For People with Bishop Rob Wright
For People with Bishop Rob Wright
Greatness
Greatness to God is measured not by a country's advances in buildings and technology but by how those are treated with the least. In Dr. King’s final Sunday sermon at Washington National Cathedral, he addressed a challenge of the day that remains true in the present: if we claim blessing, are we ready for God's accountability? That question us into the bracing clarity of Matthew 25, where Jesus sets the bar with the hungry, the unhoused, and the stranger.
In this episode, Melissa and Bishop Wright have a conversation centered on Dr. King's final Sunday sermon, given four days before his murder. Together, they explore why prophets are often met with resistance. Instead of condemning, true prophetic work loves a nation enough to critique it. Followers of Jesus embedded in institutions can bend systems toward mercy through fair wages, humane services, restorative practices, and transparent accountability. A nation's greatness, then, becomes directional: power constrained by love, budgets aligned with neighbor-care, and policies that honor the image of God in every person. Listen in for the full conversation.
Read For Faith, the companion devotional.
This is why we kill prophets, because prophets come and they tell us about the gaps. And what we say to the prophet is, is you're being disloyal, unpatriotic. When actually the prophet shows up as an expression of the most patriotic one can be, which is to love one's nation enough to critique her. The prophet's heart, and King said this again and again, is not that America be condemned, but that America repent and change course.
Melissa:I'm your host Melissa Rau and this is For People, a conversation about Bishop Wright's For Faith weekly devotional. You can find a link to this week's For Faith and a link to subscribe in the episode's description. Bishop, this week's devotion you've named Greatness, based off of the "Remaining Awake Through a Great Revolution", an address that the Reverend Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. delivered on March 31st, 1968, the Washington National Cathedral.
Bishop Wright:Right. This is his last Sunday sermon, and it's at uh our Episcopal Cathedral, the Washington National Cathedral. And it's just an excerpt. In four days after delivering this sermon, he would be dead. It's amazing just to think about that for a second. But this is what he wrote. Ultimately, a great nation is a compassionate nation. America has not met its obligations and its responsibilities to the poor. One day we will have to stand before the God of history and we will talk in terms of things we've done. Yes, we will be able to say we built gargantuan bridges to span the seas. We built gigantic buildings to kiss the sky. Yes, we made our submarines to penetrate the oceanic depths. We brought into being many other things with our scientific and technological power. It seems that I can hear the God of history saying, That was not enough. But I was hungry and ye fed me not. I was naked and you did not clothe me. I was devoid of decent sanitary housing to live in, and you did not provide shelter for me. And consequently, you cannot enter the kingdom of greatness. If you do it unto the least of these, my brethren, you do it unto me.
Melissa:So I guess we have a many of us have a difference of opinion of what great or greatness looks like. And I think MLK Jr. certainly had an idea of what great looks like that might be better in line with what God would believe to be great.
Bishop Wright:It's such an important conversation. Um, and and just notice before we dive into it, the way in which all through the arc of the Bible, these kinds of conversations have, there is earthly power in dialogue with God through God's representatives to that earthly power. So the prophet emerges to stay in dialogue with the king or the president or the head of the empire, Caesar, et cetera, and to say, yes, you've accomplished uh tremendous power. Uh you have, you know, military and uh GDP economics and all of this, but is that really the best use of power? Uh, or what aspects of power uh are deficient? Uh and this is why we always kill the prophets, because the prophets ask us inconvenient questions. The prophets bedevil earthly power. Um, Dr. King was not uh murdered uh because he said we should all get along and don't worry, be happy. What he said was that there is a cost for greatness. Um not only that, there's an accountability and a responsibility uh that comes along with greatness and that uh the prophet puts forward, uh, not in a finger-wagging way, right? But out of a deep love for God and out of a deep love for God's people, comes to say there are people who are suffering and languishing, and greatness ought to make us uh sensitive and responsive to the needs of all the people. And this is where we get in trouble. Our greatness includes a few, God's greatness includes all.
Melissa:Oh, okay. So it doesn't escape me that we've used the word great a number of times, and our president um wishes to make America great again. Um and I think in 1968, Martin Luther King Jr. would have said, um, we aren't great. Yeah. And so uh what does it mean? I guess I guess that that I don't know even what my question is. I just what do you believe we might need to do in order to actually make America great? Because I don't know that it ever was, so I'm not gonna say again.
