December 6, 2024 • 21 mins
What does it mean repent and embrace change? It is more than acknowledging past mistakes! It includes confronting deep-seated fears and behaviors that prevent us from living fully as God intends.
In this episode, Melissa and Bishop Wright have a conversation about John the Baptist and how his radical message of repentance encourages us to use our faith to change the world. Listen in for the full conversation.
Read For Faith, the companion devotional.
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Episode Transcript
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Melissa (00:56):
You called this week's devotion based off of Luke
chapters, chapter three, versesone through six repent, which
means that, since the passage ofscripture is John the Baptist's
cry out of Isaiah to prepare yethe way of the Lord and for any
God spell fans out there.
You know the song we're singingabout today.
(01:17):
Bishop, there are two mainthemes in today's devotion
change and repenting.
Can you unpack that a bit forus?
Bishop Wright (01:27):
Sure, well, the season has changed, right?
I mean, the weather knows it'schanged, my trees know it's
changed, the animals that liveall around in our yard, they
know that the season has changed.
And you know, we in the churchwe say that now the season has
changed because we know what'scoming.
Jesus is coming, his birth iscoming, god is doing a new thing
(01:49):
, and so this is an opportunityfor us to get ready for that.
We know that God amazing thingis happening, that God's self is
coming into the world to livebeside us, to show us how to
(02:09):
love, to love us, to forgive us,to give us an invitation to
thriving.
So we know that all that thisis coming.
We call that Christmas and so,four weeks ahead of that, we
want to make ourselves available.
We want to worship God bysaying that God is first.
(02:29):
And if God is first, that meansthat some realignment has to
happen in our lives.
And John the Baptist, jesus' bigcousin, jesus' older cousin,
jesus' cousin, with the one-wordsermon repent, is one of the
voices that we use at this timein the church.
We use John the Baptist twice,and then we use Mary, who will
(02:52):
become the mother of Jesus.
We use her voice.
And so we have these people forwhom change is real, change is
worship, change is life, changeis faithfulnessness and changes
future.
And we listen to those voicesnow.
And so John says repent, whichis that one word that invites us
(03:13):
to think about ourselves as weare.
It's a courageous word.
It means that I can face, youknow, my warts.
I can also see what iswonderful about me, but I can
find the courage to face mywarts and I can also understand
that God is calling me tosomething new and different, and
(03:35):
I'm going to have to give upsome things and make room for
some other new things.
Melissa (03:40):
So you say your last sentence in the devotion is six
letters referring to the wordrepents, six letters that invite
us to face what we have becomeand simultaneously tells us who
we are meant to be.
Right.
So how, I guess, are you sayingthat we should change to turn
back, change to do something new, like where do repent and
(04:04):
change kind of come together?
Bishop Wright (04:06):
Well, when we repent, it simply means to turn
around right Metanoia.
It means that I can turn aroundand take a good look, a good
look.
I can interrogate, I caninvestigate and take a good look
, a good look, I can interrogate, I can investigate.
And the truth of the matter is,most of us, if we get way down
into our hearts, we're honestabout, we can find honesty about
(04:29):
how we've missed the mark,about the thing, and I'm not
talking about superficialchanges.
I'm talking about wounds thatcause some behavior in us that
doesn't track with the way thatJesus taught us to live.
I'm talking about somedeep-seated fears that cause us
to be the most truncated I liketo use the word squoze compacted
(04:53):
version of ourselves.
And so repent is not only haveI been a bad boy and this is my,
you know, this is my Christiantalking to.
No, this is not that.
This is the ways in which mylife is not unlocked, that God
would have me to be unlocked,that God would have me to be
free.
You know, the thing aboutrepentance is and this is why
(05:15):
John the Baptist gets a bad rapI mean, john the Baptist comes
on the scene and people sort ofwrite him off as this sort of
zealot finger wagger, you know,unreasonable dude.
It doesn't understandcompromise.
I see him altogether different.
I see him as the guy who hascourage enough to name the thing
.
You know, it's interesting tome when you go to organizational
(05:36):
life, whether corporate orchurch, we have the meeting and
then oftentimes we have the textmeeting where we say some
things that we either didn'thave the courage to say or were
afraid to say.
