Why We Lie
Exodus 20:15-16, Acts 5:1-11
A
Sermon Preached by
March 12,2006
University
Congregational United
The story of Ananias and Sapphira is a story about heart.
It is a story that says what is in our hearts matters.
The early Christian community was of “one heart and soul” as it says in the book of Acts. They expressed that unity, that oneness with God, by sharing all they had with one another. It was a way of expressing that all of them – their money, their hearts, all they had and all they were came from God, would return to God. And they felt called to live in the way of Jesus who shows God’s oneness with us.
Well it seems Ananias and his wife Sapphira had a bit of land. They plotted together to sell it and give the money to the communal church budget….but to keep back a little bit for themselves.
Something else was in their heart besides the desire to be at one with God.
What is in our hearts can’t finally be hidden and they were found out. In the rather humorous part of the story they each died suddenly and dramatically on the spot when they were caught in their cover-up.
We don’t know why they lied, why they didn’t come clean about wanting to keep some for themselves. We don’t know what else was in their hearts.
But this morning the question is not so much about them as it is about us and what is in our hearts.
Consider this story. What would you do?
A star basketball player is just back from a sensational victory. He is exhausted but looking forward to the next day’s game which will be attended by an NBA scout. His dilemma is that he is pooped and wants to be rested for the game, but he has a calculus test tomorrow too. He’s doing poorly in the class and needs to pass the test to keep his scholarship. He has three options:
1) Study the best he can with the willing help of his roommate and give it a try, knowing he’s in sorry shape.
2) Pay a tutor and work most of the night to learn enough to get a C.
3) Get the answer key to the test and memorize it so he can pass the test and still get his rest for the game.
What should he do? Patricia Hersch was writing a book on
adolescents in
hanging out in the local high school when kids in a class were asked that question.
What do you think most kids thought the basketball star should do?
Overwhelmingly, the kids responded that the solution to the young man’s problem was to cheat.
Polls of high school kids show that somewhere around 75 percent of high school students admit to cheating. Only 10 percent said they would never consider cheating.
“Everybody knows it is the wrong thing to do”, one kid said, “But I am not convinced that it is unfair when you are in a class you are never going to need again in your whole life and the difference between a C and an A will make a difference in what college you get into.” And everybody knows that does matter.
A straight A honor student shared, “Even though we are told it will hurt us in the long run, that is a bunch of baloney. Unless you are actually planning to keep the pattern of cheating, you can cheat in that English class that doesn’t matter toward your goal, let’s say of being a doctor. Maybe you are hurting other people and that may be unfair, but you are not hurting yourself. Why not take the easy way out if you can go home and be with your friends for three hours or work in a subject that really matters to you like I work on my science courses – why sit there and struggle over English that is five hundred years old? The bottom line is grades are more important because they get you someplace.”
The major issue for our kids
in
We don’t spend a lot of time talking with each other anymore about values such as honesty, integrity and personal responsibility. And in a time when our society lacks clear ethical guidelines, kids are responding to the one message they hear loud and clear from the adult world: Succeed. Do well. Do whatever you need to do.
That is the very real pressure that our 10th graders here at church and around our state are feeling this week as they prepare to take the Washington Assessment of Student Learning (the WASL). How you do on the test matters. You need to pass the test to graduate. Those of us who are school administrators and teachers know that how kids do on the test effects your school ranking and the support your school will receive. Very real pressure.
I’m not saying all this to pick on our kids.
In survey after survey, parents rate peers as having the most sway on teens.
But in survey after survey, teens themselves rank parents as their number one influence.
I’m not saying this to pick on parents either.
It’s much bigger problem than our kids or parents.
I’m talking about us.
All of us who are trying to live in this crazy, mixed-up world,
where some things that are hurting our hearts have gotten into our hearts.
I see it here all the time. We are a large, successful church full of people who by any standard in the world are highly successful, highly competent people. We have gifts of organization, planning and creativity, of drive and passion that have served us and our families and our world well. But there is shadow side of that for us “successful” people. We don’t know how to stop being successful. We never feel quite successful enough.
I see it in our life together.
Who we are as a church never feels quite “successful” enough.
We are never quite doing enough, never quite being good enough.
We are a church full of great people and great parents who feel too often like failures.
We are a church full of super kids who too often don’t feel super enough.
And so we lie. We cover up. We pretend. We are afraid. We don’t know who we would be if we weren’t a “success”.
As one man shared with me, “I have struggled with depression for a long time and I used to cover that up because well, ‘real men’ don’t get depressed. It made me feel weak and diminished and I hated that. But then I said to myself one day, ‘Who cares? This is what is happening. There is nothing wrong with me. But there is something I need some help with’”.
We live in a society that judges those like this man who are depressed, those whose families are struggling and hurting, those living with an addiction. It is ingrained in us Americans that we are the country of success and we have been successful in a lot of ways. But sometimes we are the country and people of failure as well. And that is something we don’t want to face. So we cover it up. We pretend. We lie.
All the time I have the privilege of hearing from us about some of the real stuff in our lives. And I want to say again and again and sometimes I just interrupt you and say, “It’s just normal. It is happening here with lots of us, with lots of our families and for sure it is happening out there.”
