“The Golden Rule”
February 23, 2025
Rev. Rebecca Migliore
Here we are today: still listening to Jesus preach his “Sermon on the Plain” (as it is called in Luke). Last week, it was Blessings and Woes. Last week, it was directed towards the disciples (with everyone else listening in). This week, Jesus turns from the disciples to address “You who are listening”—I imagine everyone! And this week, Jesus encapsulates his entire philosophy into a single phrase: you probably already know it. Yes, it’s the golden rule: Do unto others as you would have them do unto you.
There is a story about a rather legalistic Seminary student who wanted to have a Scriptural basis for everything he did. He felt he was on solid ground if he could quote the Bible (book, chapter and verse) to okay his actions. He did all right with that until he began to fall in love with a beautiful co-ed. He wanted very much to kiss her, but he just couldn’t find a scripture to okay it. So, true to his conscience, he would simply walk her to the dormitory each night, look at her longingly, and then say "Good night."
This went on for several weeks, and all the time he was searching the Bible, trying to find some Scripture to okay kissing her good night. But he couldn’t find one, until finally he came across a passage in Romans that says, "Greet each other with a holy kiss." He thought, "At last, I have scriptural authority for kissing her good night." But to be sure, he went to a professor to check it out. After talking with the professor, he realized that the passage dealt more with a church setting than with a dating situation. So once again he simply didn’t have a passage of scripture to okay kissing his girl good night.
That evening he walked her to the dormitory and once again started to bid her "Good night." But as he did, she grabbed him, pulled him toward her, and planted a ten-second kiss right on his lips.
At the end of the kiss, the Seminary student gasped for air, and stammered, "Bible verse, Bible verse." The girl grabbed him a second time, and just before kissing him again, said, "Do unto others as you would have them do unto you." (from sermoncentral.com)
“Do unto others” sounds pretty simple. Except that the more Jesus talks, the less simple it sounds. I mean, he starts off with “Love your enemies.” And then adds, “Do good to those who hate you.” (I can hear the low murmur beginning in the crowd). Also, “Bless those who curse you.” (What is he saying? Is this a joke?) And even, “Pray for those who mistreat you.” By now, it feels like what he is asking is anything but simple.
And then it gets worse. “If anyone strikes you on the cheek, offer the other also, and from anyone who takes away your coat do not withhold even your shirt. Give to everyone who asks of you, and if anyone takes away what is yours, do not ask for it back again.” It is at this point that we get what we have been taught as “The Golden Rule.” But doing unto others as you would have them do unto you sounds like reciprocity. You scratch my back, I’ll scratch yours. Or I’ll scratch your back assuming that at some later time, you WILL scratch mine.
Jesus immediately shuts that kind of thinking down. He provides three examples, with the same set-up and the same call and response for each. If you love those who already love you, what credit is it to you? Even sinners love those who love them. If you do good to those who do good to you, what credit is it to you? Even sinners do the same. If you lend to those from whom you expect repayment, what credit is it to you? (By now they all could answer the question together), Even sinners lend to sinners, expecting to receive their own back again!
This “you help me and I’ll help you” is just normal, ordinary, expected behavior. It is not what Jesus is talking about. Jesus is calling us to something else.
Jesus is calling us to show ourselves as what we truly are: children of the Most High God. And as those created in the image of that God, we are to try to be like God, to try to do as God does.
And what does God do? God loves us. God forgives us. God calls us to enact peace and justice woven together (shalom). [An aside here, Jesus never intended for his words to suggest that if someone is abusing us, we should just “take it.” That is the opposite of what he is trying to say.]
The decision by someone is call this “The Golden Rule” may have been less than helpful. A golden rule sounds like a balance, do unto others on one side, with as you would have them do unto you on the other. Except Jesus isn’t looking for fairness or balance. The scales are tipped in one direction.
He even says, “A good measure, pressed down, shaken together, running over, will be put into your lap.” Anyone who is a cook or a baker or has had to deal with measurements will understand this. If you are measuring out, let’s say coffee, and you want to get the absolute most amount, you put some into your container, and press it down, put some more in, and shake it to get rid of all the pockets of air, and put some more in, and if you want to be very generous, you add still more, so the container is running over. More than a good measure, an abundance, more than one could have expected. That is what Jesus is trying to ask us to do, because that is what God does. This has nothing to do with reciprocity, in fact, it is the opposite of reciprocity. It is acting as God acts, which is extravagantly, abundantly, lovingly, beyond measure.
Let’s go back to the first things Jesus said in this passage: Love your enemies; Do good to those who hate you; Bless those who curse you; Pray for those who mistreat you. Now it makes sense. We are called to act not as everyone else might act, not “this for that” but as God acts. As Jesus says again, love your enemies, do good, lend, expecting nothing in return.
Why do we do this? Because we are children of the Most High God, and God is “kind to the ungrateful and the wicked.”
It is in extravagance that we offer the other cheek, that we give our shirt as well as our coat, that we are to lend without expecting to get anything back.
Do you remember how the people of Nazareth were so amazed by the cleverness of Jesus arguments and explanations about God? Here might be another example. Those listening would have known that some people, maybe even many of the people who were listening to Jesus would only have been wearing a shirt and a coat, nothing else! So they would have seen that he was pressing his point almost to absurdity—no one wants Christians streaking around. But it was his way of saying, this is what God is asking of you. Not a little portion. Not even a tithe (a tenth). But more than you can imagine, even up to everything that you have.
And we are to be that free with our love, our good deeds, our blessings, our prayers. Not because someone deserves them, not because we hope that when we are in need that same person will pay us back, not because it is a duty, not even because we are following a rule we have been taught. We are to do these things because we are following the One who did them in the first place. “Be merciful as Abba is merciful.” We are to do these things because we believe that the Kin[g]dom of God is breaking into our world—is, in fact, already here. And this is how it is in God’s realm. We are just trying to live in that realm already.
What would that look like, sound like, in our own time and place?
Maybe it would be like a tweet from Bernice King that Dr. Karoline Lewis mentions in her musing on this passage called “Simple Rules” (Workingpreacher.com, Feb. 19, 2019). Dr. King proclaims, “Jesus didn’t call it “social justice.” He simply called it Love. If we would only Love our neighbors beyond comfort, borders, race, religion and other differences that we’ve allowed to be barriers, “social justice” would be a given. Love makes justice happen.”
Or maybe it would be this comment by Matthew Meyer Boulton of the SALT Project, “How then shall we live? Less by a Golden Rule, and more by a Golden Love: a love “expecting nothing in return,” a love beyond fairness, beyond exchange; an extravagant love of grace and mercy; the love we were born for, children of the Most High.” (“Grace in Action,” Salt’s commentary for Epiphany Week Seven.)
However this “golden love” that we have called the “golden rule” reveals itself--in ourselves, in others—I think it is clear that Jesus wants to make sure we understand its source. It isn’t something we can will ourselves to do. It isn’t a beneficence we bestow on others. It isn’t really about us at all. We are the conduit of a love that has first come to us. It starts and ends with God. A God who has promised and has shown love for us in the greatest measure: pressed down, shaken together, running over.
Here’s one more way to say, or sing, what Jesus was trying to point out. In the words of St. Teresa of Ávila, in English translation, and set to music by the Taizé community:
“Nothing can trouble, nothing can frighten.
Those that seek God shall never go wanting.
Nothing can trouble, nothing can frighten.
God alone fills us.
(from Mary Hinckle Shore’s commentary, workingpreacher.com, feb. 26, 2025)
May it be so. Alleluia, Amen.
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