Or in the church, we have theparking lot meeting, right.
So John creates a space for realauthenticity and that's a gift.
(05:58):
Think about it.
It's a gift.
It's a gift because you knowwhy I brought up this whole
notion of change theory is that,look, companies are thinking
about change theory, governmentsare thinking about change
theory.
It's that strategy, that set ofactions, that plan that's going
to lead to us becoming, as anorganization or a nonprofit.
You know what we want to be.
(06:19):
Well, god has a change theoryas well, and it has to do with
somebody finding the courage tobe authentic, model authenticity
so that the rest of us can seethat is a better way to live.
That's repentance.
That's repentance.
It's not a you're a bad boy oryou're a bad girl, quite the
opposite it's come and be free.
Melissa (06:38):
Yeah, Well, there's also, I think there's an
invitation to truth telling inthat right, Like self-aware
enough to be able to see wherewe're at, what we've become, in
order to understand, I guess,what the healing needs to take
place in order for us to beauthentically who we are meant
to be, which I mean.
(06:59):
Your last sentence is likehugely packed with meaning,
Bishop.
Bishop Wright (07:02):
Just say it.
Well, I mean, I like John.
You know I like John.
John is a little boy whose momand dad had a real life struggle
with God.
You know infertility, theystruggle with infertility and
they bet on God's promises overmany years.
And so John is the fruit ofthat marriage.
(07:25):
And so you know it's not asurprise and we don't talk about
this nearly enough about howthese faith families formed
these youngsters.
How did Mary and Joseph'sadventure form the young Jesus?
How did John the Baptist's youknow, zechariah and Elizabeth?
How did his mom and dad'sjourney with God form him?
And so I think that all of thatis in the story, and I think
(07:47):
what these people come to say tous that is, john now and later
Jesus and St Paul and I meanthere's a whole host of figures
they come to say is that you canstand in front of God as you
are, seek God's face, mercy andpower, to be who you need to be,
to be who God wants you to be.
(08:07):
Look, it takes an immenseamount of courage to say I want
to be who God wants me to berather than I want to be who,
you know, commercial societywants me to be.
That takes a lot of courage,and what it means is is that
some things are going to getrefined, some things are going
to get tweaked, some things aregoing to get purged.
New capacity is going to haveto be taken up, new
(08:29):
vulnerability is going to behave to be at work.
But here's what I like aboutJohn and John's invitation to
repent, to see myself as I am,warts and wonder at all, is that
when you do that, when you dothat, when you and I do that, it
is amazing how much easier itis to be beside other people,
(08:50):
not over and against them, notabove them, not beneath them,
but literally beside them,because you understand that they
are fellow travelers.
You understand that you havereceived the grace of being set
free and moving into a moreauthentic space, and you know
this.
You exude this before you everopen up your mouth, and people
(09:11):
want to be what we used to callwhen I was growing up down to
earth.
People want to be that right.
Pretense is a wearisomeenterprise.
It's exhausting to perform whoyou are not right To be at odds
with your own self.
And so when we talk aboutrepentance, we're talking about
(09:31):
coming home to God, about cominghome to ourselves, yeah, and
finding the courage to livealternatively in the world.
Melissa (10:02):
Yeah, I really like too that you just said about coming
alongside others authentically.
There's a really fabulousauthor their name is Prentice
Hemphill, who just published abook called what it Takes to
Heal.
And they're also an activist,an organizer and um a therapist
(10:24):
who specializes in embodimentand healing, and what you just
talked about too.
You didn't talk about itdirectly, but you talked about
the, the generational thing youknow um.
John's parents and Jesus'sparents, and generational trauma
is real, especially when we'retalking about justice, social
(10:49):
justice and change on a morecorporate level.
So we're talking about twodifferent things, right, we're
talking about personal healingand repenting, turning back to
God, individual relationshipwith Christ and divine, and that
we're also talking, I think,about hopefully a global or a
more collective sense of healing.
How does an organization,bishop repent?
Bishop Wright (11:13):
Yeah, well, I mean, let's start, let's build
to that, let's start off whereyou started off, right, so you
know you're talking about, youknow family of origin stuff,
right?
So culture is.
Edgar Schein, greatorganizational thinker, said
culture is how the leadersbehave.
