Concerning Oaths
Sermon on the Mount # 6

a sermon on Matthew 5.33-37
by David C. Mauldin
Westminster Presbyterian Church, Mobile, Alabama


After a brief break we return today to our series on Jesus’ Sermon on the Mount. For the next three weeks we will continue working our way through Jesus’ demanding teachings found in Matthew, chapters 5 through 7. Then we have Christ the King Sunday, Advent, and Christmas—after which we will come back to the Sermon on the Mount in the new year.

If you have been following closely, you’ll realize I have skipped ahead. My last sermon in this series dealt with the passage in which Jesus begins to say, “You have heard that it was said … but I say to you …” That first one was about anger. Hating your brother or sister makes you guilty of murder, Jesus explained, because what matters to God is the condition of your heart. Today I am preaching the passage about oaths and honesty. In between the two you will find Jesus talking about adultery and divorce.

Before you think that I am passing over those touchy topics, and conclude that I am a weasel and a coward, let me explain what’s happening. I am not skipping them, merely rearranging the order. I will preach that passage next week, even though it comes before today’s reading in the text. My reason is practical: We celebrate the Lord’s Supper this morning. On Sundays when we do that, I generally cut the sermon to about 75% of its normal length. The twin topic of adultery and divorce needs at least a full sermon. Honesty is another matter. Few people, even though most of us are dishonest in some small way, will get uncomfortable or take exception if the preacher says Christians should be honest. It is a safe topic.

That is, it should be safe. And it would be, in anyone’s hands but Jesus’. His demand for pure hearts and right actions turns even his most basic instructions into the life-changing Word of God. When the Word of God is on the loose, no one is safe.

Here’s a little nugget for the Bible scholars in our congregation. In this part of the Sermon on the Mount, Jesus is working with Old Testament laws. He is not changing them. Instead he explains how we ought to live them based on God’s intention in the first place. Keeping in mind that God sees the heart, what does obedience to God’s Law look like? He says, “You have heard that it was said …” then he talks about laws from Exodus and Deuteronomy: murder, adultery, and divorce. Then he says, “Again you have heard …” then he talks about laws from Leviticus: oaths, retaliation, and love of enemies.

In first century Palestine, oaths were a common form of speech. I tell you a juicy bit of gossip. You say, “I can’t believe it!” I respond, “I swear it by the gold on the altar in the Temple.” The Law of Moses commanded the faithful Israelite to swear only by the name of the Lord: “The Lord your God you shall fear; him you shall serve, and by his name alone shall you swear” [Deut 6.12]. The idea was, don’t swear oaths in the name of any other god. The Law of Moses did not condemn swearing an oath, so long as what you swore to be true was in fact true. False oaths are strongly condemned. Honest oaths are not.

By the first century, two customs had grown up around the practice of swearing an oath. One was: The name of God was considered too holy to speak, so no one swore an oath in God’s name. Instead they found things associated with God to swear by. They could swear by heaven, by the holy city of Jerusalem, by the Temple or its altar, or something similar. The other was: Oath taking became so common that it wasn’t taken seriously. It littered everyday speech like trash along a highway. Rabbis debated over what exactly constituted a binding oath. If you swore by the altar in the Temple, you were bound to your word. But, if you merely swore by the gold on the altar, were you bound? Many rabbis lamented the abuse of oaths. Jesus was different. He simply did away with them.

Jesus got rid of oaths and gave his disciples a simpler to understand but harder to live standard: Be honest. The point of oaths was to ensure honesty. Why not be honest all the time? Oaths would be unnecessary. Tell the truth. Yes means yes. No means no. Lies, deceptions, and half-truths come from and lead to evil. Disciples of Jesus are honest because their hearts are true.

Let me sweep aside a nagging issue before we move into the good stuff. At least since the Reformation, some Christians have argued, based on this passage, that Christians should not take an oath in court. Most have said, and we Presbyterians are among them, that taking an oath in court is OK. The simple fact is, the court needs a way to define perjury. If you lie under oath, that’s perjury. To say Jesus will not allow an oath in court makes him very legalistic, which he was not. His concern is honesty. So long as you tell the truth in court, go ahead and take the oath.

Now, in a culture that weasels around the truth by arguing over what the definition of “is” is, Christians have the chance to be salt and light. I read a cartoon recently in which a little girl says honesty is not the best policy. The best policy is truthful accuracy. A friend asks her what the difference is. She answers, “Remember when my teachers voted me as the underachiever of the year? … Well, that means I’m now an academic award winner!”

Politicians dance around the truth. Corporations fudge the bottom line. Meanwhile, everyday people like you and me deceive, conceal, and lie. Jesus wants the truth. He demands honesty. “Truthful accuracy” and similar expedients are exactly the kind of thing he condemns in this passage.

Now, we could end the sermon here. Jesus, who called himself the Way, the Truth, and the Life, wants disciples who tell the truth when they talk. End of discussion. Or is it? I want to explore three special cases that make Jesus’ call to honesty challenging.

