Good Friday and Reflections on Howard Thurman

Good Friday isn’t just a date on the calendar—it’s a truth test. What happens when real integrity shows up in public life and refuses to be bought, bent, or silenced?

In his 1964 meditation Discovery, Howard Thurman suggests that death isn’t the worst outcome. The real tragedy is living without dignity, without conviction—without the integrity of your spirit and soul.

In this episode, Melissa and Bishop Wright wrestle with the uncomfortable logic of the cross. If Jesus embodies a truth that heals, feeds, and restores, why do systems react as if that truth is a threat? Maybe it’s because truth—real, lived truth—disrupts what’s convenient. Bishop Wright offers a simple invitation: anchor yourself in God’s goodness, treat every person as a sibling, and live a truth the world can recognize. Listen in to the full conversation.

Read For Faith, the companion devotional. 

Transcript

When Truth Becomes A Threat

Bishop Wright 0:00

When truth comes in our midst, walked among us, fed us, healed us, gave us sight, we cannot embrace that. That becomes too inconvenient for us, for our legal system, for our politics, for our religion. And so we have to assassinate it. While it's interesting to sort of hear these big words from me, I think we have to think about personally the ways in which we domesticate, deny, euphemize truth.

Melissa 0:40

Welcome to For People with Bishop Rob Wright. I'm your host, 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. Bishop, it's Good Friday.

Bishop Wright 0:57

It's Good Friday, yeah.

Melissa 0:59

And you base your devotion off of Howard Thurman's Good Friday message in 1964 that you named Discovery.

Bishop Wright 1:08

Yeah, yeah. Let me read that for you. And I quote from a Good Friday meditation from Reverend Dr. Howard Thurman from 1964. And he writes, Today is Good Friday. And I'm reminded not merely of the drama of this occasion, the death, the crucifixion, and the extended agony of that timeless interval, but also I'm reminded of the life of which this crucifixion was a part. The crucifixion was the logic of the life that the master lived. The discovery that death is not, after all, the worst thing in the world, that there comes a time in a person's life when they must cast their vote either to live with dignity and the strength and the character and the insight of a person with convictions, with a sense of the dignity of their life, or to die. And when this choice is before one, then one may reflect upon the meaning of the events of Good Friday. The tremendously universal disclosure that a man or woman's physical life does not represent that upon which he should or she should place the highest premium. The integrity of his spirit, the integrity of his soul, the meaning of his role.

Melissa 2:32

So, Bishop, I mean, that's fire right there. Do you want to like how is this hitting you right now for today for such a time as this?

Turning Truth Into Love

Bishop Wright 2:40

Well, yeah, well, first of all, Howard Thurman. So Howard Thurman is Martin Luther King's uh great teacher. He was the sort of one of America's great mystics. Um uh he was the sort of the mystic resource uh for so many who gave their lives, their bodies, their their treasure to make sure that this country uh began to embrace uh all of its ideals uh in the civil rights movement and you know, prior, uh, you know, in the 40s, he has a multiracial congregation. Um he's just this amazing spiritual resource uh for the soul of America. Sadly, uh for so long uh we didn't access his genius. And now I understand that people are sort of more familiar with him and embracing him. But he's he's such a dense thinker, he's such a good thinker. Um, you know, a little dab will do you, you know, you just got to bite a sentence or two uh from Thurman. But but nevertheless, here he is in 1964, and he's meditating on Good Friday. And I think one of the first things that he says, which is sort of shocking for us, apparently, you know, especially these days, is that death is not the worst thing that can happen to you. That's sort of point number one, right? Uh and he goes on to say the the worst thing that can happen to you is if you don't plant a flag, if you don't live with dignity or convictions, uh if you don't cast a vote uh for the dignity, your dignity, and the dignity of others, uh, and you just simply expire, you just simply die, uh, well then you never really lived. Uh and so I think that's huge. And he he goes on to say, sort of point number two, uh, is that um uh the crucifixion, Jesus on the cross, uh on a on a dump uh outside of the city walls, in between two criminals lynched in front of his mother, uh I think he's saying that that that was the culminating logic of how Jesus, he calls him the master, how Jesus lived. Uh and so it was inevitable, I think Thurman would say, that to live a life so robustly full of conviction uh about what religion should be, faith should be, what dignity for all should look like, it was inevitable that we would find ourselves uh incapable of metabolizing that much truth. So we had to kill him. So there is a logic on display in Good Friday. That is, and it doesn't reflect positively on us, but because it shows that we have a hard time digesting uh truth. When truth comes in our midst, uh there it was, ruddy, uh woolly-haired, uh raised by Mary and Joseph, uh walked among us, fed us, healed us, gave us sight, um, tried to help those of us like me uh who were in the business of spirituality to see the more deep, more perfect truth. We cannot embrace that. That becomes too inconvenient for us, for our legal system, for our politics, for our religion. And so we have to assassinate it. So there is Thurman saying that. And you know, while it's interesting to sort of hear these big words from me, I think we have to think about personally the ways in which we domesticate, deny, euphemize truth.

Melissa 6:05

Yeah. You know, and that uh Jesus and the disenfranchised or disinherited disenfranchised. Disenherited uh was raw power, right? I know. Well, it struck me when I was reading that book a few years back. I I was like, oh my gosh, this was written even before Martin Luther King. Like this inspired Martin Luther King, which was before the civil rights movement, Howard Thurman was speaking truth to power and had a profound faith. And so I I guess I bis Bishop, what do you think this means for us? Like, how do we tell the truth in ways with conviction in such a noisy landscape?

