shifts the understanding of belief itself - moving beyond intellectual agreement to embrace trust as the foundation of faith. "When we say we believe," Bishop Wright explains, "that word is actually better rendered 'trust.' We are the people who say we trust God." This distinction transforms how we approach our spiritual journey, especially in times of division and anxiety. Listen in for the full conversation.
Read For Faith, the companion devotional.
We Believe is about hey, what are the gaps between what I say on Sunday and how I live on Monday? And, without any shame, how can I chart a course across that gap between what I say and how I live? That's why I want to talk about, you know, we Believe, because I think what we're doing here is giving people an opportunity to then restate where is my actual heart and where is my actual treasure.
Melissa:Welcome to Four People with Bishop Rob Wright. I'm Melissa Rao 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. Over the course of this next season, bishop Wright is framing his devotions and our conversations around the theme we Believe as we make our way through the lectionary. Bishop I trust your July was well spent learning and growing. Welcome back.
Bishop Wright:Well, thank you, what a gift it is to be able to take some time away and to be able to have such trustworthy and wonderful partners to keep the work going. And so, yeah, I'm back and grateful for my time of reflection, some writing I love to be in my garage tinkering with old cars, some of that and a little bit of travel. So glad to be back.
Melissa:Yeah, and so how is God inspiring you most these days?
Bishop Wright:The gift of vacation is so you're not preaching every Sunday, not teaching during the course of the week, and so you really have a time to reflect a little deeper and maybe even catch up with yourself, and so I'm really grateful to that that. My life with scripture over the last month has been just devotional, just not for anybody else's ears or heart other than my own, and so I've been really glad about that. My wife and I have been doing some Bible studies, prompted by an app that we're using, the Bible app, and so that's it's unfamiliar and that's not typical lectionary stuff that we use in the Episcopal Church. So that's wonderful that it comes at us sort of obliquely and I can't anticipate it and I'm less familiar with their approach, and so that's been great. So to hear God, see God, think about God. You know, coming in different ways.
Bishop Wright:Certainly, being out in nature has been wonderful. I've spent a lot of time outdoors fishing and doing other sorts of things and you know, nature just cries out. You know the genius of God, the wonder of God. I was in rural Mississippi last week with a friend who has about 40 acres and is a farmer, is a farmer and just him walking us around his garden and his chickens and all these other wonderful projects that he has. I mean, it's the best seminary lesson I think a person could have about the ways in which you know we take God for granted. We're absolutely enveloped in God's will and way.
Melissa:That's kind of a nice little segue, because this first devotion you named Treasure, based off of Luke 12, verses 32 to 40. It's really about storing up our treasure in heaven, right, and not in worldly stuff, and you were just talking about a farmer and lots of nature stuff. And so how do you make meaning I guess we're going to be framing, we believe, and do you just want to kind of give us a background about where that might have come from or what's on your heart there?
Bishop Wright:Yeah, where that might have come from, or what's on your heart there. Yeah Well, I mean, you know being away for a little while, having an opportunity to sort of think deeply, and you know my work is more pastoral, actually, and agricultural, if you will, than it is a sort of academic. What I mean by that is is that if you think of yourself as pastor, that is, someone caring for souls, then you've got to pay attention to, you know, the intersections at which people are struggling, the complexity, the you know sort of velocity, the volatility of life, and what you want to do is offer them or refresh their connection with, in as much as anyone can. Our resource and our resource is scripture, tradition and reason. In our tradition we call it the three-legged stool. Our resource is God creator and God redeemer in the person of Jesus, and God sustainer and companion, you know, in the Holy Spirit. And so as I watch the news, just like everybody else, and I read the papers just like everybody else, and I feel the pinch of all of it, just as a person, as a dad, as a husband, as a friend, as a brother, you know I as a brother, you know I, you know the spirit calls me to ask the question you know, what do we have in our toolkit as believers that can help us at these intersections? And then, as someone who has a platform as an ordained person, you know, I just want to be a resource to people, good folks of every stripe, who find themselves at intersections and need the resources. I believe and want the resources.
