Cross My Heart and Hope to Die
Jesus taught them: “You have heard it said, ‘You shall not swear falsely, but carry out the vows you made to the Lord.’ But I say: Do not swear at all, either by heaven, or by earth, or by Jerusalem. Let your word be ‘Yes, Yes’ or ‘No, No’; anything more comes from the evil one.” – Matthew 5:33-37 abridged (NRSV)
It’s Inauguration Day, and millions of Christians will be watching TV and applauding a grandly staged oath-taking, even though Jesus admonished his followers never to swear oaths, not by God, not by anything.
But don’t worry, Bible scholars say he didn’t really mean it.
It seems that in Jesus’s day, if you swore by God, it solemnly obligated you. But if you swore by anything lesser—even your mother’s grave or your child’s life—it was like crossing your fingers behind your back. You could make a big showy promise on a stack of Bibles before millions of witnesses, but if you didn’t explicitly invoke God (and mean it), you could renege on your promise later and not be considered a liar. Technically, anyway.
Apparently, people routinely did this sort of thing. So, what Jesus is addressing here, the commentaries explain, is hypocritical hair-splitting. He’s not against oaths, he’s against loopholes.
Maybe so. And maybe that’s how his audience understood him. But that doesn’t mean he doesn’t want us to be very wary of oath-taking. Because if you can’t be believed without crossing your heart and hoping to die, putting up your mother’s grave as collateral, or invoking the Holy as your witness, you’ve got some serious work to do on your character.
Forget about stacks of Bibles, Jesus says. Instead of swearing up and down, just say yes and mean it, say no and mean it, and live a transparent life that proves it.
Prayer
For those who today will swear by You to uphold the common good, may they not lie.
About the AuthorMary Luti is a long time seminary educator and pastor, author of Teresa of Avila’s Way and numerous articles, and founding member of The Daughters of Abraham, a national network of interfaith women’s book groups.