Christian Art | Do Not Swear At All | Sermon On The Mount
Matthew 5: 33-37 – Week 10 Ordinary Time, Saturday (King James Audio Bible KJV, Spoken Word)
33 ¶ Again, ye have heard that it hath been said by them of old time, Thou shalt not forswear thyself, but shalt perform unto the Lord thine oaths:
34 But I say unto you, Swear not at all; neither by heaven; for it is God’s throne:
35 Nor by the earth; for it is his footstool: neither by Jerusalem; for it is the city of the great King.
36 Neither shalt thou swear by thy head, because thou canst not make one hair white or black.
37 But let your communication be, Yea, yea; Nay, nay: for whatsoever is more than these cometh of evil.
In Jesus’ time, the swearing of oaths was common, and the casuistry surrounding such oaths was intricate. There were what we would now term loopholes – ‘perfectly’ legal ways of doing wrong. The letter of the Law, rather than the spirit, had proliferated – the whole of the Sermon on the Mount concerns this subject – and thereby our knowledge of the will of God had been deliberately obscured.
Jesus, therefore, takes the Law of Moses concerning oaths (cf. Exodus 20:7, Numbers 30: 3, Deuteronomy 23: 22) and develops it, in order to strip away such accretions, to purify the Law, such that we may live according to God’s intentions.
Rather than mock God, by swearing in his name with regards to what might be relatively trivial matters, and then perhaps calling upon our inner lawyer to deny that we ever swore any such thing, Jesus tells us not to swear at all. This constitutes one more stripping away of the divisions between ourselves and God. The swearing of oaths was an easy lie; through the removal of such verbiage, we discover ourselves, more fully exposed, and open, to God.
It is now that we have honesty. Jesus has told us not to be so pretentious as to swear oaths. Jesus has also insisted we consider again just what we were swearing by: heaven and earth, the throne and the footstool of God. Rather than seek to appropriate God’s creation for our own callow ends, we are taught to respect God.
Jesus seems to suggest that we cannot swear by things over which we have absolutely no control. Heaven and earth are completely beyond us, and then so too are the hairs on our head! Jesus seems to say that to swear by something is to appropriate it, to claim what is not ours as property. To swear is, therefore, to lie.
Rather than do thusly, we are called by Jesus, when we are tempted to swear an oath, instead to pause and take a moment to think of ourselves and to think of God – to remember God. When we do this, we are recalled to a compelling relationship with truth and justice. Now there is no need to ‘protest too much’. We are with God, we are with Jesus, and absolute honesty flows thereby. Rather than swear, ‘yes’ or ‘no’ will suffice.
‘Thus saith the Lord, Stand ye in the ways, and see, and ask for the old paths, where is the good way, and walk therein, and ye shall find rest for your souls.’ Jeremiah 6: 16.
Concluding Prayer
Let us praise you, Lord,
with voice and mind and deed:
and since life itself is your gift,
may all we have and are be yours.
We make our prayer through our Lord.
King James Audio Bible | Endnotes
Do Not Swear At All
Jesus gives a commandment to his followers: ‘Swear not at all; neither by heaven; for it is God’s throne: Nor by the earth; for it is his footstool: neither by Jerusalem; for it is the city of the great King.’
This passage is often interpreted as a commandment against making oaths.
Is Jesus actually forbidding all forms of swearing? The commandment not to swear at all is a radical departure from traditional Jewish law, which allowed for oaths in certain circumstances. In fact, the use of oaths had become so common in Jewish society that people were using them frivolously, often without any intention of keeping them. An interpretation is that Jesus’ commandment is meant to reorient the disciples’ priorities and to emphasize the importance of truth-telling.
One of the reasons why Jesus commands his followers not to swear is because of the power of words. Words have the power to create reality, and the act of swearing can create an obligation that may not have existed before. Swearing also carries with it the implication that the speaker’s normal word cannot be trusted, and that an oath is needed to guarantee the truth of what is being said. By contrast, Jesus wants his followers to be known for their integrity and honesty, and to speak truthfully in all circumstances.
The Catholic Church has traditionally interpreted Jesus’ commandment as a call to avoid all forms of falsehood and deception, including lying and perjury. Saint Thomas Aquinas argued that swearing was only necessary in certain situations, such as when giving testimony in court, and that even then it should only be used sparingly. He wrote: ‘It is always wrong to swear to what is false, and it is a sin to swear to what is true unnecessarily.’ (Summa Theologica, II-II, Q. 89, A. 1) Saint Augustine wrote in his work On Lying that ‘It is one thing to swear in order to put an end to strife, and another to swear to maintain falsehood’ (Ch. 19).
Protestant theologians have grappled with the meaning of Jesus’ commandment. Some, like John Calvin, have argued that Jesus was not prohibiting all forms of swearing, but was instead targeting the misuse of oaths. Calvin believed that Jesus was concerned with the common practice of taking oaths lightly and without any intention of keeping them. Other Protestant theologians, like Karl Barth, have emphasized the radical nature of Jesus’ commandment. Barth argued that Jesus was calling his followers to a higher standard of honesty and integrity than had ever been seen before. He wrote: ‘The commandment not to swear at all is a clear and unequivocal statement of the fact that in the kingdom of God there is no longer any place for human assertions or guarantees.’ (The Epistle To The Romans, p. 349)
In contemporary Christian thought, some Christians argue that Jesus’ words are only applicable to specific cultural and historical contexts, and that oaths are not inherently sinful. Others see Jesus’ commandment as a call to live a life of honesty and transparency regardless of the cultural or historical context. This means being truthful in all situations, and avoiding any kind of deception, whether it involves making oaths or not.
