And God is doing great new things. Wow. Beautiful. What if someone came to you and said, professor Wright, how can I grow as a follower of Jesus? What would you tell them?
I would say, you’ve got to get to know the Bible. You’ve got to get to know how to pray. And if that’s difficult, there are books on it. But also there are pastors who can sit with you and say, now let’s explore what’s going on in your life and why there’s a particular blockage about this or whatever it is. So the Bible and prayer are absolutely essential.
Now, I’m an Anglican, and within the Episcopal or Anglican tradition, the breaking of bread, communion service, the Mass, the Eucharist, call it what you like, absolutely central. And I would say for most Christians, most of the time, the breaking of bread, the sharing of that is the mysterious way which Jesus himself gave us. And you know, when I’ve often said when Jesus wanted to explain to his followers what his death was going to mean because they weren’t expecting it, despite the fact he’d been trying to tell them. When he wanted to explain, he didn’t give them a theory, he gave them a meal. And the meal is the theory.
The meal says Jesus is dying so that you can have life. And so for me and for millions, the communion service, the Bible prayer, and particularly the strange fellowship in what we call the Body of Christ, which is this awkward company called the church, that the church can be a very painful place. It can go horribly wrong. But my goodness, when it’s working, it’s the most beautiful thing. So, well, you know how it is in the Acts of the Apostles, they continued daily in the apostles, teaching and fellowship, the breaking of bread and prayer.
So you’ve got the teaching which is what became the Bible, and the fellowship, the church, the breaking of bread and prayer. Those are the things. And I’ve often said to people, Jesus told us to love God with our heart and mind and soul and strength. Most of us come in on one of those. Some people, their heart is warmed and they.
Off they go. But they need then to work around the other three. Some people, it’s intellectual, they’re convinced by an apologist that. And so it’s the mind. But then they probably need to be told, we got to get the heart in gear as well, and the strength to go and serve God in his world.
And so working around that. And that’s one of the exciting things about being Christian. It isn’t just, okay, I’m now a Christian, There it is. It’s that, okay, now we can go to work. And your little book here has got lots of stories about people coming into faith and growing and being surprised by what God is doing now in their lives.
And that’s how it goes. I love that. So I have this. Now, this right here is deep. Right.
The people need to know. Tell us about the first time you met the Queen of England. I’m not sure when the first time was, but because I was working in Westminster Abbey before I became a bishop. Okay. And when Westminster Abbey is like the private property of the Queen, but obviously it’s very public property, but there would be great state occasions.
And it may be that it may have been the funeral of Princess Margaret, or it may have been the funeral of the Queen’s own mother, the one we called the Queen Mother. And I was present for both of those, and I was one of the clergy officiating. So the Queen would come through and we would shake hands. But then when I became bishop, one of the things that happens in the Church of England is that the bishops get a turn of going and staying with the Queen in her private residence and preaching on the Sunday morning. So then you really do get to know her.
And she’s a very. She was, bless her. I wish she was still with us. She was a very gracious lady. Impeccable good manners, good Taste gracious and friendly.
Tell us about when you’re at the dinner and you’re sitting next to her about the dessert. This was wild. I was given a briefing note about all sorts of things about how you are when you’re with the queen. Nobody had told me this one they brought. There were about 12 of us around the table.
I was next to the queen and they brought her the dessert, which was like a kind of a fruit flan or something like that, and she declined it. They then came to me and there was a slice. So I said, yes, thank you. I thought I’d take a slice. Went all the way around the table and nobody else took a slice.
And I realized that if the queen had declined it, you were all supposed to decline it. So the queen beckoned the guy back and she took a slice in order to keep me company. And so the two of us ate our dessert with the rest of the table looking on jealously. That’s. And that was.
That was the classic good manners that she realized that I didn’t know that this was the rule and so made it all right. The other funny thing, that night, the queen was very keen on corgi dogs. These. These little, little dogs. What a corgis.
And she had half a dozen of them. And towards the end of the meal, when they served cheese and crackers, she would snap her fingers and somebody would open a door and the corgis would come in and perched beside her and she’d break these crackers and give them to the dogs. And I thought, we’re at the queen’s dinner table and she’s feeding the dogs. This is okay. She’s the queen.
She gets to do this. She gets you. Wow, that is. That is pretty cool. Thank you.
Thank you for sharing that. So your incredible scholarship, Jesus, the victory of God, really done a. I mean, it helped shape the reality of the resurrection of Christ. And I’ve read all your books on the Apostle Paul. Paul, a biography, gosh, that was.
