We Confess Nothing Is Impossible For God

During the season of Lent, Bishop Wright invites all to a five-week Lenten teaching series, We Confess, with weekly video meditations and study guides that frame Lent as a loving turn toward healing, renewal, and hope through honest confession. You can learn more about the series at episcopalatlanta.org/lent26.

In this week's episode, Melissa and Bishop Wright have a conversation about the fifth reflection: We Confess Nothing is Impossible for God. In Ezekiel 37, dry bones come to life– nothing is impossible for God. Whether you read the dry bones as literal or symbolic, the point is the same: God can revive what looks dead, even what has been desecrated and denied dignity. That raises a practical question for anyone trying to live a faith that matters: what is our role in breathing life over death? Listen in for the full conversation.

Transcript

God Makes A Way

Bishop Wright 0:00

Look at our faith tradition. Our faith tradition is all about God making a way out of no way. It's all about uh even though doors are closed, windows open. And so that is the long history of what it means to be a follower of Jesus and a believer, you know, in this radical uh wild wilderness God who keeps finding a way uh to checkmate all of the foolishness uh that we do in the world.

Melissa 0:40

Welcome to For 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. Now, during the season of Lent, Bishop Wright has invited all to a five-week Lenten series called We Confess, with weekly video meditations and study guides that frame Lent as a loving turn toward healing, renewal, and hope through honest confession. You can learn more about the series at EpiscopalAtlanta.org. Good morning, Bishop.

Bishop Wright 1:17

Good morning.

Melissa 1:18

For our fifth week in Lent, the name of your your devotion is called We Confess That Nothing is Impossible for God, based off of Ezekiel chapter 37, verses one through 14. And if everybody knows the song about the dry bones, yeah, what it's all about. You want to tell us what inspired you to go with this passage?

Bishop Wright 1:44

Well, yeah, we've been talking about confession, and uh it's it's easy to, I think, to think of confession simply as only uh saying out loud or perhaps to uh a therapist or a priest, you know, those those um those struggles that we've had, those where we've missed the mark and uh perhaps how we've injured others. That's uh one aspect of confession. But another aspect of confession is uh is being able to say out loud something that we've experienced and something that comes to us through the eyes of faith. And so when you think about Ezekiel and God asking Ezekiel to breathe on the dry bones and proclaim to the dry bones, what you land uh with uh is is that uh we say routinely as uh followers of Jesus that nothing is impossible for God. And so 630 years or so uh before God raises Jesus from the dead, we have this story. Uh and the truth of the matter is throughout 66 books of the Bible, these impossible things keep happening. That's the record of faith. These impossible things through people who are regular, uh, who are in relationship with an irregular God, an extraordinary God, uh, these things keep happening. And that is really our witness to bear to the world. We are the and-yet people. Yes, this looks futile, but futile in God's eyes and in God's hands becomes fertile. Um, many are the stories of people who struggle with infertility in the Bible. Many are the struggles for people who feel uh ill-equipped uh and unworthy. Many are the stories in the Bible where people have overcome amazing odds, death-defying odds uh by trusting God. And so that is also part of our confession. That's what we have to say back to the world. Uh yes, this is dire. Yes, the spreadsheet says X, and yet. So for us, we're the stewards of and yet in the world.

Literal Or Symbolic Dry Bones

Melissa 3:48

So, Bishop, I'm reading this story, and I'm I am embarrassed to admit I didn't do a lot of research before showing up here on this particular passage. I'm familiar with it, of course, you know. Um, and yeah, I'm not quite sure. I'm curious how what your take is on how people typically interpret this. You know, is this a fever dream that I mean I have to say, I think God speaks to us through dreams. I think God speaks to us everywhere if we're paying attention. So I'm not saying I'm not trying to discredit this at all. I'm curious if people think this is a literal thing, or if most people believe that this indeed was a dream.

