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Sunday, November 15, 2009
Is the Golden Rule Tarnished?
By Rev. Jerry Herships
Luke 6:27-32
27“But I say to you that listen, Love your enemies, do good to those who hate you, 28bless those who curse you, pray for those who abuse you. 29If anyone strikes you on the cheek, offer the other also; and from anyone who takes away your coat do not withhold even your shirt. 30Give to everyone who begs from you; and if anyone takes away your goods, do not ask for them again. 31Do to others as you would have them do to you. 32“If you love those who love you, what credit is that to you? For even sinners love those who love them.
It exists in every major religious system of thought and in most every world philosophy. The theory of Reciprocity. I have handouts of what some of the world’s religions have to say about it. I had to edit the list down because there were too many to fit easily on one sheet.
It comes to us in two places. It is in Matthew in the Sermon on the Mount and here in Luke in the Sermon in the Plain. Some scholars believe that it is the same occurrence and others believe that Jesus told the same sermons in multiple places. Matthew says it this way: (Matthew 7:12) “In everything do to others as you would have them do to you; for this is the law and the prophets.” And in Luke it is, “Do to others as you would have them do to you.”
The Sermon on the Mount many believe was given at the North End of the Sea of Galilee, near Capernaum. It is a natural amphitheater. Normal level of voices can carry as much as 200 yards. When I was in Israel, we stood in the area that was believed to be the spot of the Sermon on the mount. That was a bit surreal.
The bottom line of the verse is this: treat other people the way you want other people to treat you. My question today is: do you think it works?
I’ll tell you why I ask. I don’t think everyone wants to be treated the same way I want to be treated. Now of course I want to be treated with kindness and respect and good intentions. The challenge becomes how I chose to interpret those things.
For example, love. Everyone wants to be loved. The question is…how? Do the ways that I want to receive love represent the ways that you want to receive love? It can get kinda tricky. Let me give you an example.
One year for Laura’s birthday I bought her a COACH bag. She isn’t real big on buying things for herself so I thought I would get her something nice that would last. When she opened it she thought it was great…then she saw the label. She said although she loved it, she had to return it. It was too much money to spend on a bag. I have done a little research and discovered that Laura is the only woman in the history of the company to ever return a bag. (NOTE: years later, I bought her another bag from COACH and told her I got it on sale and that she could not return it…truth is. I got it at the outlet in Orlando and all sales were final.)
I, on the other hand, LOVE gifts. Laura will buy me a magazine at King Soopers and I will fall over myself thanking her. There is something to this phenomenon.
Gary Chapman wrote a book awhile back called The Five Love Languages. Laura and I read the book over ten years ago and I STILL use what I learned in the book today. The wild thing is that it isn’t just for your relationship with your significant other. It has helped me with my dad, my bosses throughout the years, my sister and brother and people in this congregation.
The gist of the book is that people should follow the golden rule but how you employ that rule makes all the difference. In the book there are five primary love languages: words of affirmation, quality time, receiving gifts, acts of service, and physical touch. We all have all the love languages but Chapman maintains that there is probably a dominate one. That is your primary love language.
When we expect others to have the same primary love language as we do, when we, “do onto others as we would have them do onto us,” we can sometimes get hurt or at the very least, not feel loved and understood.
If we were to go back to the Laura and Jerry COACH bag story, we would see CLEARLY that Jerry’s love language is gifts while Laura’s is not. What I really should have gotten Laura was a week of me emptying the dishwasher. Laura’s primary love language is acts of service. Now I will say that I think your love language can change over time, but what I think is important is that we don’t assume that the love language that works best for us is the one that will work for others.
You see this happen all the time. Let’s take a classic, stereotypical example, A wife saying, “You never say you love me.” The husband’s reaction? Never say I love you? I bust my …working 90 hours a week so the kids can have the best schools, you can buy whatever you want and we get to take a nice vacation every year. And you say I never say “I love you.”??? Now, on the surface, he looks like a jerk but maybe the reality is that his love language is acts of service and hers are words of affirmation. Maybe the complaint isn’t saying the words “I love you” but that he is never home. Her language might be quality time…of which she is getting none because he is always at work. Or maybe it is physical touch. Suddenly, “not tonight dear I have a headache.” Means something different. Maybe that person does…but to the other person, whose love language is physical touch…well, you can see how signals can get crossed.
Jesus is telling us to love each other. That is the message time and time again. HOW we do that is the hard work that we need to put in.
And let us be clear; it is not dependant on how it is received. I first was going to stop the scripture passage with verse 31, “Do to others as you would have them do to you.” I then realized that verse 32 is where the rubber meets the road. “If you love those that love you, what credit is that to you?” Ouch! Jesus is kinda telling us, “don’t think you are all that great for loving the loveable. Love the Unlovable. THAT is what I have done and as followers of mine you are to do the same.” Love others regardless of whether the love is accepted and returned.
That is what this congregation is becoming known for. I talked to someone in the congregation this week who told me that they were talking to one of their customers and telling them about going down to Civic Center Park and feeding the homeless. This person said they want to give to that program. People get it. People that go to church and people that don’t. We aren’t even asking for money and people are opening their hearts and checkbooks. You know why? Because they sense that we are just going out and loving on people. Simple. Not shoving religion down their throat. Not forcing them to hear a sermon first. Not telling them what lousy sinners they are. We are just loving them, being with them and meeting them right where they are. People are smart they can sense when something is true. They can sense when something does or does not have an agenda. Complete strangers are giving us money to go out and love the invisible of the world. When we feed the people at El Centro or the folks down at Civic Center Park, we are loving those that the world has deemed unlovable. And they have love languages too. Some just want some time from you. Some just need a kind word. Some are touched that we are giving them something. Some are just thankful we are willing to shake their hand. Quality time, Words of Affirmation, Gifts, physical touch. People are people whether they have a roof over their heads or not. It is not always giving them what we would like. It is taking the time to figure out what we think THEY would like. Same is true with everyone we meet.
In the end, we might want to turn to that great 20th century theologian, George Bernard Shaw who said it this way, “Do not do unto others as you would that they should do unto you. Their taste may not be the same.”
Maybe we need a platinum rule: do unto others as you think they would like to be done unto.”