That just ministered to my heart so much. And we know in new creation, the new heaven, new earth, the crown jewel is Jesus. And we know we’re going to have vocation. We’re co-heirs with Christ. It’s going to be glorious.
No more tears. It’s going to be beautiful.
What are you going to say to the Apostle Paul? What questions would you have for him? I want to be sure I know exactly what 1 Corinthians 11:2 and following was all about, which is about women wearing headgear and men not and I kind of get that. If he means that it’s about in church, women are certainly leading in worship, but they must look like women and not look like imitation men, as it were. And likewise men should look like men and not like imitation women.
That I get because this is a celebration of God’s good creation. But the arguments that he uses for that are still puzzling and I’ve read all the commentators on them and they don’t agree. And so I want to say what was actually going on there. And there are various theories but I’m not convinced by any of. So when I wrote my little commentary on 1 Corinthians, I think I said perhaps, perhaps, perhaps.
But so that’s one thing which I’ve always. And there’s a puzzle about the so-called Pastoral Epistles 1 and 2, Timothy and Titus, because if you read quickly through all Paul’s letters and then read one Timothy first, Timothy feels quite different. That doesn’t mean Paul didn’t write it. I mean you probably write in different genres according to what you’re doing. I certainly write in different.
I wrote a children’s Bible recently write articles for newspapers. They’re quite different. So it’s perfectly possible that Paul might have just written in a different style. But I want to be sure. Did you actually write that letter to Timothy or did you get Luke to write it for you or what?
And I don’t worry too much about that, it’s Pauline. But I’d like to just to be clear, how did that one happen? Wow, it’s good to know you still have questions. So as a. So I’m 53, I’ve been a lead pastor going on 15 years.
What advice would you have for me? Yeah, the long haul is the long haul and that that’s what we’re all in for. I forget who it was. Talked about a long obedience in the same direction. Eugene Peterson, it was.
Oh yeah, okay, okay. Did you know him? My mother in law actually got his number and he said I could call him at any time and go to his house in Montana and guess who didn’t do that? Yours truly. Oh, that’s too bad.
That is too bad. I’ve not read everything you wrote, but I’ve read quite a bit of it and it’s good stuff. But that sense of being in for the long haul, there are times when we just get tired and I would urge proper vacations. What UK called vacation, what we would call holidays. When I became dean of a cathedral at the age of I don’t know 43 or something like that.
One of the senior clergy said to me, people will tell you you should take two weeks holiday. He said, it’s got to be three, he said, because it’ll take you a whole week just to wind down, and then you can have two weeks of really relaxing holiday. And I would be inclined now to say it should have been four. And when I was bishop, I would take four weeks each summer, and I would take a week at Christmas and a week after Easter. Because if you don’t, you’ll burn out.
That’s right. And so you have to have strategies, because otherwise, if you’re energetic as you are, and if you love what you do as you do, then the temptation is to sneak back in early and if you have a day off, actually to do some work on the side. And the answer is absolutely not. Yeah. One of the blessings of Transformation Church is every summer, I take seven weeks off.
Seven weeks. Good stuff. Seven weeks off. And so rhythms of grace and my own spiritual formation. And I’m thankful that I have the Holy Spirit, but also have the spirit of Vicki, my wife.
And as you know, she threw the javelin in college. So I follow directions quite well. Dr. Wright, you are a blessing not only to me, not only to Transformation Church family, but you are a blessing to the global church. Your message was phenomenal.
But you know what’s better than your message? Your life. Oh, thank you. You embody Christ. And so I want to take a moment and I’d like the podcast audience to join me in
praying over you.
Thank you. So we’re going to pray. Father, in the name of Jesus and through the power of the Holy Spirit, we thank you for the life of Dr. Wright and his precious wife Maggie and his four children. We lift them up to you, to your throne of grace and mercy.
And that as he loves to say, that you would surprise them with moments of mercy, that you would surprise them with comfort and strength, that you would continue to bless them to be a blessing. And, Lord, as he continues to go hard after your kingdom, that his pen would be more effective and powerful than ever, that his voice would be stronger than ever, that his health would be stronger than ever, that he would finish well and continue to be a blessing to the global body of Christ, we thank you for Dr. Wright. We thank you for his ministry. We pray this in Christ’s name.
And God’s people said amen. Amen. Thank you very much. You’re welcome. Friends, you’ve just tuned in to “Transforming the Church” podcast, because when the church is transformed the world is, too.
