Dan said, “Just tell it like it is.” On next to no notice, son Dan is a father and Alison and I are grandparents. That’s the roller coaster of news I referred to last Sunday as I spoke of loving family and the fact that we let go of stories, images and expectations in order to live in the here and now.
Life in families is often a ride. And we learn to love and support in all kinds of situations even when life comes a bit too quickly. Older son Halsey congratulated Dan for giving the family tree a good shaking. My guess is that Halsey is also relieved that, this time, he wasn’t the one doing the shaking.
“So, Dan, what do you want me to say at church?”
“Well, Dad, Brianna may be a surprise but she’s quite real. We’re not hiding her or ourselves so you might as well just tell it like it is.”
Not bad advice for any father, or brother, preacher or leader; no spin, no denial, no poster child dramatics--just tell it like it is.
We arrive at number nine in our series on the Ten Commandments “you shall not bear false witness.” In playing with the numbers I’ve learned that our Roman Catholic friends call this eight; they combine our one and two into one and split coveting into two so we both end up with ten. Do not bear false witness is number nine for many Protestants and number eight for Roman Catholics. Dean Johnson gave me the gift of the two tablets of the law... Protestant style (just in case I wanted to look like Moses... or Charleston Heston!).
Like stealing and murder, the command not to bear false witness against neighbor is rather straightforward and legally obvious. A civil society demands honest discourse and cannot tolerate false accusations against another. The ancient Code of Hammurabi from Babylon, written hundreds of years prior to the Jewish law, clearly defined that false witness is to be punished at the same level as the accused offense. If, for example, you falsely accuse someone of murder then you are liable to the punishment of murder, namely, the death penalty. From the standpoint of legal process, a strong stand against false witness is quite obvious. Yet, like the other commandments, when connected to the human heart and not just the letter of the law, the command is quite complex and profound. At its core this command tells of the need for truth-telling and the damage of false speech.
The March 11 issue of the Christian Century arrived on my desk on Monday. Needless to say the lead editorial caught my attention with its opening line: “When was the last time you heard a sermon about the Ninth Commandment, “You shall not bear false witness against your neighbor”? (By the way, preachers are like hunters and gatherers; we are constantly on the prowl for anything that fits into the diet of a sermon and we’ll eat almost anything. The Century article was like a fish jumping into the boat, wanting to be caught.) The “Century” editors picked up on last month’s congressional hearings on the use of performance-enhancing drugs with baseball players. In the midst of that public setting, Roger Clemens said, “I have never used steroids, human growth hormone, or any other type of illegal performance drugs.” At the same hearing, Brian McNamee, Clemens’ former personal trainer said, “I injected those drugs into the body of Roger Clemens at his direction.” Clearly, someone was lying. Amazing. Right in the midst of sworn testimony before Congress someone lied; one of them was also bearing false witness against a neighbor, in this case, a supposed friend.
After this example, the Century editors went on to the more painful, raw edge of our corporate life together. This month, the fifth anniversary of the beginning of the war in Iraq, the Century reported on the false witness that led up to the war. I visited the web site of the group that they quoted and looked over the full report. In excruciating detail The Center for Public Integrity and the Fund for Independence in Journalism document 935 false statements made by President Bush and seven of his top officials regarding the security threat of Saddam Hussein’s Iraq. These statements appeared on at least 532 separate occasions in the two years following 9/11. This is an incredibly painful side of our public life. Many say, “Let’s move on, for there is no value in looking back.” Yet, our next President, regardless whether it is McCain, Clinton or Obama, will inherit a war, a war now estimated at two trillion dollars, all off-budget and funded by debt. (New York Times, March 4, 2008, Op-Ed, Bob Herbert) The least we can do is to engage in some truth-telling prior to handing it over to a new administration. What does it mean to hold each other accountable to false witness when the false witness is done by the most powerful people in the land?
Do not bear false witness. Truthful speech is crucial to a democracy and to our life together in families and in faith communities. Speech is sacred. Joan Chittister writes: “Speech is sacred because it is godlike. It creates our world.” (Ten Commandments, p. 101) In speech we form images and stories that define our lives. We create our world through language. False witness creates a false reality.
“The most common lie,” Nietzsche wrote, “is that in which one lies to himself.” (As quoted by Chittister, Ibid. 107) The worst lies are the ones we tell ourselves.
I’ve included the account of the Garden of Gethsemane alongside the command not to bear false witness, for it is the most powerful account that we have of Jesus struggling with the purpose and direction of his life. He had set his eyes on Jerusalem, even knowing that conflict lay in his future. The gospel story unfolds in terms of a long walk to Jerusalem to cross and tomb. We know next to nothing about the internal thoughts of Jesus, yet, along the way, the gospel writers hint at Jesus’ struggle and the turmoil of his disciples. Jesus did not want many to know of his identity as the Messiah. Often, following a healing, he’d instruct the person to tell no one. After the powerful revelation of his identity as messiah before Peter, James and John, he asked them to keep it a secret. And, in the garden, right at the edge of that fateful day, he struggled with it all. Could he continue? Is this in fact his purpose, his direction, the truth of his life? Jesus wrestled mightily with his calling, his place, the truth of his mission. Jesus did not want to walk that lonely valley... but he did. The truth of his life and mission demanded it.
The worst lies are the ones we tell ourselves or make ourselves live. Back in the 1970's Vaclav Havel wrote about the inevitable demise of the communist control of Czechoslovakia. The system was a lie, he wrote, and the lie would inevitably unravel. Musicians and writers were key to the Velvet Revolution, for in the telling of the truth, even the truth of their own artistic expression, they unmasked the lies that kept up the facade. Havel, so celebrated in the West, was also critical of our facades and lies; the promise that consuming will bring happiness and the “momentum of anonymous, impersonal and inhuman power.” He warned against the power of “bureaucracies, ideologies, political slogans and artificial languages whether it takes the form of consumption, advertising, repression, technology or cliché--all of which are the blood brothers of fanaticism and the wellspring of totalitarian thought.” (Living in Truth, p. 153)
I’ve called this sermon on false witness “A Faithful Way... with Self” for the telling of the truth and the false witness are fundamentally tied to personal integrity and the honesty of one’s own life.
There is a poignant article in the March 3 issue of the New Yorker by Honor Moore, the daughter of Paul Moore, the former Episcopal Bishop of New York City. He was a fine priest and important leader with extensive influence in the ecumenical church and the life of New York City. He was the first to ordain women into the priesthood; he opened the Cathedral to artists and activists. He welcomed New York power brokers and Harlem youth to the church. And, as we have learned since his death, he was also gay. Honor Moore’s article is moving and touching. She simply says it like it is, without anger or judgment or turning her Dad into a cause. She writes of her great love of her father and respect for his leadership; she has vivid memories of him in his vestments and all the ceremony that Episcopalians are particularly good at presenting. She writes of the confusion at the time of the breakup of her parents’ marriage and, in this past year, being baffled, then accepting of her father’s sexuality. Yet, throughout the article, there is the hint of sadness as if to say: “If only we could have known and talked.”
I mention this not to jump into the grand ecclesiastic conflicts around gays and clergy but simply to touch the human side of the truth we tell, the facades we are forced or feel forced to create, the lies some live. The lies we inflict on ourselves are so very difficult to face.
“Just tell it like it is, Dad.” I try to do that, for the sake of the truth; for the sake of my own life. It is a crucial part of living with integrity. And the commandment requires it: do not bear false witness. It is a demand, a law. But it is also a gift when we realize that the giver of the law is the Creator of life, the one who is gracious and kind, slow to anger and abounding in steadfast love. Our hope is in the fact that God can handle the truth.
