We Have Work To Do // Roll Down Justice // Mar 22 2026

were welcoming children who had been forcibly removed from their families. They were required to cut their hair, they were not allowed to speak their languages or engage any of their family spiritual practices. And we have had to repent and apologize and confess our sins as Methodist Church for the harm we did through what we thought were good schools at the time, but we're not being run with respect for the families involved. We are not the saviors. Jesus is our savior, but God wants us to work through the power of Jesus to bring justice into the world. [00:21:08] (44 seconds)  #RepentAndRespect

which not just provides housing for people and families who have lost their homes, but also provides an extended period of case managers who support families as they work to break the cycle of poverty in their lives and learn the life skills that helps them hold on to jobs and create a clean and safe environment for their children to grow well in. Now we don't get to erase what happened to these families, but we do get to walk beside the families. [00:15:44] (32 seconds)  #HousingWithSupport

I go into the bathroom all by myself, and I'm standing there in the bathroom going, what's urine? What am I supposed to do? They said there's a little door in the wall and put the urine in the cup and then put it in the door, and I'm like, I don't know what, so I put the cotton ball in the cup, and I put it in the door, and I went out and said, mom, I I I don't know. And she's like, if only they had just told me to pee in the cup, we would have been fine. [00:09:24] (36 seconds)  #TellKidsClearly

we don't have the luxury of turning off the engine to try and fix things. We need to come up with ways to advance justice while we are still living together as a community in the world. And one of the biggest things we can do to make justice happen is to live with kindness and respect. Next slide. So how do we, sitting in this room today, bring justice to the world while the engine is running? This church has a great tradition of doing a bunch of projects that bring justice to the world. A big partnership we have is with the Ecumenical Partnership for Housing, [00:15:01] (44 seconds)  #JusticeWhileEnginesRun

One of the things as we get ready to celebrate Easter in two weeks though, when we look at this cross as it's being filled up with justice prayers, and feel free to add more justice prayers today, is that we tend to also have the feeling like maybe we're the savior of the world, but God sent us a savior, Jesus, and he does a much better job at saving the whole world than we do. As Methodist, there have been times we've screwed up as well. There was a time when we thought we were helping by providing schools for native American children, but in fact those schools [00:20:26] (42 seconds)  #WeAreNotTheSaviors

And each of us has a way to do it. Maybe we're gonna vote, maybe we're going to give a financial donation, maybe we're going to advocate for an issue, maybe it's through physical volunteer work like our group that is going to Detroit this summer in June, and Judy has still got some openings if you are interested in joining. We're taking kids with their parents, 10 or 12 year olds, high school kids are welcome to come, we've got several college students from UW Stevens Point that are signed up to go, and then on up to senior citizens. [00:21:52] (35 seconds)  #EveryoneCanHelp

I am proud to be an American, and part of the reason is that we have a tremendous tradition of justice in The United States. We don't always get it right, and that's a conversation for a different day, but there are examples of beautiful moments when we have gotten it right. I was recently reading a book about some of the great flavors of the world, and one of the great flavors is black pepper. I mean, most of us, if we put salt on, we usually put black pepper on and it adds just a lovely little flavor to it. [00:12:13] (35 seconds)  #ProudAmericanJustice

What I didn't know was that after the US revolution, The United States lost all its black pepper because Great Britain had an absolute monopoly on all black pepper in the entire world. So when we lost the world, the war, they wouldn't let us have any black pepper anymore. So black pepper comes from the Aceh region in Sumatra, which is currently in the nation we call Indonesia. American traders heard a rumor as to where black pepper came from, and they went to the islands of Indonesia and they started poking around until they found [00:12:48] (44 seconds)  #PepperTradeDiscovery