Sermon: "Stop Snitchin'"

9th in the "Stone Tablets in a Wireless World" series.
Delivered August 9, 2009 by Rev. Laura Crihfield.
Sermon Text: Exodus 20:16

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Well we've almost made it through the series that we're in which is the Ten Commandments. Next week we're going to finish up with what we hope has been a practical and very applicable look at these ancient texts and these ancient commandments and how they fit into our modern world. So next week we're finishing up which means this week we're on which commandment? Right. Nine. Nine.

Yes, and the ninth commandment we can find in Exodus, chapter 20, verse 16. And I'm going to read first from Today's New International Version which says, "You shall not give false testimony against your neighbor."

Let's pray: Lord God, thank you for this time. Thank you for your Word. Thank you that it is as alive and relevant for our lives today as when it was written. I pray that you would help us to apply it to our lives. Help us to know when we leave this place what you're speaking and how you desire that we respond. Come Holy Spirit, come and fall on each one of us now. In Jesus' name, Amen.

Well Exodus, chapter 20:16... fairly short so we're going to look at it in a couple of other versions. The New Living Translation says, "You must not testify falsely against your neighbor." The Contemporary English Version says, "Do not tell lies about others." And the Message, Eugene Peterson's version, simply says, "No lies about your neighbor."

It's not surprising in a verse that's as short and this direct that we don't see a lot of variation in how it's written from translation to translation. It's pretty straight forward. Don't lie about others. Or is it as straight forward as we think? That God included this commandment points to the very sad reality that we are all prone because of the fall to use our words to hurt others.

Bearing false witness or slandering another is such an easy sin to find ourselves involved in, and it can easily destroy reputations and often causes tremendous harm. And because of that, we are called to think very carefully about how we use our words.

A bit of historical context here might help us really grab the scope of this commandment and why it was included in the list of ten. Most traditional translations as we saw in the first couple that we read from refer to not bearing false witness against a neighbor. And this is key; this is really important. Most contemporary versions simplify it to don't lie about others. But the idea of bearing false witness is important for us not to lose sight of as we dive into this text.

Testifying or bearing witness, if you're anything like me, almost immediately brings to mind being in a courtroom, being a witness in a court of law. And it's appropriate that we think here in those terms. In the Old Testament in Israel, far more offenses than we have today were punishable by death. Kind of glad we live now. But there were a lot more that were punishable by death.

Murder, as you would expect, was in that category. But also in that category was being caught in adultery with a married woman, the rape of an engaged woman, kidnapping, here's one... insulting your parents... yikes. Causing your parents injury, even Sabbath-breaking in some circumstances could bring with it the death penalty. And if you're like me it kind of makes you think. These were obviously really serious offenses, and serious allegations. And thankfully because of the serious nature of them, no one could be convicted on the sole witness of one person.

For conviction in a crime requiring the death penalty, at least two eyewitnesses had to agree in their story, which was great if they were both telling the truth. If they weren't, justice likely didn't prevail, and I wouldn't have wanted to be on that side of justice. So knowing that lying about someone could actually lead to their death makes it very clear why the ninth commandment was so important... taken so seriously. Lives literally depended on it.

Even today, speaking the truth is mandatory, or at least is supposed to be. Right? In our courts of law when one is called as a witness, what do we have to do? We have to swear to tell the truth, the whole truth, and nothing but the truth, so help us God. Right? Now whether or not everyone does this is certainly up for debate and probably very questionable, unfortunately. But as a basis for justice, truth in the courtroom from early in Israel's history and still today has been an expectation, not an option.

But the ninth commandment doesn't stop in the courtroom. Wherever we are, a lie is a lie. And most biblical scholars agree that this commandment needs to be seen in light of the whole biblical view of lying and not just as it relates to the courtroom. There are hundreds of verses, even chapters in the Old and New Testaments that deal with the sin of lying.

A few of them, just so we can get a hint of it...

Proverbs 12:22, "The Lord detests lying lips, but he delights in people who are trustworthy."

Proverbs 13:5, "The righteous hate what it false, but the wicked make themselves a stench and are filled with shame."

Proverbs 19:5, "A false witness will not go unpunished, and whoever pours out lies will not go free."