Right, and that's also in thefamily.
So there's some repentance thatall of us need to do in our
family system.
Right, we participated infamily systems, we've gone along
(11:34):
to get along, and there aregoing to be kinder, more candid
ways that we can get along.
So we have to acknowledge that.
And this is look, people aremaking boatloads of money in
therapy for creating space wherepeople can say you know just
that, right, people caninterrogate and find the courage
to say, oh, I'm colluding withthat or I'm participating with
that, right, and so move righton up to, you know, outside of
(11:57):
the family, into organizations.
Right, it's about acknowledgingthe elephant in the room.
This is what John does does,right, I mean, you can go to
harvard and take a leadershipclass on what it means to get
the elephant in the room so thatthe organization can find new
square footage.
Can, you know, grow andinnovate.
I mean, this is, this is timetested.
What's interesting about jesusis.
Jesus's change theory is tosend the gen genuine article
(12:20):
among us, in john right to anembodiment.
So he doesn't send an idea, hesends flesh and blood.
He doesn't send a perfectperson, he sends someone who can
understand what it means to beset free and communicate that
right.
Freedom is a communicabledisease, right.
We saw that in Harriet Tubman,we saw that in Frederick
Douglass.
We see that again and again andagain.
(12:40):
We see this in people.
We see this in people, people.
You know, again and again andagain we see this in people,
elie Wiesel, we see this inpeople, people.
You know again and again andagain.
This flesh and blood thing isbetter than any corporate memo.
It's sort of a.
When we see it, we can be it,as someone has said, but
organizationally it's the samething.
I mean organizationally it is,you know, the person exerting
(13:02):
leadership at the top, findingthe capacity to say the thing,
to name the thing and to keepingthe organization focused on it.
You know it's interesting.
It'd be a little controversialhere.
It's interesting to see now thatso many corporations are
walking away from DEI, diversity, equity and inclusion work and
(13:25):
there's a list of corporationsnow who said they're not going
back, and I understand, I mustsay, even as an African-American
, I understand that a lot of theDEI work is not really good, it
doesn't pass muster, it doesn'tpass real good intellectual
scrutiny.
But we can't walk away fromtelling our real American story,
(13:48):
and that is that for manycenturies in some cases, many
decades in other cases, we haveexcluded people based on their
gender, based on their race,based on lots of different
things, from enjoying all theblessings of liberty, as we like
to say here.
And so what's interesting aboutJohn is that John comes to
(14:11):
reassure us that you can facethese hard things and there is a
future going forward.
I love that wonderful littleturn of phrase every saint has a
past and every sinner has afuture.
I think what happens with ussometimes is that we don't
believe if we tell the realstory, if we dare to investigate
(14:35):
the ways in which we've missedthe mark.
I think we're worried thatforgiveness is not real, that
equity is not real.
And so other people in thebusiness world are telling us
and demonstrating for us thatwhen we have a diverse group of
thinkers around the tableworking on a difficult problem,
that leads to, you know,wonderful new solutions that
would have never occurred to usif we were a homogenous group.
(14:58):
So you know, thinking aboutgetting lots of different kinds
of people with lots of differentkinds of experiences around the
table is actually advantageousto real, serious business and
innovation.
So I think that we see this inthe real world.
But somebody's got to find thecourage to be able to say, yeah,
those letters D, e and I may betoo politically charged for us
(15:21):
to tend to, but we can't losethe spirit of that work.
And the spirit of that worksays that as Americans, as
diverse as we are, we'restronger and better together.
John is going to always get theelephant in the room.
He's going to find the courageto get the elephant in the room
and he's not going to I'll talkabout this next week and he's
not going to give quarter to anyinsincerity.
(15:43):
And that's because he lovesthis process of telling the
truth, of coughing up all themucus, of getting rid of all of
the perfunctory business andgetting down to it.
I love John.
John must have been from myhometown, pittsburgh, because
you know I grew up saying youknow everybody, you know we
valued hard work.
I mean lots of places do, butsince I got the microphone.
(16:06):
I'll talk about Pittsburgh.
We valued hard work.
It wasn't a perfect place, butthere was a down-to-earthness
where you could just get it said.
And John does that on God'sbehalf.