Bishop Wright:So, yeah, that's where I'm coming from and so how I get to we believe is that, you know, sort of just given the tone and tenor of our country at this time of the state of Georgia, where I am given divisions of all kinds, given fears and anxieties that I understand, of all kinds by all kinds of folks, you know, I think our best response, you know, I think our best response to all that volatility is to center down on and to remember our tether, to strengthen even our tether, to what we say we believe, who we say we are.
Bishop Wright:And and of course, as you you'll see in the meditation, I make the case that believing is not just intellectual assent to an idea, right, it's just not sort of sitting in a room and say, yeah, that sounds about right to me. No, that's not what we mean when we say we believe. When we say we believe that word believe is actually better rendered trust. So we are the people who say we trust God and so I want to call folks back to that, want to call myself back to that and really sort of open up and offer that resource again to us as we begin the fall and close this year and embark on 2026.
Melissa:So, bishop, I mean, it's pretty easy to agree that God is wondrous, that God is good, that God is trustworthy and that God provides. Where do we go wrong in such an easy thing to believe?
Bishop Wright:Well, you know, as I say, what we, what we would prefer to do, is then control that. We would prefer. I mean, what's the old adage? You know, we're made in God's image. And then we decided that we would return the favor, which is to sort of make God in our image.
Bishop Wright:I think where we go wrong is is that, you know well, I mean, think about our design flaws. I mean we're sort of made to go wrong, right? I mean we're sort of we can get really tribal really fast and think that the beauty of God is only for one part of our human family, or one gender in our human family, or one socioeconomic class of our human family. You know we can do that. I mean, why is it that, you know, a country that is as wealthy as ours, you know, has lengthening lines for basics to live in? Why is a country as wealthy and as brilliant as ours can't figure out housing? Why is a country as brilliant as ours, who knows that it needs the labor from people of all over the world, from people of all over the world, has decided to sort of disparage folks and, rather than be really creative and think about ways in which we can secure our borders as well as use the labor from other folks, issue some sort of really smart pass system where people come and do seasonal work, et cetera. I mean. So the whys are as long as my leg, and so I think the whys point to a short-sightedness, perhaps even a selfishness, an arrogance, an abuse of power.
Bishop Wright:So this is our design flaw. We do this at home, we do this when we're together, we do this in the church, we do this in the world, and so that's what goes wrong all the time. You know, this is why Jesus, what Jesus has to say, is so dangerous, because he really wants us to name that. Where is your heart? He says where is your heart? So if our heart is in my tribe or my kin over yours, then my treasure will be in sort of stepping on your neck, so to speak, and putting myself first.
Bishop Wright:If my treasure, however, is in God and the fact that every human person is my sibling and that all creation bears the marks of the divine, then I might organize myself differently. And you know, it really is interesting. Our biggest blunders throughout history have been the violation of that simple idea that the earth is the Lord's and the fullness thereof, and you are my neighbor. Therefore you are entitled to that which I desire for my own children. When we get that wrong, things go tragically, terribly wrong. When we get that right, you know all creation sings, god smiles, and we prove that we sort of are above the beasts.
Melissa:Okay. So I mean, that was great Bishop, and what don't we believe? Like, does it matter? Like I'm looking at this in my interpretation, I'm reading the NRSVUE where it's saying be watchful slaves. And says be dressed for action and have your lamps lit and I know there are a lot of people who will interpret that as being ready for when the second coming of Christ comes. Be ready to go to heaven, don't be left behind. You know literally. And yet it also says be dressed for action. Action for what? So are there things when we're talking about what we believe it doesn't matter, like what we believe don't believe? I'm just curious what your thoughts are on that.