Then if we look at the New Testament, skipping to 1 Corinthians 13, verse 6, "Love does not delight in evil but rejoices in the truth."

And then finally out of Ephesians, chapter 4, verse 25, "Therefore each of you must put off falsehood and speak truthfully to his neighbor, for we are all members of one body."

This is serious. The Lord detests lying. A false witness will not go unpunished. Love rejoices in the truth. Simply put, because truth is central to the core of our relationships, to the core of healthy relationships, God speaks to it so much in Scripture. That's why it's there. That's why there is such scriptural concern and focus on truth-telling. It's central to our relationships because it's central to the issue of trust. And if we don't trust each other in our relationships to be speaking truth, we really don't have much.

That's true of our relationships with other people. It's also true of our relationship with God. We tell Joshua, who is here this service, and we will tell Anna when she is old enough to begin to understand it, that the trust of other people is one of their most valuable gifts, and they don't want to lose that by lying because it's so hard to get back.

Well that's true for all of us in all of our relationships, and I would guess that most of us would say, "You're right. Scripture is right. Lying is not okay. It's not an option. It's not a good choice. It's not all right." And so we never lie. Yeah, huh? Right? Oh, that it were that easy.

Story is told about a fellow who owned and published a newspaper in a small Midwestern town. And every year around election time this gentleman, who was a pious Christian, would sequester himself in his office, and he would pray to God for wisdom, asking God who God wanted to win the election that year. And then, as was his good duty, he would publish that name on page one in big, bold print because God had spoken.

And then out of, I suppose, some sense of obligation he would hide, back near whatever form of classified they had, the names of the opponents because he probably felt like he had to at least put them in there somewhere, but they were sort of hidden... "By the way, these folks are also running."

Well one year there developed this two-man race for the state legislature. And the newspaper publisher, after his dutiful praying, figured out that God wanted Thompson to win. And so he played him up. He put him on the front page. He gave him just all the publicity anyone could ever hope for if one was running for an office, and he buried Peterson, Thompson's opponent, right near the classifieds, didn't really give him much of any attention.

Well the day of the election came and it was the biggest landslide in the state's history. Peterson absolutely annihilated Thompson, who was the publisher's favorite. And so as you can expect, the whole town wondered what this publisher was going to do the next day on the front page of this paper. And he didn't disappoint. When the paper hit the streets the next day, in big, bold print, "Thompson finishes second, Peterson, next to last." Pretty clever, don't you think?

Now was what the publisher wrote true? Yes, right, technically that's exactly what happened. Is it in keeping with the spirit of truth-telling and the ninth commandment? No. Instead of clearly stating the truth, he chose to stretch the truth just about as far as it could possibly be stretched so that he wouldn't look like a fool.

We've all done that, haven't we? That stretching of the truth is so easy to fall into, especially if it means that we'll end up looking good or that we'll have some great opportunity because of it, or maybe just simply we won't look like a fool. And it can happen so fast.

One minute we're in this innocent conversation, maybe we're talking about the weather, we're talking about our kids, we're talking about our job, whatever it is, and the next minute before we know what has happened, we're talking poorly about another. Perhaps we're stretching the truth about something that happened. Maybe we're directly criticizing something that someone did who is not there to defend themselves.

Or maybe we're not the one speaking at all. But we're willingly listening while someone else is gossiping, slandering, bad-mouthing. And rather than stop that conversation or defend what we know to be true about our friend or our colleague, maybe a family member or a neighbor, we just remain silent. We don't say anything.

Maybe we don't know what to say or maybe we kind of agree with what's being said and we don't really want to stop the conversation. And we end up just as guilty as the person who is speaking the words. Gossip, subtle lies, and hurtful words are so easy to fall into, can be so subtle and are so toxic.

We could all tell stories about relationships that were harmed, maybe relationships that were completely destroyed, because someone spoke a word when they shouldn't have or maybe because they didn't speak a word that they should have to defend someone. It happens all the time. And it goes against the very heart of God. And it goes against the very desire God has for how we operate in our relationships.

Inner personal communication, I am convinced, is one of the greatest gifts we have ever received. The ability to communicate is something we should treasure. Unfortunately, if you're anything like me, we all too often abuse the privilege, take it for granted. How many times have we all wished we could just eat the words that just came out of our mouth? The second they come out we just know that they shouldn't have.

