There is a wonderful joke about a pastor who tells his congregation that his sermon for the upcoming week will be about those who lie. He tells them to go home and study a particular chapter from the Book of Mark.
The next Sunday, the pastor begins his sermon with, “Last week, I asked all of you to study the 17th chapter of the Book of Mark; could those of you who did so please raise your hand?”
And, sure enough, almost every person in the congregation raised their hand, and that is when the Pastor says, “You are the ones I need to talk with today because there is no 17th chapter in The Book of Mark!”
I recently talked to my own flock about those who lie. I asked them what the opposite of lying is and, sure enough, one of them immediately called out, “truthing.”
What a great word, although, if you look it up in the Dictionary or Thesaurus, you probably won’t find it. Instead, you will find that the opposite of “lying” is “standing,” perhaps that is why when someone is known for telling the truth, we call him a stand-up guy!
Of course, the opposite of lying is telling the truth, but, as we all know, “To Tell the Truth” is not necessarily a reality, it is more of a game show, at least, it was a game show.
While I am making light of it, I really don’t think that telling the truth is something that should be taken lightly. In fact, we should be on a steady diet of truth, and by diet, I’m not talking about what we put into our mouths, but rather what comes out of our mouths and what we let into our ears.
I was with a couple of math teachers the other night around dinner time, and it got me thinking about a mathematical equation for the truth I had learned long ago. It is found in the Talmud (Sanhedrin, 29a) and the formula reads, “When you add to the truth, you subtract from it.” Wow, how’s that for a mathematical conundrum? And, I will be brazen enough to use a bit of New Math by continuing the equation with, “And when you add to a lie, a small one becomes bigger and bigger.”
During my sermonette last week, I asked, “When you think of a profession known for lying, which profession comes to mind?” (I’ll let you come up guess what they came up with).
And then, I reminded everyone that we are in the midst of an election campaign and in unison everyone called out, “POLITICIANS.”
Maybe, just maybe, that’s because politicians seem to make more promises during a campaign than anyone can possibly fulfill; or maybe it’s just that the politicians really don’t have the power to put their promises into effect. I’ll leave that for you to decide.
Do the math and wash … I mean watch … what comes out of your mouth!
Shalom My Friends,
Rabbi Craig H. Ezring
Rabbi Ezring is a member of the National Association of Jewish Chaplains and serves in this capacity in a number of Health Care settings in the area including Advocate Home Care Services and L’Chayim Jewish Hospice in Partnership with Catholic Hospice of Broward County.
