12 Above all, my brothers and sisters, do not swear—not by heaven or by earth or by anything else. All you need to say is a simple “Yes” or “No.” Otherwise you will be condemned.First off, we have to admit that James cribbed this straight from Jesus, namely Matthew 5: 33-37. But hey, if you're going to borrow, borrow from the best!
At first the passage seems shocking. What's the big deal about taking oaths and making solemn promises? Upon further reflection, the issue isn't that oaths are wrong as much as unnecessary for a person of faith.
Followers of God have used a sly old trick for...well...for about as long as there have been followers of God. It goes like this: "Certain times, places, and people are important and holy. I will reverence those. If I speak in a holy context--usually indicated by me taking an oath and really, really promising that I can be trusted here--then you may be sure what I say is true and that I will follow through on it. But other times, places, and people are not so important and holy. If I speak in that context, well, I'm pretty much free to do as I please. After all, it's not like I promised by something really holy or anything!"
This is really awesome for us as "good" and "holy" people. (Note the sarcasm contained in those quotation marks.) We are free to be seen as good and upstanding citizens in church and in other public settings. We can pick and choose our times to take oaths and really pinkie swear, so to speak. But then we can leave church or those other public settings and proceed to lie, cheat, con, connive, or do whatever else is necessary to get what we desire. After all, we didn't really promise, right? It's not like we took vows in front of an altar.
This passage is God's way of calling shenanigans on that mindset. And I only use "shenanigans" because the stronger term would get me in trouble.
Note the problems with our sly little trick:
1. By elevating certain moments and places as holy and worth swearing by while designating the rest as just "normal", we pen God into a narrow corner. Sure he's present in church or in solemn public oaths, but he stays there! He never follows us into real life. Apparently he doesn't even care, as long as you don't do anything wrong in his special place. We witness to everyone that God isn't in the world and that God has nothing to do with their everyday lives...with normal words and occasions.
2. We also make God the God of the Good here...the God of the Perfect, really. He's only around when people are behaving well, in contexts like church or the witness stand. He's not the God of forgiveness, nor the God of the sinner, nor the God of people who just mess up sometimes and break words they shouldn't.
3. At the same time we set the bar for ourselves really low. If we can manage to be good for about an hour a week in church we're good! Then we're free for the other 167 hours of the week to do as we please. If we can manage to keep the two or three promises we swore to in a holy context we can then be absolute selfish boogers with everything else people depend on us for.
4. In this way we witness that people of God are two-faced and hypocritical. We also witness that God's word can be twisted to any kind of evil and still remain God's word...effectively robbing it of power and meaning.
Thus you get the "Christian" used car salesman who shows up in a suit with his family each Sunday and then cheats customers the other six days. Or you get the Sunday School teacher who lectures piously at 9:00 a.m. and is emotionally abusing his spouse and children by 3:00 that afternoon. Or, more commonly, you just get a bunch of people with the impression that church and faith happen on Sunday morning and are totally disconnected with everything else that happens during their week.
Yeah...shenanigans.
For a person of faith, every word is a witness. Every word and every moment are packed with potential power for goodness or evil in the world. That's as true on Friday night at 11:30 as it is on Sunday morning at 10:00. If you speak a word, people should be able to rely on it being good and true. They should also be able to rely on you following up on it, living your life by it. Your "yes" and "no" should be as strong as the most binding oath. If people can't draw a line straight from your most intimate moments of faith to the things you're saying and doing in this moment, what good is your faith?
Granted, this isn't always easy. We're quite careless about our words, actions, and attitudes. (Cheap Plug: Come to the next Evangelism Workshop after worship on June 3rd to begin a discussion about this very thing!) We let words escape our lips that aren't worthy of our faith or God. We hold back words which should be uttered. This is why we all need forgiveness and renewal every Sunday.
It also gets complex even when you're paying attention and trying to do right. If my wife asks me if her derriere is getting larger, The Truth is not necessarily the wisest course. Or rather, the greater Truth that it doesn't matter a bit is more central to the moment than the lesser (and more potentially hurtful) truth of "Yes, dear. I'd say about four inches circumference in the last 18 months." Sometimes figuring out which truth to speak can be a nightmare.
Even so, even as difficult as it is sometimes, we aren't free to be cavalier about our words. We aren't free to lock God away when it's convenient for us, nor to brand ourselves as his followers and then hurt people as if it didn't matter. Every yes means, "Yes, you can rely on this to be good and rely on me to live by it." Every no means the same. If we cannot pack that kind of meaning into our utterances, we should think twice before we utter.
Cue tapes of radio hosts, politicians, salesmen, newscasters, commercial spokespeople, authors of letters to editors, and plenty of pastors here...
--Pastor Dave (pastordave@geneseelutheranparish.org)
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