The Abundant Life, Part 11: Bearing Honest Witness

In this episode we turn to – you guessed it – the 9th commandment: You shall not bear false witness. It’s instruction that – like all the commandments – seems, at first glance, very simple and straightforward: When you are called as a witness in a trial, do not give false testimony.

But when we look a little deeper, we see that this commandment is filled with implications that I think are critical to explore if we are to live the abundant life – not the least of which is to recognize that in life, there will be conflict. Wrongs will be done. Harm will happen. There will be disputes that require adjudication. If life in the community of faith were easy, there’d be no need for a commandment about truth-telling.

Indeed, it turns out that truth-telling is key for a healthy community. And in fact, can be very healing when wrongs have been committed. Sometimes the only justice that can be granted is an honest accounting of what has transpired. But owning wrongs goes a long way towards making repair.

And yet there is another reason that the people of God are called to be honest brokers in all that we do – we bear witness to God himself, whom we believe raised Jesus from the dead! …a claim that strains credulity to its breaking point. If we want to be the least bit credible when it comes to bearing witness to Christ, we had best have a long reputation of integrity – intellectual and otherwise...

The text for this sermon can be found here: Exodus 20:16 (NRSV)

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