Sermon on the Mount
#3: The Whole Truth and Nothing But the Truth
October 22nd, 2006
Jeremy Bergen
Text:
Matthew 5:33-37
When I was about 18 I went to court. Now I was not bringing a lawsuit to force some company to live up to its ethical obligations, nor was I fighting the government on some unjust law. I was not a victim of a crime, nor was I accused of anything. At least not anything too serious. In fact, I went to court to contest a parking ticket. I was sure that it wasn’t deserved. I had borrowed my parents car to run some errands downtown. I had put some quarters in the meter and checked how much time I had—you can tell this was Wpg not Toronto, because quarters were all I needed. But when I returned, a few minutes before the meter should have expired, there was a yellow ticket on the window. Now I am, by nature, a law-abider. So the idea of having been “caught” was not great, nor the idea of a $20 fine. I went home and thought about this. It didn’t feel right. Convinced that the meter must have been faulty, I decided to go back the next day and run a test. Armed with a quarter and a stopwatch, I determined that indeed the meter was off! It promised 15 minutes for a quarter, but gave only 12.
With this information, I went to the traffic court clerk and registered my intention to contest the ticket. I was given a date on which to return to argue my case. So far, this story probably tells you more about my personality than about anything else. In retrospect, I’m a bit embarrassed that I caused the legal system to spend perhaps hundreds of dollars, all to avoid paying $20. However, what I remember most about this incident, was not my surprise at the fact that the commissioner who wrote my ticket was summoned to court to testify that he actually wrote it on such and such a day, nor what I actually said to the judge about my little piece of detective work to ferret out one of the city’s faulty parking meters. What I remember most was the dilemma of whether I should swear an oath in court to tell the truth.
I had a sense that swearing an oath was something that a Mennonite just did not do. I’m not quite sure where this came from, but I was aware that this was a part of the Mennonite tradition and thus that it applied to me. It’s difficult to remember just what my understanding was at that point, but it’s fair to say I felt there was a rule—against swearing oaths—that I just needed to follow. And it was a rule that would put me into conflict with the legal authorities. Well, maybe not conflict, but tension. Or maybe not tension, but mild discomfort. When my case was called, I stood up and the clerk asked that I swear to the tell the truth. I responded, perhaps a bit sheepishly, that I would like to affirm. The clerk looked at me, a bit puzzled. The judge didn’t hear what I said, so he said “What?” I repeated that I wished to affirm that I would tell the truth, but not take an oath. “Ok,” said the clerk, and she asked me if I affirmed that I’d tell the truth, to which I replied “yes.”
And that was it. Others in the courtroom may have barely noticed. But I did. Though I did not wear a plaincoat or drive to court in a horse and buggy, at that moment I felt that a Mennonite distinctive was quite visibly setting me apart for the wider society. In case you’re interested, I did win my case.
Is the Mennonite tradition of taking Jesus’ words against swearing oaths quite literally a relevant part of contemporary discipleship? Last week, Gary preached about how in the Sermon on the Mount, Jesus did not do away with the law but deepened its meaning. That is, some laws can be simply external rules that you follow but don’t really become a part of you. I have not committed murder or adultery—that is, I have obeyed the law externally. But it is when I refrain from nurturing my anger or lust that these laws are internalized and truly become part of who I am. That is what Jesus is saying in the Sermon on the Mount. But as I think back to my experience of refusing to take an oath in court, I wonder what the deeper meaning is. Our legal system has made it easy to avoid the oath, you can simply affirm to tell the truth. So what’s the difference? I followed this new rule that Jesus gave, but I’m not sure I really knew why.
There are Mennonites in Canada who work in all parts of the legal system, including as judges—professions for which the legally binding oath is simply a tool of the trade. To become a physician, one must take the Hippocratic oath, though I believe that here to there is an option to affirm. There are oaths of citizenship, oaths to take if you join the army, oaths to swear if you want to vote and aren’t on the voters list. To compete in the Olympics, one must swear an oath to compete in the Olympic spirit. Even if we aren’t called on to take them often, oaths are a part of our culture.
And yet, refusing to swear oaths has been one of the most consistent Anabaptist-Mennonite teachings throughout the centuries. In fact, one scholar who has compared various historical Mennonite statements of faith finds that the prohibition against oaths is even more common than the prohibition against fighting in wars. Taking oaths is clearly prohibited in our current Confession of Faith, something I’ll get back to later on. Yet, there hasn’t been a lot of theological reflection on this. I don’t know that I’ve heard a sermon on this topic. And the historians and sociologists tell me that thought Mennonites have consistently held this belief, in practice the results have been mixed. So this morning, I’d like to take a closer look at the biblical context for what Jesus is saying, and then how the early Mennonites, who were called Anabaptists, interpreted Jesus’ words; and then what all this might mean for us.
