Epiphany 7, 2/24/19: Beyond the Golden Rule

Sermon for Epiphany 7, 2/24/19               Luke 6: 27-38                        Beyond the Golden Rule

Jesus begins, “But I say to you that listen…” And what he may really mean is, “I say to you who are still listening,” because as his sermon goes on, his words get harder and harder to hear, for some. Remember the triangle from Pastor Brook’s sermon last week? This is the way the world was and is, he said: the powerful on top, powerless on the bottom—God’s gonna flip that triangle. Well, I’m thinking some of the bystanders listening to Jesus that day liked the triangle just like it was. And maybe they stopped listening.

So Jesus says, To you who are still listening, whether you’re on the top or the bottom, hear this….. “Love your enemies.” (BOOM). Following Jesus just got stickier for everyone on that triangle!

And actually, I’m rethinking that triangle. Could the new culture Jesus proposes be an entirely different shape, more like a flat measuring stick? After all, he’s not preaching on a flat plain in this story for nothing. It’s one thing to say that one day the top will be the bottom and the bottom the top. It’s another thing to say NO, every one of us is ON the bottom—eye to eye and shoulder to shoulder—and the only one above us is our God.

I can see why that made Jesus’s listeners mad, especially the rich and well-positioned ones who had stuck around to this point. It might even have made the powerless ones mad, too, because he’s telling them not to fight for more.

In that time and place, the Jews expecting the Messiah their scriptures predicted weren’t looking for someone who told them not to fight for more. They were ready for liberation and a Messiah who would lead the charge!

I’m reminded of a time in more recent history when a people were looking for liberation. It was the 1960’s in our country, and they were looking to Martin Luther King, Jr., to lead that charge. He wouldn’t do it the way they expected. He’d do it with love. He said, “Returning hate for hate multiplies hate … Hate cannot drive out hate; only love can do that” (Strength to Love).

Asking his followers to face water hoses and snarling police dogs by kneeling in front of them was, to many, pure foolishness. And some stopped listening. But others knelt with him. Authorities did not know what to do with this kind of resistance, from victims who refused to meet violence with violence.

Such resistance is incredibly, painfully difficult, because the most natural way in the world to respond to a persecutor is to fight back. But that takes you nowhere except to deeper hate and continued violence.

Hard to believe, but many who were on the aggressor side of those racial confrontations in the 60’s would have claimed to embrace the same goal you and I do, the Golden Rule, which is stated in this very sermon of Jesus: “Do to others as you would have them do to you.”

Professing a principle, however, doesn’t always lead to doing a deed that aligns with it. Dr. King spoke about many whose lives were “characterized by a high blood pressure of creeds and an anemia of deeds” (Strength to Love).

         The Golden rule seems simple enough, but if I’m there in the crowd around Jesus, continuing to listen, I’m beginning to wonder what happens to people like me, whose deeds sometimes don’t follow their creeds, and who don’t know what to do about that. I’m guessing you might be right there with me.

It’s a spiral of failure that’s so easy to get caught up in. The Golden Rule doesn’t help our sense of failure. But there’s something out there that can!

I’m going to turn now to two stories that tell us about that something that helps us be able to match our deeds with our creeds. The first is from Jesus’ sermon and the second from the Old Testament reading. The first one comes toward the end of today’s passage. It’s about generosity:

Give, and it will be given to you.

A good measure, pressed down, shaken together, running over, will be put into your lap;

           If you’re a baker, maybe you can get this vision. I’m told that when you measure out a cup of flour, you should tap the cup on the counter to be sure the air bubbles are gone and the flour is settled. In some cases you’ll need to add more flour, and if you pour too much use a knife to scrape off the extra.

Professor Ronald Allen explains this image through a first-century lens: Suppose a person goes to the market for grain. The merchant fills the measuring container to the brim and shakes it down so that every cranny is filled, pours more in to overflowing, and then pours that overflow of grain into the apron or shirt of the buyer to carry home. That extra, he says, is GRACE, God’s generous overflow. Beautiful!

That’s the extra something that comes to us—a remarkable overflow of forgiveness and patience, love and persistence to keep us in the flock, to pursue us when we stray, and to show itself in our words and deeds. We might expect judgment, but what we get is love, pure love, along with the energy to try again.

Second story: It’s the story of Joseph (remember the coat of many colors?) That same overflow came to Joseph, part of whose story is in today’s Old Testament reading. You may remember that even after being sold into slavery by this brothers as a teen, Joseph later treated them with unbelievable grace. He had risen to high esteem and power while they and their family had fallen into hunger and despair because of famine. And when they came to the Pharaoh’s storehouses for a handout, Joseph, now Pharaoh’s right hand man, gave them not only food, but his generous, grace-filled love.

Joseph could have resorted to payback—had those brothers thrown into prison, or worse. That was one choice. Another choice might have been to turn away, as if he did not even recognize them. But he took the third way—God’s way of grace and over-the-top generosity.

Joseph used that gift of grace. He was able to see himself as an agent of God’s overflowing grace, not of judgment. We, friends, are invited to see ourselves the same way, made able not by any rule, golden or not, but made able by grace to do the same thing Joseph did, to love harder than we judge.

Now I ask you to work on that idea with me for a moment:   

1.    Would you think of a person in your family or church or community who is extra hard to love? Name that person in silence. Got it?

2.    Then would you remember with me a little song that we teach to children? I always thought this was a song about God’s judgment. But now, after thinking today about the grace of God pouring into us, I think it’s about that very thing.

You’ll know it, so join me when you recognize it. We’ll name EYES, MOUTH, HANDS.            “Be careful little eyes what you see….”     (SING)

The father up above is looking down not in judgment, not with an eye toward punishment, but in pure grace that’s overflowing with love for you, for me, and for the ones who are SEEN by our eyes, NAMED by our mouths, and TOUCHED by our hands.

Now think again about that one who is so hard for you to love. Will God’s overflowing grace enable you to love even that one?

“I say to you that listen,” if you WANT the answer and are ready to HEAR it, here it is: YES. YES. YES.