Introduction
When I preach I always go on about reading it in context. About establishing the original context of when it was written, who it was written to and what the situation described was. How the original readers would have understood that. That is all very important. But there is of course another context. Our context. When you study preaching at college, it’s all about bridging the two contexts. This morning, I want to start with my context. Whenever you read a passage you always things going on your mind, things you’ve been reading, watching, listening to and thinking about. Often what you are thinking about influences how you read Scripture. Or as your reading Scripture it reminds you of something you have read or seen. So this morning what I want to do to start this sermon is to tell you five things that were going through my mind as I was reading these passages. Hopefully this helps you see where I am coming from so that when we look at the Bible we all know where we are going.
The first of these is the Hutton Report. Did any of you watch it on TV. For me it was compulsive viewing. While the Hutton Report was going on, my days off were spent in front of the TV watching it all unfold on News 24. And when I was working at my computer it would be on in the background so I could catch up with the latest developments. Then the other week, Lord Hutton’s report was finally published. I listened to his live comments on the report and downloaded the Hutton report itself from the internet, although I have to admit I only read a wee bit of it. Then there was was the debates in the house of commons and on Question time afterwards. And they all centred on one idea, that of truthfulness, honesty or integrity. It’s all about who was telling the truth and who was not. Then we get into the complicated stuff, like who was strictly speaking telling the truth but doing so with the intent to deceive.
The truth. In our society it has become so important, yet so illusive. On Question Time after the Hutton enquiry one of the questions that was asked was about the approach of Journalists. When they interviewed Politicians it was assumed that there was something there that they were not telling the journalist or the public and even at one point it was asked if journalists started from the point of view that politicians were lying.
Secondly, it’s another government one, this time its tuition fees. Now I don’t want to get political but I actually agree with the whole variable after the fact tuition fees scheme the government has come up with. I think its a very sensible solution to the problem. I’m not claiming the Bible or Christianity backs me up here it’s just my opinion. However, the problem I have is that in the Labour party manifesto they promised not to introduce variable tuition fees. While, I don’t question Tony Blair’s honesty and I actually agree with his policy, this does raise questions of integrity.
The third of my things is from a series of books by a writer called Robert Jordan. In this book there is group called the Aes Sedai. They are magic users and some have great powers. Because of these powers they have been mistrusted in the past. To allow them to function they set up a system of oaths taken on magical rod which ensures that they have to keep them. One of these oaths is to speak no word which is untrue, in other words not to lie. Over time however, they learned that this was not quite as much of a restriction as it might seem. There were a great many ways to say things which were entirely true but which ended up being misleading and getting people to believe things that are not true. Of course other people began to realise this and so you always look at whatever an Aes Sedai said, forwards, backwards, in a mirror or any other way you could think of. Despite they’re vow not to lie, unless they came out and said something very straightforward which didn’t happen very often they were still not trusted.
For example, to briefly return to the whole war with Iraq / Hutton Enquiry thing, one of the key questions that is know being asked of the government is that when they said weapons of mass destruction could be ready within 45 minutes, did they know that this was referring to battlefield weapons but say it in such a way that parliament, journalists and the country at large thought that it referred to missiles that were a danger to the UK. Telling the truth with the intention that someone else comes to believe something that is not true.
And then there’s me. I on the other hand am fanatical about the truth. I don’t claim this as a great mark of spirituality, it think its just a character trait. Growing up, I was always honest. If my parents asked me if I had done something, if I said no they knew I wasn’t lying. I wouldn’t tell a lie, on the other hand if I refused to answer... But it went beyond the simple. I refuse to tell social lies as well. If someone asks how the hat or the clothes look, I told them. I’ve mellowed a bit, so that I now I use more diplomatic words that are still technically true but aren’t as hurtful. Interesting is a wonderful word. When it comes to preaching and teaching I sometimes makes things way too complicated for myself because I refuse to use a simplification that is wrong. You may have noticed. On the other hand I’m getting better, I can get away with it by saying this is a simplification that isn’t accurate but it gives you an idea. As I grew older I found that it was possible to say things that were technically true but to give the impression of something that was false. For example, when playing the strategy game Risk I offer a treaty like “If I don’t attack you for the next 3 goes, then you don’t attack me for the next 3 goes.” My opponent thinks that we have signed a treaty not to attack each other for three goes, but what I actually said was that if I didn’t attack him, he wouldn’t attack me, I never stated at any time that I would not attack, I just specified what would happen if I did not attack.
Finally is a story by one of my favourite author’s Orson Scott Card. It called Xenocide. The main character of this book is a speaker for the dead. When someone dies a speaker for the dead is sometimes invited to come and speak for the person who has died. They talk to the people who knew the person, they find out all they can about their past, if the person has written stuff they would read it, if things have been written about them they would read that. When they feel they are ready, they tell the story of the person as best they can. They don’t try to cover up their wrongs, or put a gloss on life of the person like we often do at funerals, they try and tell it how the person was. But they also try and tell why a person did what they did, what were they thinking and what they thought they were doing or trying to achieve. Incidentally one of the first death’s he speaks was a great powerful politician, who was not liked by many because of some of his past acts. However, when one character, a priest, dies, the Speaker for the Dead, declines to speak for him. Why? Because he did not need to, because he lived his life as he wanted to, he was open and honest about everything he did. There was no need to tell his story, because he had already told it. People knew why he did what he did and what he hoped to accomplish, there was nothing hidden and nothing more to be added to his life. This always struck me as a good thing. I would like my life to be one in which at the end of it, everybody knew what you stood for and since all that I did flowed from that, no-one need to explain why you did the things you did, it was obvious. Sometimes some of those things might not appear obvious at the time, but when you know the person and look back it makes sense.
