Read Matthew 25:14-30
Listening to the third slave, we might hear his inactivity as a response. Listen to the third slave, and we will hear a person take moral authority through passivity.
We are challenged if we listen to the third slave as racial justice advocates. Such advocates recognize that we live within a racist system with both structural and internalized racism that provides racial preference or privilege for Whites while denying access to true institutional and systemic power to people of color. Listening to the third slave makes us wonder how it is possible to maintain enough presence of self to be able to resist the temptations to self-advancement, quick profit and praise offered by the masters of an unjust system.
How can we resist being co-opted by structural and internalized racism? What kinds of opportunities come our way to live as racial justice advocates who resist supporting the racist system that surrounds us? How can we maintain within ourselves enough fortitude, discernment and faith to act so boldly upon our faith?
This message is excerpted from “Listening to the third slave,” a 2016 resource of the Women of the ELCA, written by Inez Torres Davis. Today is the 25th Sunday after Pentecost.
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