Bishop Wright 4:26

The actual interaction with God and the bones rising. Yeah. I mean, you know, scholars are all over the map with this. I mean, you know, I mean, it's a spectrum. Some people say absolutely literal, you know, that uh that uh Ezekiel breathed on the had a conversation with God one day, and uh, and you know, it just as it's recorded, and then all of a sudden the bones reconnected and started to dance. Yeah. And so then there are other people who who use this uh as a way to think about um something being revealed uh to us uh in some state of consciousness, whether dream or somewhere in between wake and dream, uh, and uh as a sign, as an inspiration, as a symbol uh that uh that there's a turnaround possible. In fact, that there's a turnaround that's probable, that's on the horizon. And so, you know, I I think uh I think that's an important question, but I I personally don't think a lot about that question. Uh I think more about the question that um there's this hope that gets commended to us, and it comes through many different channels. And that hope ends up being buoyancy for us. Um, and so that buoyancy uh is for a people, as in the case of Ezekiel, it's for us individually. Uh, and it's this, it's this um, it's this dogged determination that comes through these people, these unlikely characters in this story that say to us the worst that we can do as humans is still um fodder for God's intervention, is still fodder for God's turnaround. And I think that's what the redeeming message is. I I tend to be a broad stroke kind of guy. Um, and and I know that's not how everybody reads scripture. And so for those folks uh who really want the details of this, I would sort of commend to you lots of really good study on this. But I'm looking at the net net, and the net net for me is that so what? So so what? Ezekiel had some revelation that came to him literally or um metaphorically, so what? And the so what I think is the buoyancy. And the buoyancy that comes to Ezekiel and his people because not only were the bones dry in the in the valley, uh, but they were exposed, which means they had been disrespected. They were not given a respectful burial. And so here you have uh problems and complexity compounding, and yet God finds a way to intervene. And I think that's a message for some of us who are tempted to despair even right now. Maybe we're looking at the international situation, maybe we're looking at the national situation, maybe we're just looking at the issues in our own household and despair. And uh, how can this turn around? Might overwhelm us, might be our constant companion. And to those folks, I would say uh look at our faith tradition. Our faith tradition is all about God making a way out of no way. It's all about uh, even though doors are closed, windows open. Uh and so that is the long history of what it means to be a follower uh of Jesus and uh and a um uh a believer in this radical uh wild wilderness God who keeps finding a way uh to checkmate all of the foolishness uh that we do in the world. And uh and so it's an inspiration, uh, but it's it's a um, I think it's a symbol for us uh to not to lose hope despite the difficulties.

Melissa 8:23

Yeah. I mean, I'm I'm gonna come at this end. I know it's not important, and yet to me it's it's the vehicle into the story is that at the end of the day, God can animate desecration. God animates out of the rubble, like and and and spoke life into it and used Ezekiel to do it, right? So Ezekiel was a partner in that work.

Bishop Wright 8:47

Yes.

Melissa 8:48

So I'm yeah, I'm curious, Bishop, what you think our role is in breathing life over death.

