November 09, 2025
• Rev. Mindie Moore
Stewardship 2025—Mine!
Week 3: My Privilege
1 Corinthians 4:7 & 1 Corinthians 15:9-10
Re-intro Stewardship, quick preview of next week:
• Commitment Sunday
• Ministry Fair
• Baptisms!
• And exciting announcements for 2026
PRAY
Have you ever thought something was one thing...but it turned out to be something very different?
Many years ago, during our first Christmas in California, Zack and I went to an event known as “the sale.” Now, I’m sure that there was a real name for this, but that’s what it was known as. “The sale.” And the sale was very exciting because it was all these high end designer things at low end prices. As someone who was in seminary and was very far from the world of anything high end, the whole thing felt very fancy and special.
And at the sale, I found the cutest shirt. It just felt like luxury. It had this cute little collar and had this flare to it that felt very unique for a shirt. The sizing was kind of weird, and it was pretty different than the size I usually bought, but I thought...that’s designer fashion for you! They just do things differently so I won’t ask questions, I’m just going to act like I know what’s going on and enjoy this fancy experience I’m having.
I wore it to church the next day and did in fact feel very fancy and Midwestern as I told everyone about my great deal. When we got home, Zack decided to Google this shirt and the designer to see just how great of a deal this was, so we could further bask in the glow of saving money.
Immediately, he started laughing.
And he informed me that I had not, in fact, just scored an incredible deal on a designer SHIRT, but I had scored an incredible deal on a designer DRESS for a CHILD. A child-sized dress that I somehow made work as a shirt for my adult-sized self. Not only had I worn this child-intended dress in public, but I had stood in front of my congregation and done the prayers and the announcements in a piece of clothing made for a 5th grader.
But you know what? I bought this piece of clothing with the understanding that it was a SHIRT. And I was determined that a shirt is what it would be. So I wore that child’s dress as a shirt for YEARS. Because I knew what I believed about this thing and no matter what the internet said, no matter how my husband laughed at me every time I wore it, it was going to be what I thought it should be.
Sometimes we can be so set on what we think or experience something to be...that it becomes really hard to let go of whatever we believe about that thing. This happens with the topic we’re talking about today—privilege. Talk about a polarizing topic. And my guess is that almost every single person has something that they strongly believe about privilege—what it is, how it shows up in our world, what the problems are—and that those beliefs can be incredibly difficult to reshape or set down. It can be challenging to have a creative and nuanced conversation especially when we’re in a big group setting like we are right now.
BUT. My hope for today is that we can try to do just that today. That we could let ourselves be open to this conversation AND that there might even be some growing places for us in the middle of it. Maybe we can expand some of what we know to be true and ask some questions about what it means to be a community of faith and people who want to live like Jesus in this world, especially as we talk about how we’re going to practice Stewardship.
We’re going to be spending time exploring some passages from 1 Corinthians as a framework for this conversation. Before we dive too deeply into the scripture, I do want to take a moment and give us a shared definition of what privilege might mean (SLIDE):
Privilege: an advantage that a specific group of people has because of their position, status, or resources.
Immediately, just the definition might pose some challenges or meet some resistance in us. Because acknowledging these inherent advantages that can exist for certain groups of people is not something that we are often eager to do—especially when they apply to us! It’s maybe not that hard to talk about someone else’s privilege, but examining our own can bring up all kinds of stuff. Especially when these advantages come from things that are in many ways beyond our control—our race, our gender, things like that.
But there’s a value to pushing through that discomfort. There’s something God can do in us and through us if we can be brave enough to wrestle with these things. If we can let ourselves ask questions about the systems that shape our world and how we ourselves respond to it, we might actually find some really life giving ways to practice our faith. And I just wonder, especially as I look at the current state of our world- what if honest conversations about privilege are conversations that the Church is both uniquely equipped for and urgently responsible for having?
When Paul writes to this church, it is a church that is both of those things—uniquely equipped and urgently responsible. This is a community that has a lot going for them and they enjoy a level of privilege that many of the churches he’s supporting do not share. They’ve got a great geographic location, this is a group of people who are full of all these spiritual gifts, they have this amazing ability to connect with the people in their wider world (they’re not just the weird church people off doing their own thing), and they have a diversity of resources within their congregation.
And because of all those advantages, it would be really easy for them to get in a headspace where they think that they are not only better than others, but that they, themselves, are the ones who have created every advantage that they enjoy. It would be easy for them to get really proud of their own accomplishments and hard work and forget all the ways God has been showing up in their community. It would be easy for them to miss the truth about the privileges they have and maybe get a little bit arrogant.
So Paul just calls it out and draws them into a conversation on privilege and gratitude and grace and what in the world they’re supposed to do with all of those things. Paul wants to create this awareness within this church—that they HAVE worked really hard, they HAVE accomplished some incredible things. AND they didn’t get there on their own. They didn’t necessarily start at the same place that everyone started. And they would absolutely be missing the point if they didn’t acknowledge all that God had been doing and the ways they had been blessed.