It is true:
We are hurting.
We are grieving.
Our families are struggling.
And we really can talk to each other. We don’t have to pretend.
We can be “real” with each other.
I can say all this because that is how it is with me. As a youth pastor I way over-program. I have been stopping myself of late and asking, “Why?” Who am I trying to prove something to? What is my fear of just putting some stuff down and making some space for us to be real and to talk? Is it the drive to be “successful” that is in fact just making me crazy? Would I feel like a “failure” if I did less? Who do I think is judging me? Is that real?
It’s true: We know how to “program” well in our church but we don’t sometimes know how to just talk and with each other all the time.
I hear us pray often for other people and the world. Our hearts are very big. But it is rare for us successful people to pray for ourselves and admit we are in need.
We talk a lot about God and Jesus here.
But we struggle to talk to God ourselves and to have a relationship with Jesus.
And something calls us here that we both long for and fear.
Maybe it is that hunger to know that there is something more important than looking good or looking the part.
That longing to know we are and we can be forgiven.
That longing to know we really are loved. Loved as we are, who we are.
If we just believed that we are loved, that we are enough, who then would we be?
We really do believe that we can look at what is the real stuff of life and don’t have to sweep it under the rug. We would be better served if we all got rid of our brooms and started talking about what is real.
Telling such truth reveals who we are.
We are a mixture of things: beautiful and broken, holy and in need of healing.
We are human.
And being human is a hard thing to accept.
One woman shared, “I lie
when I’m pressed and stressed and trying to hide part of myself I’m ashamed
of. At that moment it seems easier to
lie than to admit to being less than super-human.”
You know, we weren’t made to be super-human. We were made to be human. We were made by God to reflect God’s image. Made to be human. Nothing more and nothing less. That is what we believe.
And we need help learning to accept our beautiful and broken humanity.
To turn around and speak our truth is hard work.
An Alcoholics Anonymous
sponsor talked with a man who lied often.
The sponsor told him, “When you catch yourself lying you need to stop
yourself and say out-loud, “I’m sorry. I
told you a lie. Let me try that again.”
The man said, “I did that once and it broke the habit!”
One woman shared, “I lied
all the time as a kid. But when I was 18
a friend wrote me a letter that said, ‘If you don’t tell the truth, how can we
know what you want and how we can help
you.’ I will always remember that letter
and those words. From then on I vowed to
stop lying.”
We have saints and prophets among us who are doing just that – telling and sharing the truth of their lives. Saints and prophets among us who are freeing their hearts from imprisonment to the god of success. Freeing their hearts so they can have hearts that are at peace, hearts at one with God.
Hear three short stories:
“I was in third grade and in my math class and I happened to look over at my neighbor’s desk and saw the answer to the question I couldn’t figure out. I wrote it down, passed in my paper and walked out of the room to my regular classroom. I sat down and felt so horrible, so very horrible I got right up and told the teacher I had to leave that I forgot something in math class and I went back and went up to the teacher and told her I had looked on my neighbor’s paper and written down the answer. And I felt this rush of I think it was peace and I felt so good and so happy and like I had done something right. I never want to forget that feeling. What it is like to tell the truth.”
With kids like that in your church, you know that the Holy Spirit is alive and among us and calling us forth to stop our own lying and cheating and to get some of that peace of God in our own lives.
“I committed a medication error while working in a hospital. I was the one who found the person later unconscious. I quickly figured out I was the one who had given the wrong medicine. At this point I had a decision to make about telling the truth or lying to my manager and the paramedics who were working on her. Without a moments hesitation I told my manager what had happened. The patient lived and I was fired. It has been a long story of healing from that day. But I don’t regret telling the truth.”
With saints like that in our church who know the sacrifice of truth telling, you know the Holy Spirit is alive and among us and challenging us to do the same.
“One time I thought my boss would not come back to the office and he found me in his office making long distance calls to friends. About a month later he asked me what I thought about my action. He said to me, ‘Truth is when you know the right thing and do the right thing even when you know no one would ever find out if you did the right or the wrong thing’. This has had the greatest impact on my life. More than anything else I can remember. I owe him a great deal for his heavy and truthful words.”
With prophets like that in our church, you know the Holy Spirit is alive and among us and calling us forth to be bearers of truth ourselves.
The story of Ananias and Sapphira challenges us to be a community where we can tell the truth and be real. Not our “pretend” selves but our “real selves” and to know that is enough. We will need to keep working at it as if it were a foreign language in a world where another ethic, the ethic of success, reigns.
But we are followers of a different way.
Followers of a God who wants us to get our hearts back.
Amen.
* * * * * * * * * * *
Sources
Many thanks to the youth and their families who shared with me their stories about lying and stealing. I couldn’t have written this sermon without you.
A Tribe Apart: A Journey into the Heart of American Adolescence, Patricia Hersch, p. 98-104.
“What Teens Know that Parents
Don’t”, Stephanie Dunnewind, Seattle Times,
Way to Live: Christian Practices for Teens. Dorothy C. Bass and Don C. Richter. See the chapter on “Truth”.