And what does he create?
Let's say that really quicklyby doing this, because we've
been talking about process rightnow.
By doing this, he gives thatsinner a future right.
(16:30):
And how do you give the sinnera future?
You let them know that in God'seyes they are more than their
worst day, worst deed, worstdecision, right.
And so repentance is really onthe way again to freedom.
Melissa (16:46):
Yeah, I love that, I love that you highlighted that.
I guess my last question too islike all right, where's the
good news in this right?
Because here's the thing when Iread Isaiah's words that John
the Baptist was quoting inchapter five I'm sorry, verse
five of this, it says everyvalley shall be filled and every
mountain and hill shall be madelow and their crooked shall be
(17:07):
made straight and the rough waysmade smooth, and all flesh
shall see the salvation of God.
I mean that's wonderful, andthere are different ways that
you can look at that passage.
I'm thinking healing.
And yet some folks might be likewell, wait, someone's going to
make me straight, kind of likeenforce it, and it's like I
(17:28):
don't know if that's the spiritthat John the Baptist was going
for, and certainly not thespirit that you were just
alluding to.
Bishop Wright (17:35):
No, I mean, look, isaiah especially.
You know we're using poeticlanguage to talk about this
great reversal that God is up toright.
That's what we're using, right?
You know, some of the Bible isliteral, Some of the Bible is
hyperbole, some of the Bible ispoetry, metaphor, but we're
trying to contain in words themajesty of God.
(17:57):
And so, yeah, all the poets,all the historians, you know all
the hyperbolists, you know wefall short at trying to point to
a thing.
And this is what John is tryingto do.
He's trying to point to a thing.
Look what Isaiah and John bothagree is is that there is a
second chapter that we can'tgive ourselves.
(18:17):
There is a breath, a deepbreath that we can't generate
for ourselves.
That somehow, in tracking withGod, walking with God, coming
alongside God and acknowledgingthat God wants to be alongside
of us, we get that second breath.
And in Isaiah's passage, allcreation is going to get it.
(18:39):
So we serve in love of God ofthe second chance and the chance
and the fifth chance and the17th chance, and this is why the
psalmist says that God's mercyendures to the end.
And so you know the good newsof John.
You know, I mean people getcaught up in John's delivery
system right and the packaging.
You know his outfit and what heeats and you know where he's
(19:00):
hanging out.
But isn't it amazing that in amuddy stream it's more like a
creek?
In a muddy creek, john makesnew beginnings right, and this
has to be underscored as the wayin which God's majesty touches
ground.
God can make a future for usout of water in a muddy creek.
Melissa (19:21):
Okay, so one more question.
I promise you know I was likereading it and I was like wait a
second.
What is the way of the Lord?
What are we preparing?
Bishop Wright (19:32):
Yeah.
Our hearts our hearts, ourhearts.
We're preparing our hearts andour lives.
Look, you know what we have.
We talked about Christ beingking, and the only throne that
Christ ever said that he wantedwas the human heart, right, so,
the king of hearts.
And so when our heart isseduced into falsehoods and our
(19:53):
heart is overcome by woundednessand our hearts are overcome by
fears right, you know that soilcan be prepared by a loving God.
We can give those wounds andfears and brokenness, we can
give all of that to God, andthat is the way of the Lord
(20:16):
comes and touches our own selves, right?
And so, look, we want to thinkthat Washington can fix us.
We want to think thatpolitician X can fix us.
We want to think that evenBishop X can fix us or Pastor X
can fix us.
Look, all of those folks have arole in local and national
(20:39):
change.
But the individual in John'seconomy and God's and John's
economy and God's economy alsohas a role.
And so it is ridiculous topoint to, you know, things that
we can't control and desirechange from them, when we
ourselves have no flesh in thegame.
And this is John's things, thatall creation needs to be moving
(21:03):
in this direction.
What's amazing to me is God'simmense patience in this regard,
that God has decided to dochange theory over eons right.
And so we have a patient God,and thank God God is patient.
I don't know about you, melissa, but when I think about my own
self and my own chapters, I'm soglad that God is a patient God
(21:25):
who, nevertheless, is invitingme to change.
Melissa (21:29):
Hear, hear, we'll turn back.