Commas Not Periods In Death

Restoring Dignity After Lynching

Bishop Wright 8:57

Yeah, so I think that's what's critical. Uh I think, you know, in our episcopal tradition, uh at funerals, we say the most outrageous, maybe nonsensical thing to people. We say uh towards the conclusion of the uh of the funeral service, of the burial, we say um, even at our grave, we make our song hallelujah, alleluia. So so to be a faithful person uh is to understand that even in death for us, there's a comma and not a period. And so uh we shouldn't be putting periods where God can put commas. And I think that's one of the things that we are partners with God in. I think that's one of the things that uh comes to us as a gift, an inheritance to be a steward of. We are the people who don't put those periods there. We always reserve the right for God to insert a comma. Now, the it, you know, the sort of the peculiar part of this is that we don't always know what the form will be. We just have to be the placeholder that God can break in, that God can do something. And sometimes the thing that God is doing in us won't be revealed to us, right? And we won't know it. So those people did die in that valley, their bones were desecrated. You know, in some ways you could say full stop. But in a generation, uh, here comes Ezekiel, here comes God to revive this nation, right? And so, you know, in the Diocese of Atlanta, here where I have the privilege of serving, one of the first things that we did when we were sort of doing our racial reconciliation uh work was to get all the names that we could amass in the state of Georgia of all of those men and women who were lynched, right? White supremacy lynched them uh through the hands of people in the state of Georgia. And we put all of their names, all the names we could, on an obelisk outside of the Absalom Jones uh Center for Racial Reconciliation and Healing, uh, not as something morbid, but actually to rewrite the story, to take the period away and to put the comma. And so we talk about in the Episcopal Church that we respect the dignity of every human being. And my great learning in all this was I didn't realize that that is also uh can be extended posthumously. So we can also extend that to the bones in dry valleys. And so now we have those names there. Now we have called them by their name. Now we have re-inscribed, uh, now we have told a story that those people did matter. They do have dignity, they were precious children of God. Lives uh ended too short, brutally, violently, and yet, nevertheless, here they are as guideposts for us now about how we should care for one another, uh, how we should fend off all this temptation to violence and brutality, et cetera. So I think one of the things we should be thinking about here is that, you know, remember that God is not microwave popcorn, right? Just because, you know, there is no, you know, type in blessing, push a button, then automatically the blessing, you know, pops out. That's not the way this works. Uh, the Bible is a story of generations. The Bible is a story of a long arc of time. Uh, the Bible is a story of seasons of frustration. Uh then there's this intervention, and it doesn't always come as the as the old folks say, God doesn't always come when you call him, but God is always right on time, right? And so, and so that is this, that is the thing that is part of faith, a mature faith, I would also say, is that God intervenes in situations, but it is over the long arc of time. And so we've got to have a faith, really, um, that is not uh, you know, ocularly driven with our eyes, uh, but is driven with the heart. Um, and you know, I am uh I am the descendant of someone, I can trace my own lineage back uh to Mississippi plantations. Um and my uh ancestors uh probably could never have imagined um my lifestyle or my children's lifestyle or the freedoms that I have, et cetera, et cetera. And yet, because of the work of people who co-created with God, black and white, rich and poor, uh, yet we have uh we have advantages that uh for them uh would have been miraculous and uh and beyond belief. And so every generation, we pray to God, uh, is working as Ezekiel worked to breathe on those things thought dead and to give them life. This is true for women, uh, this is true for gay and lesbian people, uh all those people whose dignity uh was denied or dignity deferred. And so, you know, in a funny way, uh Ezekiel's story is our story. So we have to ask ourselves, what dead thing that is alive in God's imagination that's been communicated to us through the eyes of faith, are we breathing life over? Right? And so, you know, uh I know I'm sort of going on a tirade here, but you know, we're we are looking right now at scapegoating uh immigrants uh and uh strangers and foreigners in our midst. When politicians who are not on the microphone uh and and sort of off-camera will tell you that because of the labor shortage in this country, we will have to find a workforce path for so many people in our midst. Um, they won't say that now because it's not politically expedient to say because we need a scapegoat. So, you know, to some people, this notion is dead, but for those of us uh who I pray have eyes to see, we realize that what is going to have to happen is that we're going to have to find a way to embrace people with dignity uh for our mutual benefit. And so uh only a few people now are breathing on these dead ideas, uh, but we know in due course they are going to come alive.

Melissa 15:08

Indeed. And so therein lies our great hope that God can do impossible things. Where where is hope and gratitude kind of like infused in this story, Bishop, and the fact that God can do the impossible?

Bishop Wright 15:25

Well, I I think my gratitude comes out of well, it's you know, it's a it's gratitude has also a frustration. You know, that's that point I was making earlier, is that God doesn't do it on my timeline, right? But ultimately, this gratitude erupts uh, you know, in the way that it erupts in so many biblical stories. Uh after a long season, perhaps even a dry season, then there is this eruption, there is this downpour uh of blessing and of confirmation, uh, which accrues to our gratitude of knowing now beyond a shadow of doubt, those moments, those glimpses that we are anchored in something or tethered to something that is good and real and able and generous. Uh, and when we know that, that is worth everything. Um, and so to be oriented in that way, um, I think is exactly the resource that we need to make it through all the dry times. You know, the truth of the matter of life is that you're either going into a storm in the middle of a storm or just coming out of a storm, right? And so thank God we have God who's able for the storm, right? And so then our our, you know, the way I think about that is is that then so having been in storms uh and then come out of storms with God, real life storms, not cute stuff. I mean, standing at difficult intersections, what is the faith now I want to turn around and give to that God who brought me through that last storm? And so I think it's just not just recipient, because some people have just the spirituality of just being recipient, right? They have a consumerism kind of a faith. Uh, I want to look back in the ways that God has kept me uh and maybe kept generations before me, uh, whose hard work and grit have provided for me. And I want to say, I owe that God something, not out of obligation, but in response, in gratitude, right? I owe that God something. And so now what can I say forward into the next storm? What is the kind of faith that I want to give God, this God over the long arc of time, who have in who has intervened in the lives of our ancestors and made a way out of no way? I think that God is worthy of praise. I think that God is worthy of thanksgiving. And I also think that God is worthy of my getting up early and my going to bed late and my studiousness and all these other expressions of the ways in which I can benefit the world that God loves.

Melissa 17:48

Indeed. So we confess that nothing is impossible for God.

Bishop Wright 17:53

Nothing is impossible for God.

Melissa 17:56

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.