Moving in New Directions

Rev. Dr. DeWayne L. Davis

This Week at Plymouth, July 26, 2024

“It is God who says, ‘Behold, I create all things new.’ Therefore, God’s most persistent enemies must be those who are unwilling to move in new directions . . . If you choose, you’re sometimes wrong; but if you never choose, you’re always wrong.”

—William Sloan Coffin, Credo

My friends and I regularly talk about what I was like before I accepted the call to ministry. I am always surprised to hear that before ministry, the words they would use to describe me were severe, risk-averse, and demanding. After I answered the call, they noticed that I became more open to change, willing to adjust my opinions, able to tolerate uncertainty, respectful of complexity, and comfortable saying “I don’t know,” even as I seemed more trusting in moving forward. Whatever the change my friends noticed, I still know that change is hard, and hard decisions can immobilize us. Often, the risks we take and the failures we imagine can outweigh our confidence in deciding a course of action. Sometimes, it feels easier to remain silent and do nothing.

I recently listened to the Pulitzer Prize–winning journalist Anne Applebaum talking about the rising influence and power of autocrats worldwide. She remarked that the temptation in the face of the overwhelming use of the media and propaganda about the “degeneracy of democracy and evil America” is silence and isolation. The rending and radicalization of our politics and the seeming irreparable breach in our common purpose demographically, geographically, and ideologically have the potential to leave us cynical, resigned, and unmovable. How do we choose to move forward? How do we learn to take risks amid our differences to secure a better future for as many as possible?

In a collection of his beliefs about social justice, William Sloane Coffin confronts the tempting call of silence and complacency in light of the injustices of the world, inviting us to lean into the moral imperative to act: “There can be no truth that passes over injustice in silence; nor can there be any moral virtue that condones it.” Perhaps the change my friends noticed in me was the realization that if I wanted to take my role as a minister seriously, I could not afford to remain silent or complacent about any injustice. Our nation is currently at a critical juncture. I know we often hear this in every generation, and I hope that awareness of past instances does not prevent us from confronting the apathy, injustice, and vulnerabilities of our present moment. However we choose to get involved for the sake of our future, I hope that we decide to act, whether it’s through voting, protesting, advocacy, or organizing, to steer us in a new direction from where we currently stand, working alongside God in the new future that God is bringing forth. May it be so.