Friends, it's Advent.
Thank you, bishop, and thankyou for listening to For People.
You can follow us on Instagramand Facebook at Bishop Rob
Wright.
Please subscribe, leave areview and we'll be back with
you next week.
You called this week's devotion based off of Luke
chapters, chapter three, versesone through six repent, which
means that, since the passage ofscripture is John the Baptist's
cry out of Isaiah to prepare yethe way of the Lord and for any
God spell fans out there.
You know the song we're singingabout today.
(01:17):
Bishop, there are two mainthemes in today's devotion
change and repenting.
Can you unpack that a bit forus?
Bishop Wright (01:27):
Sure, well, the season has changed, right?
I mean, the weather knows it'schanged, my trees know it's
changed, the animals that liveall around in our yard, they
know that the season has changed.
And you know, we in the churchwe say that now the season has
changed because we know what'scoming.
Jesus is coming, his birth iscoming, god is doing a new thing
(01:49):
, and so this is an opportunityfor us to get ready for that.
We know that God amazing thingis happening, that God's self is
coming into the world to livebeside us, to show us how to
(02:09):
love, to love us, to forgive us,to give us an invitation to
thriving.
So we know that all that thisis coming.
We call that Christmas and so,four weeks ahead of that, we
want to make ourselves available.
We want to worship God bysaying that God is first.
(02:29):
And if God is first, that meansthat some realignment has to
happen in our lives.
And John the Baptist, jesus' bigcousin, jesus' older cousin,
jesus' cousin, with the one-wordsermon repent, is one of the
voices that we use at this timein the church.
We use John the Baptist twice,and then we use Mary, who will
(02:52):
become the mother of Jesus.
We use her voice.
And so we have these people forwhom change is real, change is
worship, change is life, changeis faithfulnessness and changes
future.
And we listen to those voicesnow.
And so John says repent, whichis that one word that invites us
(03:13):
to think about ourselves as weare.
It's a courageous word.
It means that I can face, youknow, my warts.
I can also see what iswonderful about me, but I can
find the courage to face mywarts and I can also understand
that God is calling me tosomething new and different, and
(03:35):
I'm going to have to give upsome things and make room for
some other new things.
Melissa (03:40):
So you say your last sentence in the devotion is six
letters referring to the wordrepents, six letters that invite
us to face what we have becomeand simultaneously tells us who
we are meant to be.
Right.
So how, I guess, are you sayingthat we should change to turn
back, change to do something new, like where do repent and
(04:04):
change kind of come together?
Bishop Wright (04:06):
Well, when we repent, it simply means to turn
around right Metanoia.
It means that I can turn aroundand take a good look, a good
look.
I can interrogate, I caninvestigate and take a good look
, a good look, I can interrogate, I can investigate.
And the truth of the matter is,most of us, if we get way down
into our hearts, we're honestabout, we can find honesty about
(04:29):
how we've missed the mark,about the thing, and I'm not
talking about superficialchanges.
I'm talking about wounds thatcause some behavior in us that
doesn't track with the way thatJesus taught us to live.
I'm talking about somedeep-seated fears that cause us
to be the most truncated I liketo use the word squoze compacted
(04:53):
version of ourselves.
And so repent is not only haveI been a bad boy and this is my,
you know, this is my Christiantalking to.
No, this is not that.
This is the ways in which mylife is not unlocked, that God
would have me to be unlocked,that God would have me to be
free.
You know, the thing aboutrepentance is and this is why
(05:15):
John the Baptist gets a bad rapI mean, john the Baptist comes
on the scene and people sort ofwrite him off as this sort of
zealot finger wagger, you know,unreasonable dude.
It doesn't understandcompromise.
I see him altogether different.
I see him as the guy who hascourage enough to name the thing
.
You know, it's interesting tome when you go to organizational
(05:36):
life, whether corporate orchurch, we have the meeting and
then oftentimes we have the textmeeting where we say some
things that we either didn'thave the courage to say or were
afraid to say.
Or in the church, we have theparking lot meeting, right.
So John creates a space for realauthenticity and that's a gift.
(05:58):
Think about it.
It's a gift.
It's a gift because you knowwhy I brought up this whole
notion of change theory is that,look, companies are thinking
about change theory, governmentsare thinking about change
theory.
