For the next several months on the podcast, we’re going to be thinking with you about freedom.

The lectionary selections over this stretch of what’s called “ordinary time” – though these are hardly ordinary times – follow the origin stories of the people of Israel from Abraham all the way through the Exodus to the arrival in the Promised land. It’s a huge narrative arc of journey stretching from Genesis to Joshua. It’s a journey of wrestling, of oppression, of liberation, of mistakes and harm – all with lessons to teach us about freedom.

In these very much not-ordinary times, where the possibilities of getting free from violent systems like policing are close enough to taste, we want to ask:  What does it mean to be free? What does it even take to be free? Is freedom an individual or collective…something…or maybe both? What do we need to be free *from*? What do we need to be free *for*?

We’re calling this series #JourneysToFreedom, and we’re glad to have you along.

#JourneysToFreedom (2020 Pentecost Season Year A)

Rev. Anne Dunlap starts our #JourneysToFreedom series with the "origin story" of Jacob and Esau.  What wisdom does this messy, conflictual story have to help us understand "freedom" and how to get there?

Transcript here:  https://www.showingupforracialjustice.org/the-word-is-resistance.html

TWIR 7.12.20 Origin Stories

THE WORD IS RESISTACNE is focusing on biblical origin stories for the next few weeks. Join Jean Jeffress as they look past Jacob's distracting behavior, and turn a critical lens on this nation-building narrative in light of our own nation-building narrative. As always, it's God who moves the story forward, then and now.

Transcript here:  https://www.showingupforracialjustice.org/the-word-is-resistance.html

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TWIR 7.19.20 Push Back On the Master Narrative

When Rev. Anne Dunlap notices the editing, both original and modern, that silences the women in Genesis 29:15-28, she explores what happens to our understanding of the story and how it impacts our ability to envision and embody deeper freedom.

Transcript here:
https://www.showingupforracialjustice.org/the-word-is-resistance.html

TWIR 7.26.20 Freedom or Erasure? On Editor's Choices

In this week's episode of our #JourneysToFreedom series, Nichola Torbett explores Jacob's wrestling match with an eye toward trauma, midlife, bodies, and disability justice. Whatever the future holds, it is likely that we will not arrive intact. And maybe that's not a bad thing.

Transcript here:  https://www.showingupforracialjustice.org/the-word-is-resistance.html

TWIR 8.2.20 Limping Into Freedomland

Rev. Seth Wispelwey offers a reflection on the occasion of the third anniversary of white supremacist violence in Charlottesville on August 11-12, 2017, with some lessons learned about how the call to show up then is very much still with us now.

Transcript can be found here: https://www.showingupforracialjustice.org/the-word-is-resistance.html

TWIR 8.9.20 This Little Light of Ours

We are in a time of much dying. How do we navigate it? What does it mean to get free of Egypt in such a time as this? Join Nichola Torbett in exploring these questions with help from the story of the death of Moses just outside the Promised Land.

Transcript available here:
www.showingupforracialjustice.org/the-word…nce.html

TWIR 10.25.20 Some of Us Did Not Die

From January 2017 to December 2023, “The Word Is Resistance” was a weekly podcast from SURJ-Faith by white anti-racist Christians based on the Christian lectionary, offering an anti-racist Word for other white Christians -- though all are welcome to check it out.  We are pleased to keep this incredible resource alive here as an ongoing resource to help us all get free.

What do our sacred texts have to teach us about living, surviving, even thriving, in the context of empire, tyranny, violence, repression - the times in which we are living today?  What do they have to teach us, as white Christians, about our role in resistance, in showing up, in liberation?  They teach us this: 

Our traditions were made for these times.  They come from these times.  So we have resources in our texts, our practices, to help us right now.  We can reclaim our stories and re-tell them to nourish our resistance against white supremacy and our work for collective liberation.