Friday 31st October 2025

‘Again, you have heard that it was said to those of ancient times, “You shall not swear falsely, but carry out the vows you have made to the Lord.”  But I say to you, Do not swear at all, either by heaven, for it is the throne of God,  or by the earth, for it is his footstool, or by Jerusalem, for it is the city of the great King.  And do not swear by your head, for you cannot make one hair white or black.  Let your word be “Yes, Yes” or “No, No”; anything more than this comes from the evil one.

Reflection

Let your yes be YES and your no be NO – it’s in the Bible, yet somehow saying NO, particularly in church life, can feel impossible.  It feels rude, disrespectful, ungrateful, obstructive.  It feels wrong.                                           

Being able to say NO is very important – if we can’t say NO then our YES doesn’t really have value. If YES doesn’t come from a place of free choice then it is not a gift.  So why do we feel bad when we say NO?    Often this is because what sounds like an ASK is actually a TELL – someone is telling us to do something but dressing it up as a request.  And we have to say YES.  We are so used to this way of interacting that we come to believe all ASKs are in fact TELLs.  So the first thing to reflect on, when your heart say NO but somehow your mouth say YES, is does the person posing the request have the authority to tell you to do something?  If so, is that because of their role (eg your boss) or because you have given them this authority?  In either case should that authority extend to the thing they are requesting, is this reasonable?

If it is not a TELL, then it is an ASK which means that NO is as acceptable a response as YES.  It might not help the person asking, but it doesn’t make anything any worse.  It really is OK to say NO.   Which also means it is OK for others ot say no to us, something we should accept with grace.  When we empower ourselves and others to say NO then our YES becomes really powerful.  We will no longer find ourselves muttering oaths under our breath when we say YES but want to say NO.  And we will no longer need to back up an honest YES with an oath, because everyone knows we mean YES, or we would have said NO.

Prayer

Jesus – your yes meant yes, and your no meant no.
Help us as followers of your way to honour others with a simple yes or no.
God, in love you gifted us free choice,
help us learn how to exercise this wisely and enable others to do so too.
Most of all, help us to say a wholehearted YES to you, and your offer of fulness of life.
Amen.