It's that strategy, that set ofactions, that plan that's going
to lead to us becoming, as anorganization or a nonprofit.
You know what we want to be.
(06:19):
Well, god has a change theoryas well, and it has to do with
somebody finding the courage tobe authentic, model authenticity
so that the rest of us can seethat is a better way to live.
That's repentance.
That's repentance.
It's not a you're a bad boy oryou're a bad girl, quite the
opposite it's come and be free.
Melissa (06:38):
Yeah, Well, there's also, I think there's an
invitation to truth telling inthat right, Like self-aware
enough to be able to see wherewe're at, what we've become, in
order to understand, I guess,what the healing needs to take
place in order for us to beauthentically who we are meant
to be, which I mean.
(06:59):
Your last sentence is likehugely packed with meaning,
Bishop.
Bishop Wright (07:02):
Just say it.
Well, I mean, I like John.
You know I like John.
John is a little boy whose momand dad had a real life struggle
with God.
You know infertility, theystruggle with infertility and
they bet on God's promises overmany years.
And so John is the fruit ofthat marriage.
(07:25):
And so you know it's not asurprise and we don't talk about
this nearly enough about howthese faith families formed
these youngsters.
How did Mary and Joseph'sadventure form the young Jesus?
How did John the Baptist's youknow, zechariah and Elizabeth?
How did his mom and dad'sjourney with God form him?
And so I think that all of thatis in the story, and I think
(07:47):
what these people come to say tous that is, john now and later
Jesus and St Paul and I meanthere's a whole host of figures
they come to say is that you canstand in front of God as you
are, seek God's face, mercy andpower, to be who you need to be,
to be who God wants you to be.
(08:07):
Look, it takes an immenseamount of courage to say I want
to be who God wants me to berather than I want to be who,
you know, commercial societywants me to be.
That takes a lot of courage,and what it means is is that
some things are going to getrefined, some things are going
to get tweaked, some things aregoing to get purged.
New capacity is going to haveto be taken up, new
(08:29):
vulnerability is going to behave to be at work.
But here's what I like aboutJohn and John's invitation to
repent, to see myself as I am,warts and wonder at all, is that
when you do that, when you dothat, when you and I do that, it
is amazing how much easier itis to be beside other people,
(08:50):
not over and against them, notabove them, not beneath them,
but literally beside them,because you understand that they
are fellow travelers.
You understand that you havereceived the grace of being set
free and moving into a moreauthentic space, and you know
this.
You exude this before you everopen up your mouth, and people
(09:11):
want to be what we used to callwhen I was growing up down to
earth.
People want to be that right.
Pretense is a wearisomeenterprise.
It's exhausting to perform whoyou are not right To be at odds
with your own self.
And so when we talk aboutrepentance, we're talking about
(09:31):
coming home to God, about cominghome to ourselves, yeah, and
finding the courage to livealternatively in the world.
Melissa (10:02):
Yeah, I really like too that you just said about coming
alongside others authentically.
There's a really fabulousauthor their name is Prentice
Hemphill, who just published abook called what it Takes to
Heal.
And they're also an activist,an organizer and um a therapist
(10:24):
who specializes in embodimentand healing, and what you just
talked about too.
You didn't talk about itdirectly, but you talked about
the, the generational thing youknow um.
John's parents and Jesus'sparents, and generational trauma
is real, especially when we'retalking about justice, social
(10:49):
justice and change on a morecorporate level.
So we're talking about twodifferent things, right, we're
talking about personal healingand repenting, turning back to
God, individual relationshipwith Christ and divine, and that
we're also talking, I think,about hopefully a global or a
more collective sense of healing.
How does an organization,bishop repent?
Bishop Wright (11:13):
Yeah, well, I mean, let's start, let's build
to that, let's start off whereyou started off, right, so you
know you're talking about, youknow family of origin stuff,
right?
So culture is.
Edgar Schein, greatorganizational thinker, said
culture is how the leadersbehave.
Right, and that's also in thefamily.
So there's some repentance thatall of us need to do in our
family system.
Right, we participated infamily systems, we've gone along
(11:34):
to get along, and there aregoing to be kinder, more candid
ways that we can get along.
