The Golden Rule

Luke 6:27-31

It is amazing how sometimes the simplest of tasks can become the hardest. I remember once a long while back, I owned a Honda Civic. It was a basic car with a manual transmission. 9 days out of 10, it was easy to drive. But one day, I had an important meeting, was running late, and as I got in to start it, I turned the key, and...nothing. No clicks indicating a dead battery. No other mechanical hints that something was broken. Nope, just nothing. Starting a car is simple. You get in, put one foot on the brake, one foot on the clutch, turn the key, and VROOM, you’re off. But not that day. I tried for thirty minutes, getting more and more panicked. Finally, I called my wife, Alison, who came to fetch me. I imagined all sorts of expensive repairs. She got in the car, turned the key, and VROOM...everything worked. What? Well, you see, Honda worked their cars so you had to push the clutch ALL THE WAY TO THE FLOOR if you wanted to start it....oh, me....

What this has to do with our text from Luke this morning is this—we often wonder what exactly it is that Jesus requires of us to be his disciples. As a pastor, I get asked that question a lot. What do I really need to do? Well, Jesus makes it absurdly simple—DO UNTO OTHERS AS YOU WOULD HAVE THEM DO UNTO YOU. That is so simple, even a young child can follow the instruction. 

So why don’t we do it? 

Really, why do we find that simple directive so hard to actually practice?

I mean—peruse the latest headlines—do you notice that probably 90% of them lead into stories about someone NOT doing unto others as they would have them do? No—we find it far easier to do unto others before they do unto us; do unto others whatever I please; and all other variations. 

Why? Why is it so difficult?

Jesus provides a host of clues in the lead-in to the Golden Rule—love your enemies, give more than is asked for, let someone take what you have without worrying about it....

That is hard to do. We tend to work toward self-preservation. We tend to want to keep what we have. And loving enemies? In this day of social media, it is far too easy to simply destroy enemies, especially since we can do so from the safety of our laptops without actually having to talk with anyone.

And I would go further—it is not really some far off enemy we find hardest to love—actually, the hardest enemy to love is the one nearest to home. The neighbor who sticks an offensive—to us—campaign sign in their yard. The co-worker who helps themselves to whatever is on our desks when we step away. The inconsiderate driver who scares the beejeezus out of us on the freeway. Those are the people hardest to love, and the hardest for whom to do as we would have them do for us. 

In Georgia, I stopped for coffee every morning on my way to the office. So did a lot of my colleagues in ministry—there were three or four Methodists, a couple of non-denominational pastors, an AME-Zion preacher, and a few Baptists. We were a regular ecumenical board as we got our coffee, and mostly exchanged friendly banter and back-and-forth as we got our necessary brew for work. 

But one morning, I was tucked in line behind a Baptist preacher from one of the largest churches in town. He was getting coffee with an associate pastor, I guess for a staff meeting, and he told the clerk, “I also want to buy the coffee for the guy behind me,” then turned, saw me, and blurted out, loudly, “NOT HIM!!” ...like I had the plague. It seems one of his deacons was a couple of people further back, and that was for whom the coffee was to be bought...

Oh, well...

...I knew who I would NEVER buy a coffee for...

See?

It’s those more local enemies that trip us up most frequently.

But the solution is actually fairly easy to accomplish. Really.

Slow down. Think first.

The neighbor with the obnoxious sign? Why not simply ask them why they support what or whom they do? Find out more...

The co-worker? Try to find out what is going on with them.

The obnoxious driver? A friend of mine got run off the road by a knucklehead one evening. As she told the story, she ended by saying, “I hope they got to the hospital okay” in all sincerity. See? She tried to think why someone might be driving like a knucklehead first. 

That is the key to doing to others as we would have them do to us. We need to consider before reacting or responding what we would want someone to offer us. 

Most of us want nothing more than to be heard, acknowledged, and affirmed. We want to know someone understands us. 

Remember that before turning on one of those local enemies.

As I reconsider my encounter in the coffee shop, I realize the best response would have been to buy the offending pastor a coffee. That’s what I would want someone to do. Maybe the deacon behind me had just loudly announced he wanted a committee to remove Pastor X, and Pastor X was trying to settle the storm before it broke. The truth is I don’t know. If I had responded with a kind coffee, maybe he would have felt better about things...

Who do you need to think about? We’re they angry with you? Do you realize that anger is most often the SECOND feeling someone has? Most often people get angry because they are hurt, ignored, misunderstood, or something else. Anger comes second. So rather than meet anger with anger, try to understand why it is there.

Yes, that is hard to do, that slowing down. You might gain a few scars on your tongue from stopping before blurting. But slowing down allows room for understanding, and understanding leads to being able to do to others as we would have them do.

And, that, Church, is how to do the right thing...