Bishop Wright:Well, you know, uh again, this is an important question. Um, and it's rife uh for you know uh political discord, debate, uh division, argument, right? Uh and so here's where we ought to start this conversation. For a nation like ours that claims a unique blessing from God, um, the Bible is clear. Uh, you know, you know, to whom much is given, much is also required. And so what we say in America, uh, this is not a debate here, by the way, but what just as my lawyer friends say, these are the facts of the case. We say that we are a Christian nation, and we say that we are founded as such. Full stop. Uh, and and we say, uh, despite what our founding documents say, we say uh we say that we're Christian. Uh and so in many ways, when we say these sorts of things, we're calling down an accountability on our own heads. So if we if we did not say that we are divinely and uniquely blessed by God, if we did not say that we're a Christian nation, then uh our reckoning would be different. Um, our ruler, our measurements would be different. But to call down on your head, you know, blessing and to blame God for blessing in our person and our prosperity as a nation is actually to call down the other side of that conversation. And that is, okay, you have been blessed. You want to claim, uh, for lack of a better word, a specific kind of chosenness. Well, here's what chosenness comes with from the Bible it comes with unique accountability, unique responsibility. So then uh if that is true, then the logic flows, then so then greatness now, uh our understanding of greatness now uh has to be infused with God's understanding of what greatness is. And then now we go back to scripture. And if we're gonna go try to find out God's mind about what greatness is, now we've got to start from Genesis and make our journey all the way through Revelation. And, you know, we can't do that in 15 minutes today, but one thing we can say is that uh at its base, it is to love the Lord your God with all your heart, mind, soul, and strength, and to love your neighbor as yourself. What Dr. King is doing in this speech is that he's taking us to Matthew 25. And Matthew, the 25th chapter, is Jesus. Jesus is on his way away. I mean, he's he's he's leaving, he knows what his fate is, his fate is sealed, and he's making sure that we understand, his followers, those there in that moment and us to come, that we understand where the bar is, where the accountability is, that where the responsibility is. And so, therefore, then what the definition of greatness is not Dr. King or not any other prophets that have come before us, it's it's squarely in what God says, uh, and that power must be used for mercy, that power must be used for provision for all, particularly those who are marginalized. Um, and so what we find out is that God's understanding of greatness is always in the editing position of every empire that shows up.
Melissa:Yeah, so minding the gap is really the work we should be about, right?
Bishop Wright:Well, and this is why we kill prophets, because prophets come and they tell us about the gaps. And what we say to the prophet is, is you're being disloyal, unpatriotic, when actually the prophet shows up as an expression of the most patriotic one can be, which is to love one's nation enough to critique her. Not to condemn her, but to critique her. And so, you know, the prophet's goal, the prophet's heart, uh, and and King said this again and again, is not that America be condemned, but that America repent and change course.
Melissa:So, Bishop, what does that look like in the here and now? You know, uh, I think sometimes people romanticize prophets, uh, especially after they've been killed.
Bishop Wright:We love them dead. We prefer them dead. Yeah.
Melissa:We romanticize that and and and it it becomes like the shiny thing that's not remotely uh attainable, let alone you know, achievable, in which to be accountable to. That's right. So don't what do we do about that?
Bishop Wright:Well, there's a cost. I mean, four days after Dr. King gives this sermon, uh, he's murdered. Uh, and there's a cloud of conspiracy all around that, and that's for another podcast. Uh, but but he's murdered. And I remember as a chaplain, I've said this before, I remember as a chaplain, uh, to some little kids, you know, I played some of Dr. King's speeches, and uh a little kid asked me, well, why would we kill somebody who said we should just love each other?
unknown:Right?
