It’s good to be here this morning with you. I spent the week alone. Joan was at Fort Campbell, helping Sam and Kelsea pack for their move to Alaska. I stayed home to help Spencer with Madeline, who got braces this week, so I cooked her pasta for dinner, and she said my pasta was almost as good as Joan’s, which is high praise indeed.
I’m retiring just in time to be free to travel to Alaska to see our grandchildren, and to have more time to advise Joan on certain household tasks. I’ve been too busy to do that up until now, so I’m looking forward to that, the opportunity to share my opinion, to teach her, to tell her how to do things she’s been doing for decades, which I know she will appreciate. How could she not?
The last time I had this much time off was the year before I became your pastor, twenty-seven years ago. I had pastored Irvington Friends Meeting, had begun writing books, but flamed out after eight years, so we left Irvington Friends, and moved to Danville, where I spent the daylight hours working on our house and the evening hours writing while Spencer and Sam, then six and three, were asleep. It was a wonderful year; one I recollect with much happiness.
Then one winter evening during that idyllic year, the phone rang. It was Dick Givan, the head of the search committee here at Fairfield. He introduced himself and asked if I could meet with the search committee. When one is a Quaker pastor, there is an unwritten rule one should observe, and that is this, if a meeting asks to meet with you to discern whether you might serve as their pastor, you do not say no. Because God might be leading you to do this, so you pay them the courtesy of listening and discerning, and testing the leading.
But I had been having such a fine time not being a pastor, that I didn’t want to take it up again. I just wanted to write and spend time with my sons while they were little, and in my spare time give advice to Joan about how to run our household, which I could tell she appreciated.
I told Joan, “I will talk with them, because it’s only proper. But I don’t want the job.”
She said, “Just tell them what you believe and they’ll never hire you.”
Which struck me as excellent advice, so that’s what I did.
I drove over from Danville and met with the search committee, and we talked and I tried to appear uninterested, which wasn’t hard because I wasn’t interested, and I told the committee, “Before we consider this any further, I need to tell you three things. The first thing you need to know is I don’t believe in Biblical inerrancy. Nor do I believe homosexuality is a sin. And you need to know that if I’m asked to perform a gay marriage, I will.”
Dick Givan, I’ll never forget this, rocked back in his chair, stared directly me, then said, “I like a man who speaks his mind. Come be our pastor.”
I thought, “Well, crap.”
So I became your pastor, and while some of you say you have learned things from me, I have learned far more from you.
In our remaining weeks together, I want to talk about the things you’ve taught me, the things you’ve done for me, the lessons you’ve instilled.
I want to begin by saying you have let me live by my principles. You have allowed me to speak the truth, as I understood it, without fear of punishment or rejection. That is no small gift. I’ve known countless people who kept their convictions and truths hidden, afraid of reprisal or losing their livelihood, their jobs held hostage, their consciences forfeited as ransom.
When Dick Givan said, “I like a man who speaks his mind,” I knew this was a place I could be honest. I knew I would not have to masquerade, or raise my finger in the air to see which way the wind was blowing. There have certainly been some who have disagreed with my convictions, but not once has the meeting acted to silence me. Not once has the meeting said, “You cannot believe that. You cannot say that. You cannot write that.” I have felt free to say what I believed. I hope you have felt free to say what you believe, that you have felt free to agree or disagree with me. The freedom I covet for myself, I covet also for you.
Here is the gospel truth about every human institution. The minute it prohibits free thought, it takes the first tottering step toward tyranny. It is the very moment it begins to die, begins to crush the soul, begins to demand the one thing institutions should never demand–the surrender of conscience to the majority.
Do you think those ICE agents who round up people and carry them away, ever dreamed of doing that as idealistic young teenagers? I say no. But along came an Administration and demanded their allegiance and so they gave it, forsaking their principles to embrace what they once would have despised. For all the same reasons all of us are tempted to forsake our principles–for money, for power, for the satisfaction of belonging to something bigger than themselves. Don’t let that happen to you.
Do you think every Senator and Representative who marches lockstep with the MAGA movement, went to Washington expressly for that purpose? I say no. But along came a man with buckets of money and promises of power, and so they forsook their principles. Don’t let that happen to you.
Friends, cultivate the capacity to be realize when someone is demanding the abandonment of your principles, when someone sidles up to you offering thirty pieces of silver. Listen for that. Hear that. And cultivate the capacity to reject it always.
Make doubly sure that any institution you belong to, whether it is your church, your political party, your service organization, the company or corporation for which you work, never demands the surrender of conscience from another, never requires the abandonment of your principles, or the principles of another.
Should you witness the silencing of another’s voice, you raise your voice, you speak your mind, you hold fast to your principles.
The more things change, the more they stay the same. Do you remember the story in the book of Daniel of Nebuchadnezzar building a colossal golden statue on the plains of Dura, demanding everyone bow before it. Along came three government officials, Shadrach, Meshach, and Abednego, who would not bow, who would not forsake their principles, who spoke their minds, who told Nebuchadnezzar what he could do with his golden statue. Be them.