Matthew 5: 33-37

            Do you swear to tell the truth, the whole truth, and nothing but the truth, so help you God? 

            That is what this morning's scripture lesson is about. What happens when someone is sworn in as a witness in a court of law is a routine that goes back into ancient traditions - back to the Bible, and probably even farther back than that in ancient, ancient law codes, it was recognized that a society had particular occasions when it was necessary to ascertain that the absolute truth would be told. And the means for doing that was to swear an oath. And when you took an oath, you might do a couple things. For example, many times in the Bible the sign is raising your right hand to heaven. Another sign was to place your hand on something that was considered sacred. And the third sign was to name something precious or holy that the oath would be based on. It might be God himself. It might be heaven or earth, or it might be your own life or your own head - or, a more contemporary expression - I swear on my mother's grave. The idea is something like, "If what I am saying is not true, then the dishonor is on my God, or my head, or heaven itself"

            This is at the very foundation of our legal system. The witness to be sworn in raises his or her right hand toward heaven, places a hand on the Bible, and swears to tell the truth, so help them God - it is a routine that has been followed for thousands ~ of years. And what follows is supposed to be the truth - it is a legal requirement.  There are stiff penalties for perjury - lying under oath. President Clinton was not impeached because he committed adultery; he was not impeached because he lied about it; he was impeached because he lied under oath. That was the impeachable offense. You don't swear an oath, and then lie without penalty.

            Legal oaths play an important role in the passion and trial of Jesus. You know the story of Peter, how he denied that he knew Jesus three times, as Jesus had predicted he would. The first denial is described like this - Matthew 26: 70: "(Peter) denied it before all of them, saying, 'I do not know what you are talking about'" The second denial is described like this: "Again he denied it with an oath, 'I do not know the man.'" And then the third denial: "Then (Peter) began to curse, and he swore an oath, 'I do not know the man!' At that moment the cock crowed." Peter was so fearful and ~ so vehement in his lie, that he did it under oath.

            At the trial of Jesus, the high priest said these words: "I put you under oath before the living God, tell us if you are the Messiah, the Son of God." If you read the words of Jesus carefully (in Matthew 26:64), you will see that he does not answer that accusation. Nonetheless, the high priest tears his own robe, cries out that Jesus committed blasphemy, and condemns him to death. We know the rest of that story.

            Throughout the season of Lent, I began to preach on lessons from the Sermon on the Mount of Jesus, and we were seeing a pattern in several scriptures in a row. Jesus would take a law that was on the books - Thou shalt not kill; thou shalt not commit adultery; and so on. And Jesus would say, in effect, This is what you have been taught from ancient times. But now I tell you this. And what Jesus would do is to take the ancient teaching and take it deeper than it had ever been applied before. In effect, what he said is that it is not enough to follow the rules - you need to have the spirit of the law, and the spirit of the God behind it, living in your heart. Not just, you shall not kill, but you shall not harbor anger. Not just, you shall not commit adultery, but you shall not regard others with lust.

            The same pattern applies with today's lesson: "You have heard," said Jesus, "that it was said to those of ancient times, 'You shall not swear falsely... '... But I say to you, Do not swear at all, either by heaven, for it is the throne of God, or by the earth, for it is his footstool, or by Jerusalem, for it is the city of the great King..." Does Jesus mean that we shouldn't be witnesses in court? No. What he is pointing out, first of all, is that people were swearing by things that they had absolutely no authority over. How can we swear by heaven - heaven is God's throne, not something that's ours to use. Or by earth - earth is God's footstool, not ours to offer. Even to swear by your own head is false, says Jesus, because you can't even make one hair white or black (This was before Grecian Formula was invented.).

            But the point Jesus is making more is that the only thing we have control over is our own integrity. "Let your word," he says in verse 37, "be 'Yes,yes' or 'No, no'; anything more than this comes from the devil.'" For a follower of Jesus, swearing an oath will make no difference at all, because, whether you're under oath or not, a follower of Jesus is required by the call of Christ to speak the simple truth - from the heart; unadorned; undiluted; anything more, anything else comes from the devil.

            That sounds pretty easy, doesn't it? Someone asks you a question, you give a straight answer. Yes. No. But... I don't know if it's just me taking more notice, but it seems to me that just in the last few years, the simple truth is very hard to come by.

            For one thing, we've forgotten the 'simple' part; here's an example: Malcolm Baldridge, former U.S. secretary of commerce told this story. A young employee walked into a supervisor's office and asked for a raise. The supervisor responded, "Because of the fluctuational predisposition of your position's productive capacity as juxtaposed to governmental statistics, it would be momentarily injudicious to advocate an incremental adjustment." The employee responded, "I don't get it." And the supervisor responded, "That is correct."

