For People with Bishop Rob Wright
For People with Bishop Rob Wright
Diversity
"Diversity belongs to God's imagination." With this bold statement, Bishop Rob Wright cuts through the political noise surrounding conversations about human difference. In this thought-provoking episode, we explore how the ancient biblical story of Pentecost offers a divine endorsement of human diversity that transcends modern political debates.
In this episode, Melissa and Bishop Wright have a conversation about Pentecost centered around Acts 2:1-21 where the Holy Spirit descends on a linguistically and ethnically diverse gathering, creating understanding without erasing distinctiveness. This divine affirmation of difference provides a powerful counterpoint to modern anxieties about diversity. As Bishop Wright observes, "We can't see all of God until we see all of us," reminding listeners that our differences reflect God's creative abundance rather than problems to be solved. Listen in for the full conversation.
Read For Faith, the companion devotional.
I know it's become sort of a political fodder to even use the word diversity and I'm just not going to let go of that word to appease some people who want to make political correctness somehow a demigod. Diversity belongs to God's imagination. Diversity belongs to God. God upholds it and I think, as part of followers of God incarnate in the form of Jesus, we've got to hold on to it and point to all of the myriad positivities.
Melissa: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. Hey, hey, Bishop.
Bishop Wright:Hey, hey.
Melissa:So this week's devotion you called diversity, in a nod to Acts 2, chapters 1 through 21,. You know, basically, when the spirit descends upon the people and they talk crazy languages and everybody can understand what's being said, and you really highlight the truth that God is a very appreciative of the diversity that God's created.
Bishop Wright:It seems so from the Bible. Yes, yeah, man.
Melissa:So I'm also. It doesn't all right. So we call that Pentecost, the day of Pentecost, the church's birthday, and we're also celebrating. Well, many are celebrating June as pride month.
Speaker 2:Yes.
Melissa:So how do you see Pentecost being appropriate for us to talk about now? We don't have to. We could talk about the pride stuff a little bit further down in our conversation.
Bishop Wright:But it all sort of goes together. I mean, well, first of all, let's say Pentecost is what we're. We're on our way to celebrate this Sunday and, and usually we use the second chapter of Acts and the first 21 verses of the first chapter, I'm sorry of the second chapter, and you know it's just this amazing psychedelic, you know vivid, you know God is doing a new thing with a sort of an old gathering, penta 50, right. So five or 50 days after Easter we call it the, you know the church's birthday flaming tongues and and rushing wind descend on a gathering of very, very, very diverse, ethically diverse, linguistically diverse gathering and and you know it's the diversity I like to say that is affirmed, enabled and commissioned in Pentecost. So no talk about how it's a bad thing, no talk about any of the ways that we have come to talk about diversity these days. I mean, it was an accepted fact of the then known world that lots of people looked lots of different kinds of ways and that that was a good thing and that, you know, while there was no sort of millennia in the world that was perfect. You know, on several scores it was easier to have these kinds of gatherings than it seems to be to have now, anyway. So God rushes in, as God was promised. Jesus promised that when I go the Spirit will come, and that the Spirit will enable, will strengthen, etc. And so, over this amazing group of lots of different kinds of names.
Bishop Wright:What's always a little bit humorous every year when we get together in church is people trying to read all those different kinds of names, right, all those wonderful you know, pointing to all this wonderful ethnic and linguistic diversity. And then Spirit comes and does this amazing thing. What I always like to point out in this text is that they're able now to understand each other. And, uh, part of the understanding is they're all talking about the wonderful deeds of God in their own way, and and I always, that always holds out my hopes. I don't believe in a whole lot of Kumbaya, but but I do believe there are spaces and places and practices that we can take up. That might bring us a little bit closer together If we could suspend some of the other silliness, silliness that we sort of default to when we get together. So they began to talk about the wondrous. The Spirit enabled them to talk about the wondrous deeds of God. And so, as they do this, and then, as we read later on, that it is affirmed, this diversity, this beautiful imagination, creativity, example of creativity of God's imagination, is affirmed, and then it's enabled, and then it's commissioned for God's purposes going forward. And so I think that's the best way to think about who we are and we being, you know, speaking globally, is that we are each individual parts of a marvelous whole, and we can't see all of God until we see all of us. And I know it's become sort of a political fodder to even use the word diversity, and I'm just not going to let go of that word to appease some people who want to make political correctness somehow a demigod. Diversity belongs to God's imagination, diversity belongs to God. God upholds it, and I think, as part of followers of God incarnate in the form of Jesus, we've got to hold on to it and point to all of the myriad positivities. And so, yeah, you know.