One challenge in interpreting Jesus’ commandment not to swear is the fact that the Bible itself contains many examples of people making oaths. In the Old Testament, for example, God often makes oaths to his people, and Abraham and Jacob both swear oaths with God. In the New Testament, the apostle Paul frequently uses oaths in his letters.
We may understand that the commandment not to swear at all is a call to live a life of radical honesty and integrity. It challenges Christians to speak truthfully in all circumstances, and to avoid any kind of deception or falsehood. This is not always easy, especially in a world where dishonesty and deception are often rewarded.
The Bible offers us different accounts of Christ’s first miracle, each suited to the particular needs of the audiences to whom the Gospel evangelists are speaking. In John’s Gospel, the first miracle is that of the wedding feast at Cana. For Luke, it is Jesus freeing himself when those around him, of Nazareth, seek to kill him. Matthew speaks of the healing of a large number of the sick and possessed, most particularly a leper. Here, Mark tells us of the casting out of a devil. In highly compressed form, we are told of how Christ frees us from the fear of evil. He has power over devils. To a people living in fear, this is a most remarkable and wonderful message [ … ]
The Jews of Christ’s time thought of the coming of the Messiah and the restoration of Israel in terms of a great banquet, where poverty would give way to plenty and conflict to fellowship. Jesus has told two parables, while he dines at the house of the leader of the Pharisees, one of the choice of places at a feast and one of inviting the sick and the poor. In the light of the parables, a guest at the meal is moved to express the hope of the coming of the Messiah [ … ]
On Tuesday, His Grace turns to the theme of Jesus’ hidden years. His Grace asks the students to consider questions concerning what really happened: ‘Who, for instance, was Joseph? Was he indeed a carpenter, or has Joseph’s true role in the society in which he lived been misconstrued and forgotten to us? Though it be a beautiful, simplifying image to grasp, which offers to us much that is of value in Catholic faith… ‘A wise elder, which carpenter could mean, or a great engineer, an architekton, which in the Greek does not mean carpenter. But carpenter in the Hebrew could mean a wise man…’ His Grace turns the pages of his Bible back and forth, as if to itemize the paucity of information. Then he says: ‘What I think I can say to you with confidence is that it is of profound significance that we simply don’t know what Jesus was doing for most of his earthly life. There are some very different possibilities. One idea cherished by the Church is that Jesus worked with his father Joseph as a carpenter. Another possibility is that Jesus lived and prayed and studied closely with John the Baptist. They were cousins, and very close, almost the same, in age. Luke’s Gospel tells us clearly that Jesus and John knew each other from within the womb before they were born. So there may have been something quite important happening there. You see, we don’t know – it is an impossible mystery to us – just how much Jesus had to learn. This is because, if Jesus knew everything, humanly speaking, even as a tiny baby, then how can we say he is fully human? We simply can’t probe too far into this mystery, but we can draw extraordinary truth and healing from this thought, which becomes of immense relevance in our own lives. Jesus came to know and to understand himself not merely as a son of God, but as God the Son, and so as self-identical with his Father. It is not an adoptive relationship. Jesus is God. Now so much is hidden here. But this is a great gift. If you think about it, how do we come to know that we are loved by God, that we have our relationship with God? What are we born with in here’ – his chest – ‘and what do we have to learn? This is to say, what is gifted to us by other Christians at our baptism? ‘Jesus must have studied, and experienced profound revelation about who and what he truly was, and, so it seems to be, these studies cannot have been confined to the Semitic world. But this is the important point: there is a hiddenness about all of this. No matter which schools and which sects our Lord might have encountered all these years, this to us is as a desert space. What this means is that we can enter into the hidden life of Jesus, and there we can discover our own being with God, our own sonship. Our own particular being loved by God can come to us, if we can enter within this great unknown – into this desert space, where we are loved by Jesus. I firmly believe that there may be a great Lenten mystery in this period of our Lord’s life.’ A Bishop’s Lenten Homily | Extracted From The Gospel According To Tomàs | Faith And Hope And Love And Sexuality | Part 1 A Bishop’s Lenten Homily | Extracted From The Gospel According To Tomàs | Faith And Hope And Love And Sexuality | Part 2 A Bishop’s Lenten Homily | Extracted From The Gospel According To Tomàs | Faith And Hope And Love And Sexuality | Part 3 A Bishop’s Lenten Homily | Extracted From The Gospel According To Tomàs | Faith And Hope And Love And Sexuality | Part 4 | King James Audio Bible | KJV A Bishop’s Lenten Homily | Extracted From The Gospel According To Tomàs | Faith And Hope And Love And Sexuality | Part 5 A Bishop’s Lenten Homily | Holy Week | Extracted From The Gospel According To Tomàs | Faith And Hope And Love And Sexuality | Part 6