What does that have to do with the previous bits? It’s all about honesty and integrity. Which is also what our Bible passages were about.
The 10 Commandments
But what does the Bible have to say about the whole issue of honesty and integrity. Let’s start by looking at the 10 commandments. Two of the ten have relevance for us. The most obvious is of course do not give false testimony. This is primarily concerned with giving evidence in court to get at someone else. Elsewhere in the Old Testament we are told that someone who does this is to be sentenced with the same sentence that would have been imposed on the accused if the evidence had been genuine. The idea here is honesty. Be honest.
The second one, is the third commandment, do not misuse the name of the Lord your God. Now this actually has two primary meanings, we’ll look at one this morning and one this evening. Neither of them has to do with using God’s name as swear word, although obviously God does not approve of this, none of the Jews to which these commandments were given would have even thought of doing that. No what this was primarily about was a different kind of swearing. Swearing an oath by God and then not fulfilling it. Again it was about honesty and integrity. Firstly, that they don’t lie by swearing an oath they don’t intend to keep. Secondly that once they have made that oath, they keep it, even if later they decide they don’t really want to. I’m not talking about if the oath puts them in an unexpected position where they will have to sin to fulfil it, but rather if it is now inconvenient or difficult they must still fulfil their oath.
Telling Lies
Honesty and integrity. However, these are not merely restricted to never telling a lie in court or keeping oaths that were made in God’s name. Although some did try to put such restrictions on it. In Leviticus 19:9 it says “Do not lie.” but it does not leave it there. It goes on to say “Do not deceive one another.” This goes beyond the merely technical do not tell an untruth, but do not deceive which as we have seen you can do by telling the truth. It’s not about legal frameworks and where technically you did or did not lie. It’s about an intention to deceive. Christians should not be people who are trying to deceive others. We should not mislead them or trick them. We are to be people of honesty. People who’s word can be taken at face value. Who others do not have to look at our words six different ways to see if they really mean what they appear to mean. People who are honest.
But there are other ways of not being honest. Of claiming benefits we’re not entitled to. I remember listening to a Christian friend who complained because her neighbours had reported her mother’s benefit fraud after they had a row with her. In was horrified, not because the neighbours reported her, nor because her mother who was a non Christian had committed benefit fraud, but that my friend who was a Christian didn’t seem to have a problem with the fraud, it was what everyone did. Or maybe its a misreporting of expenses, claiming things your not entitled to. Or maybe it’s just letting little things slide, because they are not important enough to worry about. To be a Christian means to be honest in all our dealings, whether personal or work.
Integrity
But there’s more to it than just be ruthlessly honest, there’s also this matter of integrity. Here, Jesus gives commentary on the 3rd commandment. It’s not just a matter of only keeping oaths sworn in God’s name but all oaths. Only Jesus takes this further and says don’t even bother with oaths, just be truthful in the first place. The problem arose that some of the groups were very legalistic about what oaths could and could not be broken. If you swore by God’s name you had to keep it that what the commandment said. But you could swear on your mother’s grave and then later mention but my mother’s not dead yet, I don’t have to keep the oath. Or maybe they would swear by the temple and claim that that wasn’t what the law said and since you didn’t swear by the God’s name you didn’t have to keep the oath. And Jesus responds by saying you have to be people of integrity, if you make an oath you should fulfil it, no matter what you made the oath by. But then he goes further and said you should be such people of integrity that you don’t need to swear an oath. The fact that you say yes or no should be enough.
If people who know you and have had dealings with you before require you to swear by something before they will believe you, then you are not living lives of integrity. Those who know you should be able to accept that if you say yes, you mean yes and you will hold to that as strongly as if you had sworn by God’s name. Again it’s coming back to this matter of honesty. It is not honest to make an oath that you are planning to break or even leaving the option open as to whether you break it or not. Jesus says be of such honesty and integrity that people accept your yes and no as yes and no.
This passage has nothing to do with whether Christians should refuse to swear an oath when they take the stand in a court of law and everything to do with the sort of people we are. It is also not a legalistic thing that forces us to go through with everything we ever said, no matter how inappropriate it becomes when circumstances change. Sometimes circumstances change. For a trivial example sometimes you say are going to leave work at a certain time and be home at a certain time. Then a crisis develops at work, that you have to handle. Do you break your word to be home by a certain time or do you honour your responsibility to your employer and get home a little late. Sometimes we realise that we made a mistake, that we need to turn our lives around and go in a different direction, that is after all at the heart of Christianity. In this sense we should not be legalistically bound by the past. But on the other hand we should be people of our word and if we say something we should do our best to stick by it. To be people of integrity.
It’s one of those hard things about a gospel of grace and not set laws. Personally, in many ways I prefer the legalistic laws, then I know exactly where I am and exactly what to do in any given situation. However, it doesn’t work that way. We need to pray and ask the Holy Spirit to help us in difficult situations. But in general we know what it means to be people of integrity.
While I might be ruthlessly honest, but this one sometimes catches up with me. Not through any ill intent or plan to deceive but because I can be a bit of a procrastinator and sometimes things get pushed down the priority list and end up not getting done. So I need to work on this aspect, but at least I’m honest about it and don’t try to cover it up.
Conclusions
So what can we say in conclusion. I’m saying avoid legalistic pretending and be people of honesty and integrity. Be the kind of people that others can trust. When you say something, they can take it at face value and accept what you say. When you are asked about doing something, answer yes or no and keep to it. Be the kind of person that others know what you stand for and they know what you are trying to do. While others might not understand every action at the time, they trust you because you have proved to be a person of honesty and integrity.
