The Sermon On The Mount – as preached by Jesus in Matthew 5-7 – is one of those passages of scripture, often cited, but rarely explored in depth.  It is quite long and contains parts everybody loves (the Beatitudes) and warnings no one wants to really hear because they are hard.  One of those less explored and harder to hear parts came to my mind this morning,

Here’s the passage in question:

“Again, you have heard that the ancients were told, ‘You shall not make false vows, but shall fulfill your vows to the Lord.’  But I say to you, take no oath at all, neither by heaven, for it is the throne of God, nor by the earth, for it is the footstool of His feet, nor by Jerusalem, for it is the city of the great King.  Nor shall you take an oath by your head, for you cannot make a single hair white or black.  But make sure your statement is, ‘Yes, yes’ or ‘No, no’; anything beyond these is of evil origin.

In some translations that last bit is where the phrase “let your ‘yes’ mean yes and your ‘no’ mean no,” comes from.  The passage is easy to understand, really – unless we get in our own way and try to complicate it.  It says, simply, if you speak the unequivocal truth, at all times, you do not need to “Swear on a stack of Bibles, or “Swear to God,” or “swear on my mother’s grave,” or whatever invocation you think adds veracity to what you are saying.  Just be direct and be truthful.  If you are a good person, of good repute, known for your truthfulness, all that embellishment is unnecessary.

I thought about the passage because of a couple of stories I encountered this week.  One of them we have not discussed – “California Democrats were aware of a roughly $2 billion budget accounting error for months, even though Gov. Gavin Newsom’s January spending plan already projected a roughly $3 billion deficit for the coming fiscal year, according to a report.”  Where the story gets interesting is this bit a little later, “Newsom’s administration has disputed characterizing the issue as an error, saying the adjustment reflects a change in how the state estimates pension-related payments.”  Excuses, excuses.  Part of speaking unequivocal truth is owning your mistakes.

The other story we’ve looked at a couple of times is the dire state of the quality of life in L.A. County.  “Yaroslavsky, who served decades on the L.A. City Council and the county Board of Supervisors, said he thinks the declines this year are closely tied to the lingering ongoing effects and lingering anxieties — financial and otherwise — from the Trump administration’s aggressive immigration raids and the Eaton and Palisades fires.”  In other words, the problems are an act of the federal government (about which the local government has stirred up most of the anxiety) or an act of God (which the extensive damage from those fires most definitely was not), but they are most certainly not anything to do with those of us that run this county.  That’s not an excuse, that’s not even spin – that’s just a lie.

There is no truth harder to face in this world than the truth of our own foibles.  So many of the “little white lies” we tell circle around that  But once faced, there is no truth that brings good news faster or better.

That’s what grace is all about.  God’s grace, so lavishly expressed in Jesus crucifixion and resurrection, does not actually make us perfect – at least not yet.  But it does forgive us our foibles so that we can face them, so that we can work on them, so that we can begin to build a better place, the problems properly identified.

Let’s go to church this morning and face the truth.  We’ll all be better off for it.