Jesus said:
You have heard that it was said to those of ancient times, “You shall not swear falsely, but carry out the vows you have made to the Lord.” 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. And do not swear by your head, for you cannot make one hair white or black. Let your word be “Yes, Yes” or “No, No”; anything more than this comes from the evil one.
(From the Daily Office Lectionary – Matthew 5:33-37 – May 4, 2012)
The notes in my bible say that this is alternatively rendered as “. . . anything more than this comes from evil.” The King James Version follows that reasoning: “Let your communication be , Yea, yea; Nay, nay: for whatsoever is more than these cometh of evil.” In any event, the plea of Jesus here is for clarity in communication, for plain, simple, easily understood communication. ~ The Letter of James picks up this same thought: “Above all, my beloved, do not swear, either by heaven or by earth or by any other oath, but let your ‘Yes’ be yes and your ‘No’ be no, so that you may not fall under condemnation.” (James 5:12) Again, a plea for clear communication, an admonition to eschew obfuscation, a command from Holy Scripture to avoid prevarication. ~ In this political season (when, in modern society, isn’t it a political season?) we are bombarded by messages, speeches, advertisements, editorials, robo-calls, and news commentaries, none of which seem to have gotten this message! Today’s 24-hour news cycle and with the ease with which technology allows words and pictures to be manipulated seems to encourage folks to say and publish anything and everything but a “yes” which is truly “yes” or a “no” which is really “no”. ~ We’ve all heard the post-modern excuse for not believing anything: “That may be true for you, but it’s not true for me.” I don’t buy it. Maybe I’m not post-modern enough, but I really do believe there is a capital-T Truth that is true for everyone. We may not all recognize it; we may all be so seeped in a culture in which “yes” is not always “yes” and “no” is not always “no”, but that does not mean that there is no capital-Y Yes in the universe! There is. I’m convinced that there is! ~ Alfred North Whitehead, on whose philosophy process theology is based, once remarked, “There are no whole truths; all truths are half- truths. It is trying to treat them as whole truths that plays the devil.” While I find process philosophy and process theology very instructive, I respectfully disagree with Mr. Whitehead: I believe there are whole truths, at least one – God. ~ If one believes that, as I do, one should do as Jesus instructed; stick with “yes” that is truly “yes” and “no” that is truly “no”, and make sure one’s communication is as clear and direct as possible.
This psalm is not the only time Holy Scripture reports God’s displeasure with the sacrifice of animals. Consider these words from the first chapter of the Book of Isaiah, “What to me is the multitude of your sacrifices? says the Lord; I have had enough of burnt offerings of rams and the fat of fed beasts; I do not delight in the blood of bulls, or of lambs, or of goats. When you come to appear before me, who asked this from your hand? Trample my courts no more; bringing offerings is futile; incense is an abomination to me. New moon and sabbath and calling of convocation – I cannot endure solemn assemblies with iniquity.” (Isa. 1:11-13) Despite all of the ritual directions found in the Law and in the Histories (see, e.g., Exodus 29, Leviticus 1, Numbers 7, and 1 Kings 18), the Psalmist, the first Isaiah, and especially the Prophet Micah make it very clear that sacrificing innocent animals is not what Judaism (or religion in general) is all about. Micah writes, “‘With what shall I come before the Lord, and bow myself before God on high? Shall I come before him with burnt offerings, with calves a year old? Will the Lord be pleased with thousands of rams, with ten thousands of rivers of oil? Shall I give my firstborn for my transgression, the fruit of my body for the sin of my soul?’ He has told you, O mortal, what is good; and what does the Lord require of you but to do justice, and to love kindness, and to walk humbly with your God?” (Micah 6:6-8) It may be that doing justice, loving kindness, and walking with God may (and often does) require one to give up one’s possessions, one’s livelihood, even one’s life. But such “sacrifice” without the demanded ethical basis, sacrifice done only to curry favor with God, is not what God asks or wants. ~ It is from this ethical stream in ancient Judaism that Christianity flows. It is unfortunate that early Christian writers looked back to the sacrificial practices of the Temple to find an analog to crucifixion of Jesus; we might have seen the Christian religion develop differently if, like the writers of the Gospels, they had looked more to the prophets. Jesus certainly did: “‘You shall love the Lord your God with all your heart, and with all your soul, and with all your mind.’ This is the greatest and first commandment. And a second is like it: ‘You shall love your neighbor as yourself.’ On these two commandments hang all the law and the prophets.” (Matthew 22:37-40) ~ So spare that bull! Sacrifices of animals (or their modern analogs, whatever they may be) are not the sacrifices that demonstrate love of God and love of neighbor. Rather, the core of ethical religion is as the writer of the Letter to Hebrews said: “Do not neglect to do good and to share what you have, for such sacrifices are pleasing to God.” (Heb. 13:16)
A NYC Taxi driver wrote:
This is one of those biblical tales that I just love and wish the English would tell correctly. The Hebrew ‘achowr would better be translated “hindquarters”, “rear”, or “rear parts”, or even as “butt” . . . “Back” is just so bland! God is being a little earthier with Moses than that, and in that earthiness I find a counterpoint to the grandeur of this story. ~ This is a “grand” story, a big story, the story of God “choosing” and adopting as his own a whole people, the story of God giving the Law, the story of God continuing the motion, the arc, the trajectory of the whole sweep of Jewish and Christian history. This is a big story! And in the midst of it, here is this same God rather jokingly, perhaps teasingly saying, “You can’t see my face, but you can see my backside.” ~ One of the traditional depictions of the face of God has been that of a bearded old man (think of God talking to King Arthur from the clouds in 
When I joined the Episcopal Church in high school, the last verse of this quotation was the favorite offertory sentence of the parish priest – in the King James Version, of course: “Let your light so shine before men, that they may see your good works, and glorify your Father which is in heaven.” If he didn’t say that one, he said, “Not every one that saith unto me, Lord, Lord, shall enter into the kingdom of heaven; but he that doeth the will of my Father which is in heaven.” (Matt. 7:21 KJV) I memorized those verses not by reading them, but by hearing one or the other at every service as the invitation to make a gift to God. I learned the lesson of an active faith, of being public and “out there” with my beliefs, of doing the will of the Father, from hearing those simple but profound verses at every service. ~ I love the 1979 Book of Common Prayer and its many options for worship, but I wonder whether in our quest for variety in worship we have left behind the wisdom of simple, repetitive teaching. In our current worship practice we are directed by a rubric to offer prayers for the Universal Church, its members, and its mission; for the Nation and all in authority; for the welfare of the world; for the concerns of the local community; for those who suffer and those in any trouble; and for the departed . That’s well and good, but the way in which these prayers are offered is left up to the designers of each service or to the presiding ministers and, in fact, variety seems to be encouraged. On the other hand, in our previous prayer book (and all those that preceded it) there was one prayer “for the whole state of Christ’s church.” Every Sunday, the same prayer was offered; the same lesson of the need for prayer was taught. ~ That standard prayer included the every Sunday petition that God “inspire continually the Universal Church with the spirit of truth, unity, and concord: And grant that all those who do confess thy holy Name may agree in the truth of thy holy Word, and live in unity and godly love.” Is it possible, just the least bit possible, that some of our current discord in the church is because we’ve stopped hearing these words, stopped teaching and learning the lesson of “truth, unity, and concord”, stopped trusting God to support us in agreement, unity, and “godly love”? Have we extinguished our light, have we stopped shining that light before others because we’ve stopped offering and hearing these simple, repetitive lessons? ~ I don’t know. And I love variety in worship. But remembering those every Sunday offertory sentences, those every Sunday petitions for unity, I’m beginning to wonder.
My father died in an automobile accident when I was five years old. Two things important to my religious life resulted from that. First, my mother and I stopped attending the Baptist church which she and my brother and I had gone to up to that point. Second, I started spending every summer with my paternal grandparents, Charles Edgar and Edna Earle Funston, in the town of Winfield, Kansas, and thus began attending the Methodist church during those summer vacations.