Bishop Wright 7:10

Well, I I think, you know, here again, I'm I'm reminded of the the of the prophet Stevie Wonder, turn your words into truth and then turn that truth into love. Um I think is the process. I mean, otherwise, we're just trying to sort of beat each other over the head uh with our small versions of the truth. I I think one of the things that Jesus did uh amazingly was to be the truth, right? So, so you know, obviously he did not have Instagram or TikTok or Facebook or that. And, you know, some people substitute a life lived in truth uh for occasional sort of flourishes of truth, what I call keyboard courage, uh, you know, or uh they get their fix of their version of the truth uh in the evening on their version of the news and they call that truth. I I think Jesus is always called why we had to get rid of Jesus uh on a day like Good Friday was because he kept inviting us to align ourselves with the words we use in worship. And the words that we use in worship are about covenant, and covenant is make, you know, uh love the Lord your God with all your heart, mind, soul, and strengthen neighbor as self. He says all the law and all the prophets hang on that, right? So it's just truth is alignment with that. Um, and it's just easier to scapegoat and be critical. It's just socially acceptable now for clicks, and we've monetize clicks uh to be petty uh and to be verbally violent. It's just easier to do that. So to stand for truth is to stand against the current, right? So you can't stand uh against a current unless you find yourself anchored in something. And the only thing that we have to be anchored that is timeless for us, the timelessness of truth, right, is that we believe that God is a loving God, an able God, a good God, and a generous God. And we believe that every human being is our sibling. And we believe that uh all creation in all of its uh expressions uh is also sibling to us. So the earth, the water, et cetera. So that is the truth. And so to live that out, uh, whether you are a dentist, a banker, uh a limousine driver, uh someone who cleans up after people, I mean, I think the best expression of that uh is a lived expression. And sometimes, and many most times, many, you know, many more times, um one does not even have to open one's mouth to live that truth. I saw uh a piece the other day on uh CBS Sunday morning uh about a doctor who already had, I believe she already had six of her own children, and uh had this uh this one kid to come into the hospital with no adult uh uh present. Uh and uh and this this kid needed an amazing, difficult surgery, and this kid was all alone. Well, long story short, she adopts him, right? Uh and uh and then they find out through some research that this kid has got five or six other siblings that have been neglected and abandoned, et cetera. So she rallies uh her in-laws and her siblings, and they adopt the rest of the key of the little boys' siblings. Um, you know, I I hold that up because there's a truth there. There's a truth there about generosity, there's a truth there about our interconnectedness, there's a truth there about love and compassion, there's a truth there about selflessness that I think speaks um, you know, that pierces pettiness. It actually reveals pettiness. It it shames and embarrasses selfishness. Uh, what this doctor just did uh out of the you know reservoir of our own, of our own heart and our own commitments speaks volumes to people. Um and I think this is the logic that I think is revealed to us uh in Good Friday.

Melissa 11:20

Yeah. So, Bishop, last question about the posture of people. I love the title of this discovery. Yeah, and to discover things means that we might we need to be open to discovery, that we're curious, etc. So, would you uh what is the posture we might take in approaching Good Friday and preparing ourselves for Easter?

Bishop Wright 11:45

Yeah, I don't remember the exact quote. Um uh, but you know, when when uh there's that wonderful quote quote, and I could look it up. When God calls someone, uh God calls a man, God calls a woman to die. And so in that regard, it's metaphorical. It is God is calling us into deep alignment with God's self. And what that means is that we're going to have to die to some things, some behaviors, some words, some ways. Our priorities are going to shift, if not completely, die. Uh so there is that level first. And then it just so happens that all these great men and women, uh, our spiritual sort of photo album, our spiritual ancestors have followed that logic and they've ended up putting their bodies at harm, their livelihoods at harm, etc. And I think what one of the things that we don't do well enough these days is to be frank with people about the cost of absolute radical faithfulness. I mean, the truth of the matter is that you and I have the luxury of having this conversation because people bled and died. People bled and died. And uh, you know, one wonders, now I'm I'm not I'm not being sort of silly here, but one wonders what has happened to that spirit in the church? Where have all the martyrs gone um who felt so deeply about alignment with God and that lived out loud in the culture that they uh that they put their bodies uh and theirselves uh you know uh in harm's way. I I can tell you, and I've said it before here on this channel, to have been in the good company of some of those people um who lived there and who got right to the precipice um uh uh is an amazing study in um this hybrid of boldness and gentleness. Um you don't meet arrogance when you meet people who have stood at that intersection. You meet a transformative gentleness that is married to a transformative boldness. And and I think that's what that's what the world needs more of. Uh we've got enough angry little people with big platforms. Uh I think what we need is uh all of us, as St. Paul would say, to grow up in love. Um, and when we do that, that is a truth that unless more of us do this, that is a truth that the world will never really metabolize. And so we celebrate in a funny way, we celebrate Good Friday because Jesus was not bought off. And he followed the logic of his life, and it creates for us, right, this this gift of of logic for our own lives that we can sort of, it's a plumb line, so to speak, it's a level for us uh to interrogate our own lives for truth.

Melissa 14:59

Indeed. Bishop, thank you, and listeners, thank you 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.