The first special case is what I call the Mayberry dilemma. Remember on the Andy Griffith Show how Andy would go to elaborate and deceptive lengths to spare Barney’s and Aunt Bea’s feelings. “Quick, Opie, we’ve got to make a mess in the kitchen so Aunt Bea feels useful.” “OK, Mr. Crook, you’re going to march back in there and let Barney catch you.” It happened all the time. The dilemma is: Is it OK to tell a lie to spare someone’s feelings? Your friend asks, “Do you like my new haircut?” A neighbor in need says, “I hope we’re not imposing,” when of course they are but they are in real need. The pastor greets you after worship with, “So what did you think of the sermon. A good one, huh?” A grown child who has put his parents through hell asks, “Are you glad you had me?” A wife asks her husband, “Am I better looking than so-and-so?” A husband asks his wife, “Are you disappointed in me?” Suppose the answer is not what the person wants to hear. What if the truth is destructive and painful?

Is there ever a time when it is better to lie than to speak the truth? I am going to wimp out on you here and say, I don’t know. You’ll have to decide that for yourself in the context of living as a disciple of Jesus Christ and striving for honesty in your heart and speech. I can suggest that most of the time when we tell little white lies to spare someone’s feelings, they know the truth. Whatever you say about your friend’s haircut, your voice and face will reveal the truth. Your neighbors know they are imposing. What they want is your reassurance that you want to help them. The child, the wife, the husband also want assurance. You can tell a lie, but how you treat that person always tells the truth, and usually they know. Personally, I prefer to hear the truth lovingly spoken. Don’t deceive me. Don’t go out of your way to hurt my feelings with the truth. Tell me what I need to know compassionately and with love. I do not know for sure, but I suspect that the truth spoken in love always sets us free. If it seems it might not, there is deeper evil in our hearts that needs to be dealt with.

The second special case is what I call “the secret life.” A church-going person who is friendly and popular appears to be genuinely good and decent. But that person practices a secret vice. When it becomes known—if it becomes known—our illusions explode and we are left wondering how such a thing could happen. For example, suppose a respected congressman was secretly sending dirty emails to teenage boys. You might have thought I was being ridiculous, if it had not been exposed. I realize Tuesday is Election Day, so to be fair to both parties I could mention a certain former President, but let’s not go there. In fact, let’s forget politicians and celebrities. We need not look far for people with secret lives. An important lay leader in a church gets busted for child pornography. College administrators get caught skimming money from the school. A pastor has an affair and leaves his wife. The sin can be almost anything: lust, greed, desire for power. The phenomenon is always the same. You have a secret life, a part of yourself you don’t want people to know. So you hide it. You live a lie. You pretend to be good, honest, moral, upstanding. Secretly you are doing something that if people found out, they would lose respect for you.

Do I need to explain what Jesus would say about this? He has already said that obedience to God is a matter of the heart. God sees. God knows. You can fool all of the people all of the time, but not God. Add to that his concern for honesty. And what room is left for a secret life?

Of course, if what you are doing in secret is giving money anonymously to help a needy family, that’s a different thing. The test is, what would happen if people knew? If your secret were brought to light, would you be ashamed? If the answer is yes—or even maybe—it is a sin compounded by dishonesty, and you need to repent and change your ways. Get help from a trusted confidant if necessary. I don’t know which danger is greater: That your secret life will be exposed, or that you will seem to get away with it while it slowly chokes the life out of your soul.

Now for our third special case, honesty with ourselves. There are few things people do better than deceive themselves. Most of the time we believe what we want to believe about our self. We see the speck in our neighbor’s eye so clearly, but we never notice the log in our own. The reasons for this are deep and psychological. The truth can be painful. It can also be scary. “If people knew the real me,” we reason at some subconscious level, “they would not like me.” So we put on a mask. Before long, even we can’t tell the difference. Pastors are probably worse than most when it comes to this. We are expected to be strong, confident, knowledgeable, loving, and holy. Officially we are sinners saved by grace, but we quickly discover people are very uncomfortable with our faults. So faults and weaknesses are hidden and Superman emerges. To some extent this is probably unavoidable. And there is nothing wrong with living up to expectations, so long as expectations are honest. Pity the person who avoids hypocrisy by aiming too low. The problem is, too many pastors begin to lose sight of their faults and think they really are Superman. Remember Paul’s “thorn in the flesh?” He claimed it helped him overcome that problem. We pastors are not alone, however. Every human being has difficulty being honest with self. This is just one more consequence of our fallen nature. Here the love of God can rescue us.

God sees the heart. God knows the truth even when we hide it from ourselves. And God loves us anyway. Think of last Sunday’s sermon on grace. We were dead in our sins, and God raised us to life with Christ. Do you think he did not know our condition? Did he imagine we were better than we are? No. He just loved us anyway. Sending Jesus and saving us was his gracious choice, for which we ought to be grateful. We can now afford to be honest with ourselves, because God’s love is a greater truth than whatever we are hiding. You are a sinner. Your heart has more evil in it that you would ever admit, even to yourself. Maybe you secretly believe the universe ought to revolve around you, or maybe you are insecure because you think you have nothing to offer, nothing worthy of love. Whatever the truth is, God has spoken a greater truth about you through Jesus Christ.

When I was at Cursillo, we did a little skit. In it a young woman walked slowly toward a communion table set with bread and wine. Along the way stood people representing the voices of other people or the voices deep inside her. They taunted her. Called her names. Told her how worthless she was. They said all those hurtful things we are all afraid to hear. And then she got to the table, and Christ said to her: “You are my own dear child. I love you. I gave myself for you. This is who you are. Nothing else matters.” … Christ has the final word … for all of us. He is the Truth. He wants us to be truthful, not only in what we say, but how we live. Not just in words, but in our hearts. … Amen.

rev_mauldin@yahoo.com
November 5, 2006