Privilege and Promise: This is America
Complacent, Complicit OR Converted
This week our summer sermon series, “Privilege and Promise: This is America” continues. We are committed to examining the extant racism around us (and in us!) and moving toward being actively antiracist — as individuals, as a society, and as a congregation.
Our textual guides this time are:
The beginning of the story of God as Liberator found in early Exodus.
And Jesus asking a seemingly simple question in the Gospel of Matthew that turns out to be exceedingly profound. So much so that the question continues to reverberate down through the millennia to us today.
Throughout this sermon series we’ve examined intersectionality — that is, how societal issues intersect and compound one another. But what role has the Christian church played — for and against — creating a culture built on White supremacy? More specifically, where can The United Methodist Church be found in all this? Further, given that The United Methodist Church only came into existence in 1968, what about our ancestor Methodist traditions — what roles did they play?
Pastor Dave will attempt to deal with those questions and more this Sunday, August 23rd, in his sermon, “Privilege and Promise: This is America — Complacent, Complicit, Or Converted?”
We recognize that this is heavy, exacting work that is both immediately necessary and requires long-term solutions. In other words, this is not a series — of sermons or of actions — that we can hurry up, get through, and get on to other, more comfortable topics.
That is why this sermon series occurs on the 3rd and 4th Sundays of June, July, and August. Spreading out the series is intended to give us space and time to really reflect, repent, and reorient ourselves toward the antiracist community God calls us to be…while also adding in time to breathe. We all need to be able to breathe.
Becoming an actively antiracist community will not, however, be achieved merely through monologues. Space and time to question, wonder, dream, and dialogue is vital for growth. Thus, each week of this series will be accompanied by a Sermon Chat on Zoom. The link for that Zoom call will be in the Pastor Danita’s update email — so please be sure to read it, open the attachment, and follow the instructions. We need you to be part of the conversation!
Join us on our Woodridge UMC YouTube channel as we live stream our worship at 10:00AM on Sunday.
Series Information
This is a series of sermons around the theme PRIVILEGE AND PEACE: THIS IS AMERICA. Yes, we are going to dive into some of those more difficult topics that we must address as people of faith. What does it mean to be a Christian and how we deal with privilege or the disparities in education, employment, health care and housing or even Christianity's complicity when it comes to racism. What is our response as people of faith? What can we do? Lots to talk about and even more to do. This series will only occur on the 3rd and 4th Sundays of June, July and August.