In the Old Testament, oaths were permitted and were made by figures such as Abraham. This is what it says in the book of Deut, chap 23: “If you make a vow to the Lord your God, do not postpone fulfilling it; for the Lord your God will surely require it of you, and you would incur guilt.”
Note the word “if.” Here and elsewhere, it does not appear that oaths are required. Rather, people are already swearing oaths, and God added that we should take this seriously. Here we may wonder, what is it about oaths that societies value them so highly?
An oath is a promise that is somehow joined to something much larger than oneself, such as God. An oath-taker calls on God to witness and to stand behind what you say, or what you promise. This does several things: first, having a witness such as God emphasizes the seriousness of the promise or statement being made. Secondly, such a witness serves as a guarantee. Consider the example of getting my parents to co-sign a first mortgage. They promise to make good on the debt if I am unable to. An oath is kind of like that. It invokes God as a co-signer of my promise. An oath sworn on God’s name, according to this idea, is as good as God’s word. If I default, then God will back me up. God will help me to keep my word, because I have bound myself, my promise and God all together. Thirdly, we all know that human oaths can be broken, and this is where the logic of an oath starts to break down. In ancient times, one swore an oath of loyalty and obedience when one joined an army. By invoking a god or gods as witness to this, a recruit was saying, if I am disloyal, then I can expect not only the army’s punishment, but also divine wrath. You see, on the one hand, an oath claims that God stands behind the promise; and on the other hand, the very idea of an oath accepts the fact that it may be broken. But when they are the consequences might be not only earthly, but also from God.
What does Jesus say? Why does he tell us not to swear oaths? Jesus refers to the OT tradition that says, if you swear, then do not swear falsely. He deepens this by saying “Do not swear at all, either by heaven, or by earth, or by your own head, for you cannot make one hair black or white.” What Jesus is saying here is that all swearing, all oaths, invoke God’s name, even if God’s name isn’t actually used. In the Jewish tradition, God’s name was holy and could not be uttered. So people would swear by heaven as a way of swearing by God’s name without actually saying it. Even if one swears by the earth, this invokes God’s name says Jesus, since God is the maker of the earth. But what about this odd phrase about not swearing by your own head, since you cannot make one hair black or white? It seems that Jesus is reminding his listeners that God is the creator and Lord of human beings, as well as of the earth. We may think that we are in charge of ourselves, but this is not the whole picture. The reference to the colour of hair probably refers to the process of aging—of hair going from black to white. And though I could always dye my hair—and hair dye was not unknown among the wealthy in Jesus’ day—this ultimately does not affect the aging process. God is finally in charge of our lives and our deaths. We are not. So even if we swear on our own names, we are swearing on God’s name.
So Jesus tells his disciples that all oaths invoke God, no matter what form they take. Why is this a problem? I think Jesus highlights the fact that an oath taker is promising something they cannot deliver. Only God’s promises are absolutely certain and true. Indeed, the Bible sometimes describes God’s promises to his people as an oath that we swore to them. But our words are not God’s words, and it is presumptious for us to try to add God’s stamp of approval or guarantee to what we say. Will others then hold God accountable when we fail??
One danger of oaths is that people come to rely on an external mechanism, a sworn oath, as a means of assuring someone that what you said was true. In this context, it might seem that one did not need to be truthful except for those exceptional circumstances. That is, truth-telling is the exceptional case, not the starting point. Indeed, as far as I understand it, it is not illegal to lie in our daily life, though it may be immoral; it is only illegal to lie under oath. But rather than rely on an external mechanism, and rather than implicate God in our very human failings—sometimes we do not keep our word—Jesus rather speaks to our character. Be truthful people. Be the kind of people who tell the truth. Let your yes mean yes. Let your no mean no. How will people know that your word can be trusted? They will know because you have been truthful in the past.
Furthermore, oaths can be a way of controlling God, or compelling God to guarantee a particular future. Oaths for military service were common in Jesus day. And if a soldier swore by God’s name to be loyal to his army unit and courageous in battle, then it seems that he is publicly committing God to something that God may not want to be committed to. Jephthah, one of ancient Israel’s leaders, swore an oath that if God granted him victory in battle, then he would offer as a sacrifice the first living creature that came to greet him. He was victorious, and the first being he saw was his own daughter. In this tragic and puzzling story, we are shocked to read to Jephthah indeed does keep his word and kill his own daughter. But was this course of events really God’s will; or was Jephthah’s foolish oath an attempt to implicate God to his rash promise?
