Integrity

October 6, 2024

Psalm 26

An Excerpt from Integrity by Adrienne Rich

October 6th, 2024

By Rev. Nicole M. Lamarche

Welcome again on this most beautiful day! Aren’t we so lucky to live here! Welcome to all who are gathering online! What a gift that we can tune in in so many ways! 

Today I will offer more like a meditation than a sermon with all that calls to us on this world communion Sunday.

If you are so moved, I invite you now to take some deeper breaths, letting go of whatever it is that is weighing us down or worrying us or whatever awaits us after this. Breathing in peace, breathing out stress. I invite you to join me in a spirit of prayer as we are all held by these ancient words from Psalm 19: God may the words of my mouth and the meditations of all our hearts be acceptable in your sight, our rock and our redeemer. Amen.

"Truth has always been more important to me than my freedom," Benjamin Spencer said and when I heard him say these words in an interview, I stopped what I was doing. The truth, his own integrity, meant more to him than most anything, even getting out of prison. This summer’s pilgrimage has me thinking a lot about truth. A couple of weeks ago I introduced you to my friend Bernard, and how I had prayed for God to send me a young woman who could help me navigate and speak French and God sent Bernard, the 60 something cyclist and trainer. His holy trinity is to love justice, and the truth. He said that part of what is happening in the world is that the truth is now breaking free, breaking out all over the place. 

So when I heard Benjamin Spencer say those words, that truth was more important to me than his freedom, I tuned in.

Mr. Spencer never once said yes to an opportunity for parole as it would have meant falsely saying that he was guilty. He refused to lie.

A black man from a poorer part of Dallas, in 1988 Mr. Spencer was sentenced to life in prison for the murder and robbery of a white business executive and yet had been persistent in his insistence on his innocence. 

He held on with the thread of his integrity.

I was thinking of the poet Adrienne Rich’s words about anger and tenderness being woven, even from a broken web.

Mr. Spencer said "There were times I didn't know whether I would ever get out."

He could have been angry, instead holding on tight to his truth kept him tender and filled with hope.

In an interview with National Public Radio, Spencer said that for him it wasn't hard giving up parole because he knew he was right, what was honorable for him, what would allow him to keep going even from the brokenness of the prison in which he found himself. He said, "It was easy for me. I had come to accept whether I ever got out of prison or not, I could not and would not show sympathy or accept responsibility for something I was not responsible for. The truth has always meant more to me than that,” he said.

There is a freedom in this conviction, a liberation from not putting energy into what others are saying or doing and instead, staying true to what is honest in all circumstances. The Psalm we heard is about walking with integrity and knowing that even when this asks hard things of us we can be unwavering in our faith in what is true, when it feels like there is wickedness and evil all around us, there is redemption and freedom in living with integrity.

Clearly this doesn’t mean it will always work out, or go the way we want to, rather I think it means that whatever way it goes, we can live with ourselves and die free from the shackles of the dissonance that comes from dishonest living. One of my most favorite pieces of scripture is from John 8:32, “We will know the truth and the truth will set us free.”

As we heard from Mr. Spencer, for him the truth was way more important than freedom, and I think maybe that is because the truth was his freedom, his balm, his ability to carry on in hope. So I wonder if integrity itself can be healing, I wonder if being aligned with what we know is true regardless of what the world around us is doing, weaving tenderness into anger and weaving, even from a broken web. Love, justice, the truth, breaking out and pushing through.

It took more than three decades, 34 years to be exact for Ben Spencer to be released for his wrongful imprisonment. And it was only possible after an organization that supports innocent people took up his case and in 2008, a judge recommended a new trial. Then, alongside a private investigator, NPR reporter Barbara Bradley Hagerty, published a report that scrutinized the testimony of witnesses as well as the work of law enforcement. And recently he was freed.  In 2021, his record was wiped clean, completely exonerated. He will also receive monetary compensation.

Benjamin Spencer has some words of wisdom for other innocent people behind bars. He says, "Always hold on to hope. You know, I believe in God. I believe that God calls the sunshine on the good and as well as the bad. So with that, we just hold on to hope and pray that doors are open on our behalf…"  With all that is wounded in the world, with all that is wrong or hard or imprisoned, I believe with my whole heart that the truth is and will set us free in the long view of time. We can’t fix all that’s wrong, but we can live our own truths; in integrity and we are free.

Communal Reflection

Have you had an experience of paying a price for living with integrity? Do you resonate with integrity being a high moral value? Has living with integrity been healing for you?

Beloved of God, always hold onto hope. Living with integrity is healing, the truth is freedom. May it be so. Amen.