Bishop Wright:Because God's love and the way that God wants us to live out love is inconvenient to empire. Right. And so immediately you have, you know, it's like uh like the boxing, you know, in this corner we have earthly power and empire, and in this corner the challenger, right? You know, we have God's love. Um, and and and and this is perennial. This is perennial. And so this is why empire always wants to co-opt prophets and God's word, always wants to read the Bible selectively, right? And so it's interesting that we have um a lot of people now talking about Christianity, uh, particularly us America as a Christian nation, etc., uh, but we are not reading the words of Jesus. Um, it's like Jesus now has become inconvenient to the religion that's founded by him. Uh and so what we want to do is we don't want to read him, particularly his words about the poor, particularly his words about strength comes in vulnerability, et cetera. Now, uh what has to be said is that um uh Jesus' movement uh was never meant for world government, right? It was a little movement. Uh it was to change the hearts and minds, it was to show the love of God on the ground, et cetera. Um, but what we think we understand is that uh Jesus' movement is supposed to infect the hearts of those who participate in all kinds of systems in the world. And so uh, even as they live out uh their commitment, uh they bend the institutions and organizations and systems they find themselves in into ways that look more like the kingdom of heaven and less like uh craven empire. And so King, I think, is a realist, but he realizes the opportunity always before those who have earthly power, and that is to change hearts and minds through concrete practices. So, therefore, we can have immigration policies, but we can do them in a particular way, which does not uh diminish the dignity of the immigrant. We could figure out things like work passes for people who have to come and pick our food and our vegetables and play an instrumental role uh in our economy and certainly in prospering our GDP. We could figure out diplomatic solutions uh to situations rather than uh to lead with militaristic solutions quickly. Uh, and on and on and on it goes. But I think what I need to say here at the end is um for people like you and me, and for for people who are followers of Jesus who find themselves throughout institutions, our work is a difficult work, and that is to bear witness to empire and craven earthly powers, uh, sometimes in big ways, uh sometimes in small ways, but to never let people forget that there's another way to think about how we solve problems.
Melissa:You know, sometimes we do things, and in those doings we mess it up. So I was thinking about the do and the not do. Is it so much that we don't do things or that we do things incorrectly? I I'm thinking about the homeless person, the residentially challenged, unhoused person who we are actively making laws to make homelessness illegal and yet don't give them proper shelter that they feel safe in. And that's messed up. It's not just about not housing someone or providing shelter, but it's also the active laws that we're trying to put in place simply because of the inconvenience.
Bishop Wright:And active laws are priorities and policies, right? Active laws, one could argue, come out of the heart of the organization, out of the institution, right? And so simultaneously, this is the kind of thing that gets prophets killed. Uh, the prophet will say something like America is this shining city on a hill, uh, you know, uh utterly wealthy and powerful, and yet so many of her citizens strive uh and and barely make it, and there's the working poor, et cetera, et cetera. And we have not done creative and robust things to take care of our people in the midst. Uh, and so there's a sea of poverty around an oasis of wealth. And this is not God's vision. And certainly this is not what the people who claim uniqueness in God uh should be trying to replicate, while simultaneously mandating that we put the Ten Commandments uh in the classroom. And so uh always before us is our ability uh to get our our wrong right and our right wrong. Uh so we we would put uh we would enshrine the Ten Commandments, but wouldn't live out the Great Commandment, right? We would enshrine the great commandments uh uh but but wouldn't make sure that all God's children have education for their minds and food for their bellies, uh, you know, and on and on and on. And so this is why people get really tired of prophets, because it seems like they're never satisfied. Um but uh but I think that this hunger that's put in all of us for equity and justice is the expression of God in our midst. It's that the Holy Spirit has not left us, that this appetite is still in many of us who want an equitable and just society. Uh and we know, uh we know that uh empire uh often, too often, is arrogance. Uh it is it is the rich and the powerful's foot on the neck of the poor. Uh and uh and we know again and again, and the millennia tell us this, and a mountain of evidence tells us this, uh, that arrogance is duty-bound, you know, inevitably going to overreach. And when it overreaches, the people suffer. Uh, because uh, you know, God has a long arc and God is patient. Uh but as King said, at some point, um, you know, uh our failings will collapse in on us and our people will suffer. Uh, and that is because God will not be mocked. Uh, and these, these, these ways that we we go, this errantcy uh that we take up has consequences. And you know what's a chilling thought for me? Uh a chilling thought for me is the disobedience uh that becomes national policy uh and that becomes uh a sort of national pride. Uh I may die before I suffer the consequences of that, but my children and my grandchildren and my great-grandchildren will surely suffer from the disobedience of our present generations and policies and behaviors and our insensitivity and our coarseness. Uh and so, and so we tend to think as Bible readers now of ourselves and things in the immediate term. Uh, but the the Bible seems to have a sensibility about the generations yet born, and about them suffering from our uh rebellion uh against God and our greed uh and our and our numbness to the plight of the vulnerable.
Melissa:Well, as for the way of MLK, the way of Jesus, I'm grateful for their words, their inspiration. May we be great together, Bishop.
Bishop Wright:Yeah. Maybe we be great. May we take up God's definition of greatness and really lay claim uh in in truth uh to what we say about ourselves, that we are a Christian nation founded by God for God's purposes.
Melissa:Maybe so. Thank you, Bishop, and 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.