Bishop Wright:When I was a little boy I was a. I was a big nature nerd. You know National Geographic before you know it was a magazine, before it was a. You know a documentary series or all that. And then Jacques Cousteau and the amazing underwater. You know sea world and all that you know sort of nature stuff I could get my hands on as a kid. I loved it. And so look, what would the coral reefs be without diversity? You know, what would the African savannas be without, you know, biodiversity? What would the Amazon rainforest be without diversity? And so, and what would, and what would we be without all the different ways that we are distinct? I just think it's wrongheaded to give up the word.
Melissa:Yeah, I agree. It's interesting to me. Let's consider two different images one a soup and the other the salad. Soup and salad are different, but it's Well. We used to call our country the melting pot. I want to be able to taste the individual and distinct flavors of it all.
Bishop Wright:It was trying to point to something that we all didn't come here the same way, but we all came here wanting, you know, many of the same things and we even came here different ways that we don't need to go into that. The difference between you know, sort of 1619, you know, with the Africans coming as enslaved people and later Ellis Island and so on and so forth. So we even came here different ways but you know we want the same thing and that's again this is what the story conjures up. People came differently to this gathering, which was a longstanding Jewish tradition. They came differently and somehow some new unity happened, by the grace of God, that they were able to sort of walk out transformed and changed a bit, with their ethnicity intact. And, you know, no one had to be diminished who they were, how they, how they spoke. No doubt cultural stuff was not diminished. As far as we can read the text, they were sent out enhanced Right by the grace of the Spirit.
Melissa:Yeah, so how do we reconcile the word pride? When I think of the Pentecost, I think of the commissioning and the very. I mean it was in your face, you couldn't ignore it right. And I'm curious how we might have distorted or get lost in the idea of pride what it is and what it isn't.
Bishop Wright:We've got a global audience. So I think what we're talking about here in the United States is that we sort of designate June as a month. We call it Pride Month, where we celebrate especially our LGTBQIA folks. We also celebrate, incidentally, juneteenth, which is a celebration on the diverse way that many of us came to the knowledge that we were now freed under the law in this country, even though it took a little while. So if we're talking about that pride, I think how I come to it is it's very much in keeping with this conversation about diversity and the celebration of that.
Bishop Wright:So the truth of the matter is is that human sexuality is in many ways, a mystery and it's a spectrum and it goes. You know, that kind of conversation about it being a spectrum and an unfolding sort of mystery has been with human beings since the beginning of time. It's now in some places, not every place, but it's in some places. The United States tends to be one in many places where we get to say that out loud that we are fearfully and wonderfully made, as the Psalmist says, and that looks lots of different ways. So I celebrate pride and I affirm that we need space to maybe recover the years, decades, that we weren't allowed to say that we were here and that we are distinct and nevertheless we are human and deserve respect and justice and dignity. So that's sort of how I come to pride. It's pretty easy. Frankly speaking, it's a pretty low bar, which is to create space for other people who have had a very difficult journey in just claiming a space for themselves. It's a low bar to just say now we're going to create a space and now you can use your voice to celebrate who you are, I think, doing violence to that, as we had, you know, over the centuries that we've been, you know, a country really needs to be reflected on and for us now to really acknowledge the ways in which we've missed the mark that all people are created equally, et cetera, because that's not been the legal code for lots of different categories. And so now, as part of the recovery of that, yeah, of course people need space to be able to say here we are, and so pride is a very easy thing.
Bishop Wright:I'm glad I'm part of a church that can do that. I think what we've got to be careful in the church is to put all of our eggs in one basket, so to speak, and here this might be a little controversial for some people and, as I think about the Episcopal Church and, of course, there's lots of different kinds of folks who are listening from lots of different expressions. What concerns me is that, while I stand completely with the members of the LGBTQIA community and affirm their right to claim their space and the fact that they're made in the image of God, I do that. What worries me is that we've sort of made our understanding of diversity and thinking of justice only on that issue, and I think that puts us out of balance. I think there are a myriad ways for us to talk about injustice in the world. There are places and spaces that need to be recovered. There are groups among us in the human family that need a space to talk about historic, economic and legal trauma that's been done to them simply because they're different, and so what I would say to all of us is is that we need to be proud of all that we are and all that we've been, and to take the steps that are necessary to begin to say that out loud and to reclaim that space.
Bishop Wright:Sadly, however, it threatens some people when groups previously excluded from the full benefits of being a citizen in this country. When those folks start to speak up, it gets really uncomfortable. Sadly, the equation in some people's minds seems to be if we give other people space to acknowledge sort of historic deficits imposed upon them, then somehow we are less, and that is really tragic. That is really tragic and I think we have to really think about that again. That's small, that's small and we're, and we're bigger and we're better than that.