Many interpreters of the Sermon of the Mount have argued that Jesus’ commands should not be taken literally, and his prohibition on oaths is no exception. Interpreters present and past have argued that what Jesus really meant is that we should not swear—that is, invoke God’s name on what we say—in everyday speech. That is, don’t swear too often, or lightly. But then Jesus isn’t really adding much to the law, which had already outlawed swearing falsely and insincerely. Others have said that Jesus was commanding that we be truthful, and that we should not swear oaths unless required by law. Thus, oaths in court are fine.
The 16th century Anabaptists, read this passage quite literally, though there was not agreement about what this prohibition against oaths meant. For some, it was a matter of being obedient to Jesus’ words. Others said that this was not so much a new law against oaths, but that what mattered was the spirit of Jesus’ words, which was to be truthful.
But perhaps one theme runs through the way in which early Anabaptists and latter the Mennonites have understood the prohibition against oaths: that of being separate from the world. Oaths have frequently been used as a test and a guarantee of loyalty and allegiance. Kings, queens, nations, and armies demand oaths of loyalty.
The early Anabaptists knew that they needed to live in the world, and that the world was a messy place. But they also knew that the demands of the world might conflict with the demands of following Jesus in life. And if that conflict came up, it was important for them to know and for others to know, that their ultimately loyalty was to God, not to state, or to a court. To refuse to swear an oath, in 16th century Europe, was a radical act, because oaths bound all of society together, under a single ruler who was understood to have been set there by God. All citizens were members of the same church—citizenship, obligation to serve one’s ruler by fighting in his army, baptism—these things were all closely linked. There was a single glue that held everything together—and oaths that invoked God’s name declared that this was God’s will. And the Anabaptists rejected this. Some Anabaptists were ordered to swear an oath that they would stop preaching or baptize adults. Such oaths, they said, are incompatible with the demand to follow Jesus. While we can’t go into the details of Anabaptist history here, basically these men and women rejected the idea that the state could make ultimate demands upon them. Or compel them to go to war, contrary to the command of Jesus.
To swear on the Bible and invoke God’s name in court suggests that God blesses what goes on there. Perhaps that God even guarantees the justice of the outcome. But this is too much. Courts may be necessary to settle dispute, but they are never ultimate. States and rulers and governments may be necessary too, but they are not ultimate, and we should never suppose that what they do is simply God’s will. And so in Mennonite tradition, there has been an impulse to maintain degrees of separation from the world. Sometimes this has been in the form of outward appearance, or rejecting certain technology. It has almost always meant refused to fight in war. And, it has meant refusing to swear oaths as a sign that our primary allegiance is to God.
From our 1995 Mennonite Confession of Faith: “Throughout history, human governments have asked citizens to swear oaths of allegiance. As Christians, our first allegiance is to God. In baptism we pledged our loyalty to Christ’s community, a commitment that takes precedence over obedience to any other social and political communities.”
This connection to baptism is I think absolutely critical. Baptism is not an oath, because it turns oath-making upside down: An oath is when we try to bind God to our idea of what is true; baptism is when God invites a response to the fact that he has already bound himself to us. Through baptism, we owe God an allegiance that must not be compromised by any other promises we might make.
In our own lives, allegiances may be indicated by more than oaths. In what ways might we have an allegiance to our economic system, to the pursuit of wealth? If money and wealth is all important to me, have I declared allegiance to it, even without swearing an oath? What about the values of our culture, such as the importance of style and physical appearance? Or the satisfaction of personal desires? Or the pursuit of career goals above all else? In what way do we show a primary attachment to the social values around us, allegiances which conflict to our allegiance to Jesus Christ as Lord? There are open-ended questions that I can’t pursue further at the moment, but which are stimulated by reflecting on Jesus’ call to swear no oaths.
Jesus calls us to be truthful people. Jesus calls us to a humility in which we do not attempt to control God or presume that our human institutions yet match God’s will for the world. Jesus calls us to give our allegiance to him. When I preached some months ago, Phil Enns said to me, half jokingly, that I asked too many questions, but didn’t give enough answers. If Phil were here, he might be waiting for me to say definitively whether or not he should take an oath in court. Well, I would say to Phil, no I don’t think you shouldn’t swear an oath in court. But that’s not the whole picture here.
I return to the memory of my 18-year-old self in traffic court, muddling my way through an attempt to be a Mennonite Christian. For me, the experience of refusing to swear an oath was important, but not as an end in itself. Rather, it was a prod, a reminder, a sign and an entry point into seeking a discipleship that tries to follow Jesus in all things.