15 June 2024 Matthew 5:33-37
“Let your Yes mean Yes, and your No mean No. Anything more is from the Evil One.” Matthew 5:37
Stanley Hauerwas taught the core course in Christian Ethics at Duke University Divinity School for many years, and in an interview he described what he would tell the students on the first day: “I would start the course by telling the kids that, one, I don’t teach to help them make up their own minds because they don’t have minds worth making up until I have trained them. I know that sounds authoritarian, but it at least saves you from Target, where you think you have a choice because you have a choice between Sony and Panasonic. But I would tell the kids that if they needed an ethics course to make them moral, it’s too late. They are already too corrupt. I can’t do anything for them. But I was going to tell them all they needed to know in two seconds, about what they needed to know to live well. And I asked them to get out a paper and pencil and write it down. Don’t Lie. Don’t Lie…. How do you tell one another the truth in a world of mendacity? It’s not easy, and you’re going to need all the help you can get. And the name that help should take is called the Church of Jesus Christ, where people go because they’re desperate to be told who they are truthfully” (No Small Endeavor, podcast, 20 October 2020).
Jesus lived in a world where people made vows to assure others of their truthfulness, and some vows obligated you more than other vows did. Jesus’ observation was that if you need vows to make people believe you are telling the truth, and especially if there is a hierarchy of such vows, and you have to have a crime called perjury that carries jail time to make doubly sure you are getting the truth, then you are already too corrupt, and there is not much that can be done to help you. You have already made peace with mendacity.
The Church of Jesus Christ is your only hope if you don’t want to make peace with mendacity, but it is a demanding sort of hope. You have to believe, first of all, that when you go to Church you are face to face with God Almighty, who knows it all already, who cannot be fooled by any lie. It is why Catholics make such a fuss about the Real Presence of Christ in the Eucharist. The Red Candle by the Gold Box tells you as soon as you walk into the room that you are face to face with God Almighty, so kneel.
You have to believe, second of all, that any lie you have ever told separates you from God, and you know you are separated from God because you don’t really care that much, or even remember, all the lies you have told. If you remembered, and knew you were in the presence of God, you would immediately ask for mercy. If you don’t, that can only be because there is daylight between you and God, so much that the need for repentance has not reached you. So, you don’t confess, and don’t repent, and the separation grows.
You have to believe, third of all, that lies come in many shapes. All cheating is a lie – you’re saying that something is the case that isn’t. All greed is a lie – you’re holding on to something that doesn’t belong to you, but you think that it does. All cruelty is a lie – you are saying that someone is less than a beloved child of God who actually is.
It is possible to say or believe false things without being a liar. Believing false things only means you are ignorant, and need to be taught. The Church is your only hope there, too.
But vows are useless. Don’t Lie. Go to Church.
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