So we have to acknowledge that.
And this is look, people aremaking boatloads of money in
therapy for creating space wherepeople can say you know just
that, right, people caninterrogate and find the courage
to say, oh, I'm colluding withthat or I'm participating with
that, right, and so move righton up to, you know, outside of
(11:57):
the family, into organizations.
Right, it's about acknowledgingthe elephant in the room.
This is what John does does,right, I mean, you can go to
harvard and take a leadershipclass on what it means to get
the elephant in the room so thatthe organization can find new
square footage.
Can, you know, grow andinnovate.
I mean, this is, this is timetested.
What's interesting about jesusis.
Jesus's change theory is tosend the gen genuine article
(12:20):
among us, in john right to anembodiment.
So he doesn't send an idea, hesends flesh and blood.
He doesn't send a perfectperson, he sends someone who can
understand what it means to beset free and communicate that
right.
Freedom is a communicabledisease, right.
We saw that in Harriet Tubman,we saw that in Frederick
Douglass.
We see that again and again andagain.
(12:40):
We see this in people.
We see this in people, people.
You know, again and again andagain we see this in people,
elie Wiesel, we see this inpeople, people.
You know again and again andagain.
This flesh and blood thing isbetter than any corporate memo.
It's sort of a.
When we see it, we can be it,as someone has said, but
organizationally it's the samething.
I mean organizationally it is,you know, the person exerting
(13:02):
leadership at the top, findingthe capacity to say the thing,
to name the thing and to keepingthe organization focused on it.
You know it's interesting.
It'd be a little controversialhere.
It's interesting to see now thatso many corporations are
walking away from DEI, diversity, equity and inclusion work and
(13:25):
there's a list of corporationsnow who said they're not going
back, and I understand, I mustsay, even as an African-American
, I understand that a lot of theDEI work is not really good, it
doesn't pass muster, it doesn'tpass real good intellectual
scrutiny.
But we can't walk away fromtelling our real American story,
(13:48):
and that is that for manycenturies in some cases, many
decades in other cases, we haveexcluded people based on their
gender, based on their race,based on lots of different
things, from enjoying all theblessings of liberty, as we like
to say here.
And so what's interesting aboutJohn is that John comes to
(14:11):
reassure us that you can facethese hard things and there is a
future going forward.
I love that wonderful littleturn of phrase every saint has a
past and every sinner has afuture.
I think what happens with ussometimes is that we don't
believe if we tell the realstory, if we dare to investigate
(14:35):
the ways in which we've missedthe mark.
I think we're worried thatforgiveness is not real, that
equity is not real.
And so other people in thebusiness world are telling us
and demonstrating for us thatwhen we have a diverse group of
thinkers around the tableworking on a difficult problem,
that leads to, you know,wonderful new solutions that
would have never occurred to usif we were a homogenous group.
(14:58):
So you know, thinking aboutgetting lots of different kinds
of people with lots of differentkinds of experiences around the
table is actually advantageousto real, serious business and
innovation.
So I think that we see this inthe real world.
But somebody's got to find thecourage to be able to say, yeah,
those letters D, e and I may betoo politically charged for us
(15:21):
to tend to, but we can't losethe spirit of that work.
And the spirit of that worksays that as Americans, as
diverse as we are, we'restronger and better together.
John is going to always get theelephant in the room.
He's going to find the courageto get the elephant in the room
and he's not going to I'll talkabout this next week and he's
not going to give quarter to anyinsincerity.
(15:43):
And that's because he lovesthis process of telling the
truth, of coughing up all themucus, of getting rid of all of
the perfunctory business andgetting down to it.
I love John.
John must have been from myhometown, pittsburgh, because
you know I grew up saying youknow everybody, you know we
valued hard work.
I mean lots of places do, butsince I got the microphone.
(16:06):
I'll talk about Pittsburgh.
We valued hard work.
It wasn't a perfect place, butthere was a down-to-earthness
where you could just get it said.
And John does that on God'sbehalf.
And what does he create?
Let's say that really quicklyby doing this, because we've
been talking about process rightnow.
By doing this, he gives thatsinner a future right.
(16:30):
And how do you give the sinnera future?