Bishop Wright:Whether we're talking church, or whether we're talking, you know, political, the political world, whether we're talking about, you know, civil society, we're just better than that. But unfortunately for some people, you finding your voice, claiming your story, et cetera, seems to put some people on the back foot and they feel diminished. And I've and it's difficult for me to find that in Scripture, it's difficult for me to find that in Jesus. The disciples certainly flirted with that. But then Jesus comes along. He gives this wonderful correction that he's in the friend-making campaign, he's in the affirmation campaign, he's in the wholeness and health and healing campaign, and there's enough to go around.
Melissa:Enough. That's totally right. It's really, to me, it's all about scarcity, and we've been built to think that. I think that we're in a zero-sum game of some sort, which doesn't make sense. But, bishop, you talked about understanding, and I think at Pentecost it wasn't so much that the Spirit moved and everybody heard the same thing and could understand it. The Spirit made it so that the Spirit even highlighted the distinctive, diverse nature in which people could experience it, and so I don't know what that means for how we might behave and honor the diversity in real time, just because of how spirit worked. I don't know. Do you have any ideas or thoughts about?
Bishop Wright:that, yeah, I mean, let's just stay with the Bible. I mean, you know, opinion is not required, right, let's stay with the scripture. It said that the spirit gave them ability, right? So there's something about being in step with God, or being the recipient of grace, that adds square footage to you, to your heart, right To your mouth, to your mind, to your imagination. The spirit gives ability.
Bishop Wright:And so they were given ability, not only linguistic ability and listening ability, because it's also that's a big piece in this story too that listening increased right, listening deepened, listening broadened right. They were able to hear from one another, and, god knows, we could talk an hour about how sort of reactivity is not the same thing as a response. Reactivity has to do with just waiting for your turn to talk or just scoring your own points, et cetera, whereas response has to do with me listening to you and maybe saying to you you know, melissa, you've said a lot to me today. Let me get back to you. I need to sit down. So that's an ability. We call that maturity, right, we call that you know. Differentiation, you know. We call that you know sort of what I would call is managing self.
Bishop Wright:So, so all of this, I think is, and I've been talking about spiritual maturity since, you know, jesus was a little boy. I like to say so, but spiritual maturity is part of it. So they're given ability and I think we could use a dose of that ability nowadays. And you're quite right, I think, what undercuts this is, you know, the constant, you know diet of fear that we're ingesting, right so? So neighborliness is not something to grow and be all about. You know it's, it's cut by fear. And you know all the scarcity, all of this, all that, the other parties coming for you. You know, I mean, the list is long. And so you know we may need to adopt some new habits, we may need to find, you know, the spigots of fear in our lives and turn them off.
Melissa:Because the spirit didn't discriminate.
Bishop Wright:Exactly right, exactly right. So now, I mean that by no means means in antiquity, that there weren't lots of problems with folks, but what we're using is this 21 verses from the second chapter of Acts to reimagine ways that we could be together. And so, if people are looking for, you know, socioeconomic solutions for the globe, I don't have them. I wish I did, but I know, I know this that if we begin to try to apply some of these lessons and welcome the Spirit into our own personal lives, it's amazing how that can actually work at home with the people we love but struggle to love, et cetera. And is it messy? And is it slow? Hell yeah, because the truth of the matter is is that we've got to do some dying to ourselves.
Bishop Wright:Look, this assembly was never the same after this event, right, because you know, once you know the genie's out of the bottle, right, it's hard to go back and be small like that again, right? And so that event has changed. And then the people are changed. You can't unremember the fact that you came there so radically different and then somehow you had this new cord of unity. People didn't forget that, and I just imagine people you know were saying this to people that they loved and knew for the rest of their lives, and so one can't even account for the fact how this inspired some people to begin to talk about God, to begin to find common ground, maybe to begin to bury historic grudges.
Bishop Wright:This thing about God is God is always calling us to grow up, and then, when we sort of see ourselves in God's eyes without shame, we really realize we've got to grow up. And then, you know, when we sort of see ourselves in God's eyes without shame, we really realize we've got to grow up. We're made for so much more. We're made to be bigger, broader, deeper, more joyful, and it's our ability to sort of hold on to the things, obstacles that make us small, that just must frustrate. You know, the hell out of God where God is just inviting, but you know God's always patient but inviting us beyond that, but the work is ours, and so, again, we continue to offer people these stories as just small distillations and, you know, a little bit of nitroglycerin maybe to blow open. You know some of these things that need to be blown open in our lives.
Melissa:Well, bishop, happy pride, happy Pentecost and listeners. Thank you for listening to For People. You can follow us on Instagram and Facebook at Bishop Rob Wrights, or by visiting www. forpeople. digital. Please subscribe, leave a review and we'll be back with you next week.