Another reading of that proclamation is “Repent, for the kingdom of heaven is at hand.” To my hearing, this alternative version is a bit more imperative; the kingdom seems a bit more imminent when it is “at hand” rather than simply has “come near.” We used to live in that part of northeastern Kansas known as “tornado alley”. If we said a tornado had “come near” that was as good as saying “It missed us! It didn’t hit us.” On the other had, if someone had said a twister was “at hand”, I would have thought it was coming right at our front door! So . . . theologically I prefer the latter reading, but must confess that personally I breathe a sigh of relief if the kingdom merely has come near. A miss, after all, is as good as a mile, and it gives me time to do this repenting and reforming that Jesus calls for. ~ So what is this “kingdom of heaven”? Let’s get one thing clear right off the bat – it is not something different from the “kingdom of God”. Some try to make a distinction (like the notes in the Scofield Reference Bible towards which I acknowledge great antipathy), but a comparison of the gospels demonstrates that they are the same thing (compare these verses: Matthew 4:17 with Mark 1:14-15; Matthew 5:3 with Luke 6:20; Matthew 13:31 with Mark 4:30-31). ~ This kingdom also is not a place far away or near by. The Greek here is basileia ; the Hebrew for the same concept in the Old Testament (e.g., Ps. 103:19) is malkuwth. While both can refer to a physical place, an actual nation state, they are better understood to refer to a condition or fact or authority of sovereignty or dominion; they might better be translated is “rule” or “reign”. This kingdom also is not a time – past or present or future. It isn’t some place or state or condition at which we arrive after death; it isn’t some place or state or condition which will arrive on earth at some future time. So what is it? ~ Well . . . in Luke’s gospel, Jesus is asked by the Pharisees about the signs of the kingdom’s arrival, to which he replies, “The kingdom of God is not coming with signs to be observed; nor will they say, ‘Look, here it is!’ or, ‘There it is!’ For behold, the kingdom of God is in your midst.” (Luke 17:20-21) The Greek here is entos which means (and in other versions is translated literally as) “within you”. Other things the Christian scriptures tell us are found within human beings are the “word of Christ” richly dwelling (Col. 3:16), spiritual gifts (1 Tim. 4:14), and sincere faith (2 Tim. 1:5). The Hebrew scriptures mention peace (e.g., Ps. 12:8), God’s commandments (Prov. 7:1), and “a new heart and a new spirit” (Ezek. 36:26). In other words, the kingdom is an internal, spiritual characteristic of human beings characterized by these things. That’s coming about as “near” as you can get! That’s even more imminent than being “at hand.” If it’s within me, within you, within us, right here in the midst of us . . . that’s a matter of some urgency! We’d best be paying attention to it. ~ It is also characterized by the things revealed in the eight “kingdom parables” of Matthew 13, but that is too much to write about in a short meditation on a sunny day. I’ll leave those to the reader’s own contemplation. ~ Just one final note . . . if the kingdom (in all its characteristics) is truly within a person (or within a community), it will be very apparent by that person’s (or community’s) outer actions, his or her (or their) conduct, his or her (or their) relationships with others and the whole of creation. Here, the words of the Letter of James apply: “Faith by itself, if it has no works, is dead. But someone will say, ‘You have faith and I have works.’ Show me your faith apart from your works, and I by my works will show you my faith.” (James 2:17-18) If the kingdom of heaven is truly within, truly come near, truly at hand in the lives of Christ’s followers, then it will be made clear in works of mercy. I think that’s the repentance and reformation Christ encourages here.
The rest of today’s Daily Office reading from the Hebrew Scriptures sets out the Ten Commandments. My first thoughts were of those and wondering whether the course of world history might have been different if the Lord had laid out those laws in an affirmative rather than a negative style. You know – said something like “You shall hold all life in reverence” rather than “You shall not murder” (Exod. 20:13) or “You will respect your neighbor’s right of possession” rather than “You shall not steal” (Exod. 20:15). But then the ending verses caught my eye and I immediately thought, “Incense!” ~ OK, not immediately … but I did think of incense and liturgy. Smoke and lightning and loud noises and a leader separated from the people to do special things vis-à-vis God (so the people don’t have to do them for themselves, because – God knows! – those things are downright dangerous!). Skip forward several generations and you have the liturgy of the Temple . . . skip forward several more generations and you have the liturgy of the Church. As I thought about today’s Exodus reading, I realized that the liturgy of temple and church is about recreating Sinai; liturgy is an attempt to experience in the here-and-now what the Hebrews experienced in this encounter with God. And I began to ask, “Is this what has put us on the trajectory of irrelevance and disbelief?” ~ The stagecraft of temple and church became the stagecraft of the theatre, of vaudeville, of burlesque, of the stage magician. There is very little difference between staging a good worship service and staging a good theatrical or musical production. Use of “props”, use of lighting, use of stage technique . . . it all started in the temple and the church, and was borrowed by the entertainment stage (in fact, one might argue that the Western European way of staging dramas and other forms of entertainment in some sense originated in the church with medieval “passion plays” and whatnot). And now, today, the flow is in the opposite direction: the staging techniques of the rock concert have replaced the formal liturgy in many independent congregations and so-called megachurches. This is so well-known that there’s even a very funny parody of the situation on 