            The word for statements like that supervisors' is gobbledegook - a word that comes from a description of a turkey endlessly gobbling. It means hiding the simple truth behind endless words. Jesus said, "When you are praying, do not heap up empty phrases as the Gentiles do; for they think that they will be heard because of their many' words." So do we, apparently. An English Dictionary published in 1755 had 43,500 words. In 1828, the dictionary had 70,000 words. In 2004, the official English dictionary had 414,825 words. We can't find enough of them, apparently.

            Are we saying more things, expressing ourselves better? Someone pointed out that the Lord's Prayer has 66 words - 67 if you count the Amen. The Gettysburg Address has 272 words. The disclaimer on a bag of potato chips has over 400 words. We've all heard how this works - there'll be a commercial for a new drug, or a million dollar contest, and they'll repeat over and over in normal language the part they want you to hear to buy the product. And then at the very end, the guy will speak a million words a minute, the side-effects, or the disclaimers - the part they hope you won't pay too much attention to - we get buried in words all the time.

            There is an agonizing scene in the movie that came out last year, Hotel Rwanda. In that scene, people are being massacred in that African nation, and a group is listening to U.S. Secretary of State Madeleine Albright talking about the situation. And she is giving this speech saying that what is happening in Rwanda is "acts of genocide." And someone says, "Then it's genocide." "No," she replies. "It's not genocide. It's acts of genocide." And she goes on to try to explain the difference between "genocide' and "acts of genocide," because, of course, if we said that it is genocide, which it clearly was, then by international law, we'd have to stop it. Somehow, if we say it's 'acts of genocide,' then we can simply let it happen. This is what we do to the simple truth.

            But not only have we forgotten the 'simple' part of 'simple truth' - we've forgotten the 'truth' part as well. Poor Porter Goss. Goss is the new Director of the C.I.A. And he made the mistake of telling the truth at a news conference. He mentioned that he was discovering that directing that agency was a nearly impossible job. He felt overwhelmed. So the word went out - the Director of the C.I.A. was admitting that he was not up to the job, said the spin doctors from the left. The spin doctors from the right met and began to consider damage control, and Goss went out and made another statement to correct the honest one. We're getting this all the time.

            The extent to which our federal government is doing it is actually scary - you need a guidebook to keep track. “Revenue enhancements" translate out to be "taxes." “Opportunity investments" - that means "spending increases." Recently there was a note in the news about a memo that was circulating in the Labor department, exploring the possibility of redefining fast-food workers as manufacturers, to make the labor statistics look better to the public. The idea was dropped when it was brought up that fast-food workers might then want manufacturers' wages.

            That kind of bending of the truth is a serious thing: scientific reports that are doctored up to support government programs; news columnists who are paid big money from public funds to support government initiatives in their columns; our administration producing propaganda tapes that intentionally resemble newsreels to deceive the public into embracing their ideas. The administration's spokespersons, and the President himself, were confronted with the obvious question - is it right in a democracy for a government to try to deceive its people? - and the response was, "Well, we're not breaking any laws. It's not illegal." Maybe it's not illegal, but by Jesus' standards of simple truth, it is the work of the devil.

            It's not just our government - practically every institution is in question today. There is no place to go for the simple truth - every branch of the news media is discredited - either slanted far to the left or far to the right, or tarnished by some scandal of bad reporting.

            Perhaps it would be no surprise that the area of deception that bothers me the most is the way the Bible is used in public, and especially in political, conversations today. It is constantly misrepresented. And the people who are quoting it most are misrepresenting it most.

            Followers of Jesus are not to be part of the misquoting, spinning, misrepresenting, hiding the truth game. They are to be simple, direct, and honest.

            In a former church, there was a longtime, devoted disciple of God in his late '80s, who now is in a very special place in heaven, I am sure. His goodness and integrity were known throughout the community. I did the funeral of his longtime business partner - they had run their business together for over fifty years. At the wake, Glen came up to me and talked about what it meant to have been in business with this man who had died. Then, abruptly, Glen held out his hand for me to shake it, which I did. Then he said, with tears in his eyes, "And this is all that was ever between us." And I knew exactly what he meant. These two men had entered into business together and conducted it for five decades without a written contract of any kind - with nothing but a handshake between them.

             I think that's what Jesus was talking about. Christians do not need a written contract; Christians are bound by the integrity of their character to live by the simple truth. We know that that's a long way from reality. But Jesus calls us to it.

             Ben Franklin said that the average person tells 36 fibs a day. It may be some of them are just polite necessities. But many of them are the way we do business, the way we protect ourselves, the way we play the game. Jesus wants us to consider a different way - the way of simple, honest integrity. In our society we talk a lot about freedom - but in fact, every falsehood -- from the most innocent white lies, to the major deceptions that blind that blind us in life, society, and government - every falsehood is a form of prison - it locks us up in our dishonesty. Jesus said, "It is the truth that sets us free." And the more we discover that, the more we are living in his grace.

            Do you swear to tell the truth, the whole truth, and nothing but the truth, so help you God?