Unfortunately we can't, and it's in those moments that the ninth commandment is so crucial because the ninth commandment gives us a guideline for our speech and protects not only our integrity and the integrity of the other person, it does that. But it also protects the very worth of the power of communication that we have been given.

On the other hand, if we allow ourselves to fall into the gossip trap, the sin of speaking poorly about another, the easy habit of listening when others speak poorly about someone, of not defending a person's reputation when they are slandered, then we are not fulfilling the law of God, and we are not taking seriously Jesus' call that we see in the New Testament to love others with all that we are.

Jesus thought it was important enough, this idea of loving others, that when he was asked, remember what the greatest commandment was. His answer and summary was, "Love God. And the other one is just like it, love others." Those two, he summarized ten down into two. You see ultimately, godliness and honesty have to go hand in hand. They have to. It's an important combination. It's a combination that we cannot forget about, or pretend isn't important.

Psalm 15, verses 1-3, and then the end of 5, kind of give us this picture, the question, "Lord, who may dwell in your sanctuary? Who may live on your holy mountain?" And the answer, "Those whose walk is blameless, who do what is righteous, who speak the truth from their hearts, who have no slander on their tongues, who do their neighbors no wrong, who casts no slur on others. Whoever does these things will never be shaken." Will never be shaken.

Those of us who are participating in this preaching series have tried very hard to make it practical and to not just look at the negative or the what we're not supposed to do, but to help us get a grasp of what it is that we are being called to do. With the negative comes the positive and we're trying to really grasp that and get a hold of that and share that. Some weeks that has been a challenge. I mean, Andy had the one on murder. He did a great job, but that's a hard one on the surface to figure out what the challenge is for most of us who are not contemplating homicide.

This one, at least for me, does not fall into that category. It is clear in my mind, and I hope it's becoming clear in yours, that God is calling us to build each other up with our words. He is challenging us to think about how we do or do not use what we say in a holy way.

Now as I mentioned earlier, words have tremendous power, either to tear down and destroy or to build up and encourage. And there is no doubt in my mind that as followers of Jesus, as a congregation who takes seriously the Word of God, that we are called to do the second of those things. To use our words for the benefit of others that they might know that they are loved, cared for, and defended when needed. To speak in such a way that others have no doubt that we have their back and that we're not going to stab them in the back with our words. To communicate so that our friends and our family know that at the core, we believe in them.

That's what building each other up is all about. To live in such a way that everyone around us, around us individually, and around us as a congregation knows that because of what we believe about the God we love, we will not participate in gossip. We will not give into that trap.

Practically speaking, one of the ways this plays out is that rather than the tendency, at least again if you're anything like me, to expose somebody's shortcomings through our speech, especially when they have wronged us in some way, shape, or form, that rather than exposing that in them our love for others, whether we feel it or not at the moment, whether we even really believe it or not, our love for God has to cause our love for other people to cover those shortcomings. Now, that's even when we known they've blown it.

That being said, I'm not suggesting that we're not supposed to challenge, that we're not supposed to rebuke, that we're not supposed to help others grow just as they are us in our understanding of living holy lives. We are supposed to do that, but if we take Scripture seriously we will look to Matthew 18, and we will see that we're supposed to do that in private, one on one, directly with the person with whom we're having an issue. Where our motive is their wellbeing and the wellbeing of our relationship, not where our motive is out there in public and our motive is to destroy, to annihilate a reputation, to get vindication, or to simply not look like a fool or look good ourselves.

My mentor in ministry, a gentleman named Steve, began as my youth pastor when I was in eighth grade, and he later when I was in seminary became... (well, there were a couple points at which) but the prime time when he was my boss was while I was in seminary. I interned at his church for four years. I worked with him. And over the course of what has now been a lot of years, I've learned a lot from him. And one of the best lessons I learned was one that I learned early on in my time on staff with him. And it's one that at the time to say that I didn't appreciate it is a huge understatement of the day. In fact, I didn't like it at all. I certainly didn't appreciate how important it was, and it was hard. So I just didn't like it.