You let them know that in God'seyes they are more than their
worst day, worst deed, worstdecision, right.
And so repentance is really onthe way again to freedom.
Melissa (16:46):
Yeah, I love that, I love that you highlighted that.
I guess my last question too islike all right, where's the
good news in this right?
Because here's the thing when Iread Isaiah's words that John
the Baptist was quoting inchapter five I'm sorry, verse
five of this, it says everyvalley shall be filled and every
mountain and hill shall be madelow and their crooked shall be
(17:07):
made straight and the rough waysmade smooth, and all flesh
shall see the salvation of God.
I mean that's wonderful, andthere are different ways that
you can look at that passage.
I'm thinking healing.
And yet some folks might be likewell, wait, someone's going to
make me straight, kind of likeenforce it, and it's like I
(17:28):
don't know if that's the spiritthat John the Baptist was going
for, and certainly not thespirit that you were just
alluding to.
Bishop Wright (17:35):
No, I mean, look, isaiah especially.
You know we're using poeticlanguage to talk about this
great reversal that God is up toright.
That's what we're using, right?
You know, some of the Bible isliteral, Some of the Bible is
hyperbole, some of the Bible ispoetry, metaphor, but we're
trying to contain in words themajesty of God.
(17:57):
And so, yeah, all the poets,all the historians, you know all
the hyperbolists, you know wefall short at trying to point to
a thing.
And this is what John is tryingto do.
He's trying to point to a thing.
Look what Isaiah and John bothagree is is that there is a
second chapter that we can'tgive ourselves.
(18:17):
There is a breath, a deepbreath that we can't generate
for ourselves.
That somehow, in tracking withGod, walking with God, coming
alongside God and acknowledgingthat God wants to be alongside
of us, we get that second breath.
And in Isaiah's passage, allcreation is going to get it.
(18:39):
So we serve in love of God ofthe second chance and the chance
and the fifth chance and the17th chance, and this is why the
psalmist says that God's mercyendures to the end.
And so you know the good newsof John.
You know, I mean people getcaught up in John's delivery
system right and the packaging.
You know his outfit and what heeats and you know where he's
(19:00):
hanging out.
But isn't it amazing that in amuddy stream it's more like a
creek?
In a muddy creek, john makesnew beginnings right, and this
has to be underscored as the wayin which God's majesty touches
ground.
God can make a future for usout of water in a muddy creek.
Melissa (19:21):
Okay, so one more question.
I promise you know I was likereading it and I was like wait a
second.
What is the way of the Lord?
What are we preparing?
Bishop Wright (19:32):
Yeah.
Our hearts our hearts, ourhearts.
We're preparing our hearts andour lives.
Look, you know what we have.
We talked about Christ beingking, and the only throne that
Christ ever said that he wantedwas the human heart, right, so,
the king of hearts.
And so when our heart isseduced into falsehoods and our
(19:53):
heart is overcome by woundednessand our hearts are overcome by
fears right, you know that soilcan be prepared by a loving God.
We can give those wounds andfears and brokenness, we can
give all of that to God, andthat is the way of the Lord
(20:16):
comes and touches our own selves, right?
And so, look, we want to thinkthat Washington can fix us.
We want to think thatpolitician X can fix us.
We want to think that evenBishop X can fix us or Pastor X
can fix us.
Look, all of those folks have arole in local and national
(20:39):
change.
But the individual in John'seconomy and God's and John's
economy and God's economy alsohas a role.
And so it is ridiculous topoint to, you know, things that
we can't control and desirechange from them, when we
ourselves have no flesh in thegame.
And this is John's things, thatall creation needs to be moving
(21:03):
in this direction.
What's amazing to me is God'simmense patience in this regard,
that God has decided to dochange theory over eons right.
And so we have a patient God,and thank God God is patient.
I don't know about you, melissa, but when I think about my own
self and my own chapters, I'm soglad that God is a patient God
(21:25):
who, nevertheless, is invitingme to change.
Melissa (21:29):
Hear, hear, we'll turn back.
Friends, it's Advent.
Thank you, bishop, and thankyou for listening to For People.
You can follow us on Instagramand Facebook at Bishop Rob
Wright.
Please subscribe, leave areview and we'll be back with
you next week.
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