When I was an RA in college we did this thing called a "privilege walk" Now, this was 20 years ago and it is not perfect, and there is plenty of good discourse on if it’s the most effective way to teach on privilege. I think that’s a good conversation to have. But I remember doing and how it stuck with me. We all started at the back of the room and when someone read something that was true of your life experience, you would take a step forward. The facilitator says things like:
• Step forward if you’re right handed
• Step forward if you had more than one car in your household growing up
• Step forward if you have never had to move because of financial challenges
• Step forward if your opinions are not frequently questioned due to your race or ethnicity
At the end, you look around and see how different life experiences have impacted the level of privilege that each person in the room has. This exercise surprised me the first time I did it, because I ended up pretty far in the front. Despite having a decently challenging and dysfunctional upbringing, I STILL had a great deal of privilege compared to some of my peers. I wasn’t quite sure what to do with that. I didn’t really love it. I found myself wanting to explain my story and the struggles that were part of it. But that wasn’t part of the exercise. It was just to experience, and observe, and witness what was true for each of us.
This is one of the places we can get pretty stuck when we try and have this conversation. We have this human need to prove that we’ve earned what we have or try to believe that we all have the same starting point in our lives. But we don’t. And I really think it’s ok to name that and HONOR that, and then ask what we can do with the privileges we have. Doing that doesn’t discount any part of our story. But it does let us approach the world in a way that is honest and maybe in a way where we can have some much needed empathy for the people around us.
Paul asks the people of Corinth a really challenging question around this idea. He says, “why are you boasting like you have anything you didn’t receive?” Why are you forgetting what God has done in your life? Why are you taking the grace that has been given to you for granted and acting like everything you’re experiencing is because of something YOU’VE done?
He wants to bring them back to the grace they’ve received, because that grace is the most important thing they can anchor themselves to. Grace is a really disarming concept when we talk about privilege. Because grace...we DON’T earn it. We CAN’T earn it. It’s given to us by a God who is so loving, so generous, so beautifully unfair...and we just get to receive it.
And if we’re operating with God’s grace as our foundation, (SLIDE) we can be set free from having to prove anything about ourselves. We don’t have to worry about losing credit for our hard work. We don’t have to live with a scarcity mindset or question our value because we're no longer going to let ourselves be defined by the systems of this world. When we hold on to grace, we’re defined by the eternal, trustworthy love of God that goes beyond anything we can achieve or possess. We’re part of the equation, but the good news is that it’s bigger than us.
I noticed this same kind of sentiment in the interviews I’ve seen of (SLIDE) A’ja Wilson from the Las Vegas Aces. If you don’t know much about A’ja Wilson, she is pretty remarkable. She was named the WNBA MVP in 2020, 2022, 2024, and this year in 2025. She is all kinds of talented and amazing. And when I look at her I think—this is a person who could easily put herself up on a pedestal. Who could put all of her success on her own hard work and talent. This is not someone who needs to be about anyone or anything besides herself.
But what I think really stands out about her is that she is constantly talking about how God is at work in her. Like almost every interview, that’s one of the first things she will say. When people are like, “why are you so great?”, and she gets asked that a lot, she starts with God. And then she starts talking about her teammates and how great they are. She’s seeing and naming the blessings around her because she knows that no matter how good she is, these other things are at play to get her where she is.
There is power in naming the privilege we’ve experienced. Because (SLIDE) when we name it, we can leverage it. I know that I am giving this sermon as a white, straight, English-speaking, American citizen, and just in those few things I named, that’s a lot of privilege on display. There are many things I do not have to fear because of those pieces of my identity. And I know there are an awful lot of people in this room who DO have to fear many things simply because of who you are.
I spent many years of my life either not wanting to name those pieces of myself OR just feeling overwhelmed with shame and guilt because of those privileges. And that’s normal and part of the process, but I also think it’s a pretty limiting place to stay. I think Paul invites us to something beyond that. I think we’re invited to really use what we have to do something good in a world that really needs it. And for some of us, who have inherent privilege...let’s not waste it.
For me, the most powerful line from this Scripture we read is in Chapter 15 verse 10. It’s Paul describing his own journey and he simply says this (SLIDE):
But by the grace of God I am what I am, and his grace toward me has not been in vain. 1 Corinthians 15:10
God’s grace towards me has not be in vain.
What a statement and what a prayer for each of us to pray. That God, all of the things I’ve experienced, all of the resources I have, any kind of privilege that I enjoy, please, LORD...let it not be in vain! Let it matter. Let me use whatever is in front of me to do something good, something that looks like Jesus.
It’s a prayer for us as individuals, and it’s also a prayer for our community. As a church, we have so much that God has given us. We have experienced grace upon grace upon grace. And what we get to do as the Church, as a collection of people who gather together, is we get to show up, exactly as we are, with whatever our stories look like, and we get to say that we’re in this together. That no matter who we are, we can stand side by side and be FOR each other. There are not that many places where those kinds of connections can happen. But it can happen here.
Specifically at St. Luke’s, this kind of allyship is a key part of our DNA. Whether it’s advocating for LGBTQIA rights, or standing against gun violence, or doing the work of being antiracist, or finding ways to stand with our immigrant neighbors, or putting a few extra groceries in our cart to help feed hungry people, this is what we do.
This is who we are. We’re a community of faith, that brings all kinds of people and stories together to not only EXPERIENCE the grace of Jesus...but to BE the grace of Jesus.
And by doing that, when people see us, my prayer is that people would see the truest representation of what faith can look like. That they would see a community that is so deeply rooted in the grace that we talk about today, that we aren’t afraid to do things like name privilege and have hard conversations and show up in an honest and brave way with each other.
Because doing those things...that’s what makes us the Church. So let’s BE the church, together.
Let’s pray.