Bishop Wright:Well, I think now's the time, especially given this sort of tsunami of politics and economic adversity and various other things. Now's the time to sort of get really clear about what we believe, and I think obviously, as I've said, belief has to become action. You know, faith without works is dead, right, faith without works is just fooling ourselves. So I think then, the next part is so what are the actions? So I think that's dressed and ready for action. So what are those actions? So there's an urgency to this, I think. And I think here's that other word too witnesses. What we believe should be readily apparent to the people around us, based on how we live, before we ever open our mouth. I think that's also true. So to me, you know the depth of belief, and the best expression of belief is action. Right, but I think what I'm wanting to do now is just pause a second here and to actually refine and clarify for ourselves what do we actually believe? Because I think that's where it is. I trust people, and I think that scripture brings us into what I call a creative tension, and so it's about how we manage ourselves in that creative tension, if I'm honest with myself, and we need to be honest with ourselves, and all of us have deluded ourselves to some degree, you know. But if we are willing to stop squinting and look at ourselves through, you know, in the mirror of God's eyes, which are represented in scripture, you know, truth is healing to our souls, it's healing to our bodies, it's healing to our communities. And so we believe is about hey, what are the gaps between what I say on Sunday and how I live on Monday? And, without any shame, how can I chart a course across that gap between what I say and how I live? That's why I want to talk about, you know, we believe, because I think what we're doing here is giving people an opportunity to then restate where is my actual heart and where is my actual treasure.
Bishop Wright:And again, Jesus respected the dignity of people by giving them questions right and not commands. He didn't dictate and he wasn't an authoritarian. He loved enough to give the space, and that's what we see in the prodigal son story Loving enough to give the space. And you know, that story would be much less profound if the dad would have chased after the kid, you know, and sort of tied him up and drug him home, but the fact that the child came to himself and that precipitated the change of mind and heart and direction.
Bishop Wright:I think this is where it is, and so what I think we should be doing here is offering people some clarity. This is what we say. This is who Jesus was. This is who Jesus is. This is Jesus's invitation. You decide, and I think that's the best way to live, and I think our treasure has got to be at least in that. That's the good news of the gospel. It's not coercion, and every time the church does that, and every time we as believers, as individuals, begin to coerce in God's name, we do violence to the gospel.
Melissa:So you're using some pretty big words like we and I and us and individual.
Bishop Wright:Sure.
Melissa:And so how do we hold that intention? Because you said go deep within yourself to really you know. So, bishop, can you kind of like unpack that a little bit that? How do we walk? Because you know the prodigal son and that brother, you know the self-righteous one who was all judgmental, was all about what what the other did or didn't do, or what the other believed or didn't believe. And so how do we hold those?
Bishop Wright:well, Well, you know, the title of this little series is called we Believe, but every we starts with an I right. And so I mean, I think that we cannot delegate out, and perhaps that is a part of the problem is that we are looking for other people to deliver to us some sort of righteousness, some sort of grace, etc. And it seems that Jesus starts with individuals. It seems that Jesus wants to start with individual hearts and behaviors and people's way to manage truth, and so that's where we start.
Bishop Wright:Look, you know, one of the most, I think, pregnant moments when we gather in worship is that we are a collection of ragtag individuals and then we are together for an hour in our tradition, hour, hour and a half and then after one person preaches in our tradition, and after we've heard the scripture, after one person preaches in our tradition and after we've heard the scripture, we stand up as best we can and we say we believe.
Bishop Wright:And that's a pretty powerful moment because in that one moment, while we may have affiliations with lots of different groups, we're sort of saying we believe, and then, of course, the doing of that is everything. And so I want to call us back to, you know, the. We is made up of individuals, and the strongest we we can ever assemble is individuals who have a clarity of purpose and a clarity of commitment and a depth of connection to compassion. So all of these ingredients are, I think, a great starting point for us to begin to consider again what we actually believe. How do we want to live? Who is God in my life and what does that mean?
Melissa:Well, bishop, I'm looking forward to the next few weeks. Thank you, and thank you, listeners, 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.