“Let it be so for now.” Acceptance of the status quo, even if only for a little while, is a hard thing for a change agent like John, but some times that’s what has to be done. Some time after this event, Jesus would use the metaphor of a mustard seed to describe the kind of faith that can accomplish great things. (Matthew 17:20; Luke 17:6) It’s a great metaphor because it reminds us of the need to follow the advice he gave here to John: “Let it be.” ~ As any gardner knows (and this is the time of year when gardners are reminded if they’ve forgotten), waiting and accepting the status quo is the essence of planting seeds. After all the fun and anticipation of choosing seeds from a catalog or garden-supply store, after the activity of preparing the soil, after making the hole for your seed, after covering the seed and watering . . . there is the waiting. If one is an impatient type of person, growing things from seeds is not the way to experience instant gratification. The worst thing about growing seeds is waiting for them to grow. But that’s what has to be done: “Let it be.” ~ Depending on what one has planted, the wait may be anywhere from five or ten days or to as much as six or eight weeks to germinate. Until then, you continue to water soil that just sits there looking the same. You hope for sunlight, because sunlight warming the soil is important to growth, but there’s not much you can do about that. So you water and you wait. It’s what has to be done: “Let it be.” ~ If a change agent like John can be patient, can make a small change and then accept the status quo for a little while, great changes can be wrought. Jesus used the seed metaphor another time. He said, “Very truly, I tell you, unless a grain of wheat falls into the earth and dies, it remains just a single grain; but if it dies, it bears much fruit.” (John 12:24) ~ Small change . . . patience . . . great change. “Let it be so for now.” And you may just hear the voice of God saying, “I am well pleased.”
You’ve got to hand it to John the Baptizer! He sure knows how to warm up and relate to a crowd. ~ What is John saying by greeting his audience thus? Is John speaking to the Pharisees and the Sadducees at all, or rather to the rest of the crowd? Or, more likely, is Matthew (who here is repeating a line found also in Luke and who later puts these same words into Jesus’ mouth) saying something to us, his later readers? ~ I grew up with snakes. In the desert wilderness of southern Nevada, pit vipers (in the form of rattlesnakes) were common even our backyards. Rattlesnakes can be dangerous, but they are also cowards. A rattler prefers to remain motionless, hoping not to be noticed. If you come too close and corner it, it will rattle a warning and stand its ground. But rattlesnakes never pursue people; they would rather flee than fight. They prefer to “flee the wrath to come”; make them aware that you’re coming and they will slither away as quickly as they can. ~ The image Matthew’s Baptizer puts before us may be that of a fearful group scattering in all directions. On the other hand, when snakes are congregated in a large group where they cannot flee, they are very dangerous. It is noteworthy that John says, “You brood of vipers” not simply “You vipers”. To me, the word brood suggests a bunch of snakes all tangled up together (as in the picture accompanying this text). When rattlers are congregated like this, they can’t and don’t flee – maybe it’s a phenomenon of “safety in numbers” – they stick together in a writhing, deadly mass. ~ Who are the vipers today? Back then, it was the religious leadership and not just those of one “party”. John addressed himself to both Pharisees and Sadducees, both the “right” and the “left” of his day. Could it be that today’s “brood of vipers” are the leaders of the churches? Could it (in my own denominational tradition) be all of the bishops and leaders of the Anglican Communion who have spent too much time tangled up, hissing and rattling at each other about issues which truly are adiaphora to the Gospel of Jesus Christ? Could it be that John’s complaint was not that the Sadducees and the Pharisees were corrupt or evil, but that they were distracted and wasting their time and effort, that his ire was worked up because rather than be about the work of God they were too busy wrangling with one another over that which was extraneous and immaterial to that work? ~ John contrasts the “brood of vipers” to the “brood of Abraham”, reminding his listeners that God could “from these stones . . . raise up children to Abraham.” God was able to raise up in the church of Christ a brood for Abraham who were not of the lineage of the Jews. Has that brood, however, slipped into the same irrelevant behavior?