You see Steve worked hard as a head of staff at a church to develop a strong ministry team among his staff. So he had this set of staff expectations, that when you came on staff with Steve, you agreed to. It was a single document. It was one page. It wasn't long and belabored. But there was this list of things that you agreed to if you were going to serve on staff at this particular church.

Most of them had to do with serving well, serving faithfully, serving with excellence, doing (you know) what God is calling us to do in ministry. As hard as those were at times, those were the easy ones because the other set of expectations on this page had specifically to do with how we interacted as a staff.

And the hardest one dealt directly with this ninth commandment because one of the top expectations Steve had out of anybody on staff, was that we would always give a good report of our colleagues. Not sometimes, not when we felt like it, not when the mood struck, but we would always give a good report about those with whom we worked.

That was easy when I was feeling good about the person that I was being spoken to about. Right? If I was in a great relationship with that person, I didn't have anything that they had done that had made me angry that day or that week or whatever, it was pretty easy for me to say, "You know what? That doesn't really sound like the Leigh that I know." Which was the response we were supposed to come back with.

Something in our own words that said basically, if we were approached by somebody in the church, approached either somebody was complaining about one of our coworkers or they were crying because they had been hurt by them or whatever the situation was, if we were approached, we were supposed to come back with some sort of response that said, "That really doesn't sound like the Leigh I know. Have you spoken to her? I'm sure there has been some misunderstanding. I'd really encourage you to go speak to her." End of story. End of conversation.

Like I said, that was easy if I was on good terms with Leigh But if I was mad at Leigh... it never happens. But if I was mad at Leigh, that was really hard because somehow them speaking poorly about Leigh to me could somehow vindicate me. It's not just about what we say; it's about how we act.

Again, our words are powerful and there were times and there still are times I have to confess, and I think we all do, when I am not good at this. When I was on staff at that church there were repercussions if we were caught not giving a good report. This was serious stuff. We were approached about it, talked to about it. It was serious.

Whether we like it or not, we are commanded... commanded in both the Old and New Testaments to discourage any conversation, any attitudes, anything that we see in others that don't edify, that don't build up other people, that don't encourage, that don't equip, because when we fail to build others up we fail to build up the Body of Christ. And when the Body of Christ isn't built up, others will notice. They will.

If people walk into the concourse, we have guests who walk into the concourse on a Sunday morning, they're overhearing our conversations. And if our conversations are tearing other people down, are slandering somebody, are back biting, are negative, I would not blame them a bit if they just walk right back out that door because I would not want to invite somebody into a community where that's the norm.

Thankfully I don't hear that a lot around here. And that is a blessing. I pray that we hear it less and less and less and less. That we become more and more a community of faith that is known as a community that refuses to buy in to gossip, that refuses to do anything other than take the higher road and say, "I'm not going to have that conversation." That doesn't sound like the Tom, the John, the Tim, the Susan, the Kim that I know. Have you talked to that person?

I pray that we move toward using our words more and more in holy ways as holy tools to build each other up and to clearly communicate the love of God to those around us.

There is no stronger way to end than to share another Scripture. And that is Ephesians 4, continuing on. We read 25, but continuing on in verse 29 through 32. It says:

"Do not let any unwholesome talk come out of your mouths, but only what is helpful for building others up according to their needs, that it may benefit those who listen. And do not grieve the Holy Spirit of God, with whom you were sealed for the day of redemption. Get rid of all bitterness, rage and anger, brawling and slander, along with every form of malice. Be kind and compassionate to one another, forgiving each other, just as in Christ God forgave you."

Will you pray with me? Lord God, this challenge before us is hard. This is one of those commandments God that cuts to the core of who we are and is often a difficult one to be faithful to. God, we ask that you would help us to do that, that you would help us to be faithful. Help us to follow through with what you are calling us. Help us to build each other up with our words that both individually and as a community, we would be honest with each other, we would love each other for you, and that we would encourage, equip and edify each other that we might be sent out to serve, and serve you well. For we ask this in the name of Jesus, whom we desire to serve with all that we are, Amen.

© 2009, Rev. Laura Crihfield
Central Presbyterian Church, Baltimore, MD 21204 410/823-6145
www.centralpc.org