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Sermon on the Mount: The Ending First

Matthew 7:12-14, 24-28

 May 4, 2003

The Golden Rule

¹²“In everything do to others as you would have them do to you; for this is the law and the prophets.

The Narrow Gate

¹³“Enter through the narrow gate; for the gate is wide and the road is easy^£ that leads to destruction, and there are many who take it. ¹⁴For the gate is narrow and the road is hard that leads to life, and there are few who find it.

Hearers and Doers

²⁴“Everyone then who hears these words of mine and acts on them will be like a wise man who built his house on rock. ²⁵The rain fell, the floods came, and the winds blew and beat on that house, but it did not fall, because it had been founded on rock. ²⁶And everyone who hears these words of mine and does not act on them will be like a foolish man who built his house on sand. ²⁷The rain fell, and the floods came, and the winds blew and beat against that house, and it fell—and great was its fall!”

²⁸Now when Jesus had finished saying these things, the crowds were astounded at his teaching, ²⁹for he taught them as one having authority, and not as their scribes.

A man was taking a drive in the country, when his car suddenly stopped running.  He had coasted to the side of the road and lifted the hood when an old horse came clip-clopping by.  The horse never slowed down, it just looked down at the car and the man and said, "Better check the gasoline."

The man was shocked.  He ran to the nearest farmhouse and frantically knocked on the door.  When an old farmer opened the door, the man told the farmer what had happened.

"Was this a horse with a floppy ear?" asked the farmer.

"Yes, Yes!" the man shouted.

"Oh, well," the farmer said, "don't believe everything he says, he doesn't know the first thing about cars."[1]

A husband and a wife were leaving the office of a marriage counselor.  The husband turned to the wife as they walked to the car and said, "Well, did the advice the counselor give about tact and consideration, finally get through your thick skull?"[2]

A former treasurer of Harvard University, one of the wealthiest and most wisely invested institutions in the world, once confessed that two golden rules existed for managing the Harvard investments:

1.  Never ask the advice of the economics department.

2.  Never ask the advice of the business school.[3]

Advice.  Most advice is just plain useless. 

The American playwright Lillian Hellman once said about the advice other authors would give…"If I had to give young writers advice, I would say don't listen to writers talking." [4]

Now what does one do with this?  Would you take her advice?  Or would you take her advice NOT to take her advice?  It can get somewhat confusing. Who do you believe?

Linus and Lucy are standing at a window watching the rain come pouring down.  It's so heavy that Lucy begins to worry.  "Boy look at it rain.  What if it floods the whole world!"  she exclaims.  Linus, George Schulz's resident theologian reaponds, "A worldwide flood is impossible,h since Genesis 9 promises that God will never again flood the earth."  Obviously relieved, Lucy sighs, "You've taken a great load off my mind…"  Linus final words in the vignette are "sound theology has a way of doing that!"[5]

For us Christians, as for Linus and the late George Schulz, the creator of the world famous comic strip, Peanuts, theology, the bible, and Christ himself, weigh heaviest in the barrage of good and bad advice that comes down on us from all quarters of the world.

Perhaps the most important and most often used piece of advice found in the bible is that piece of advice we just read from Matthew 7:12.  

¹²“In everything do to others as you would have them do to you.

This little piece of advice is so widely held and so important to biblical theology itself that it is often identified by its nickname, "The Golden Rule."

However, the Golden Rule, this bit of Christian advice, so central to Christian faith, is not exclusive to Christ or to Christianity.  

Theologian Roger Shinn, in his book, The Sermon on the Mount writes,

Religious teachers all over the world, many of them long before Jesus, taught one form or another of the Golden Rule. Look at a few examples.

1. The Hindu Mahabharata teaches: "Men gifted with intelligence and purified souls should always treat others as they themselves wish to be treated."

2. A Jainist writing, also from India, says: "A man should wander about treating all creatures in the world as he himself would be treated."

3. When Confucius was asked for a single word to sum up the rules of life, he answered: "Is not reciprocity such a word ? What you do not want done to yourself, do not do to others."

4. The Taoists taught: "Regard your neighbor's gain as your own gain, and regard your neighbor's loss as your own loss."

5. In the generation before Jesus a man asked the great Rabbi Hillel to teach him the Law while standing on one foot. Hillel answered: "What you yourself hate, do not do to your neighbor. This is the whole Law. The rest is commentary. Go and learn it."

Although the Golden Rule is not in the Koran, another Islamic writing says: "No one of you is a believer until he loves for his brother what he loves for himself."

Immanuel Kant the great atheist philosopher also used the Golden Rule.  He tried to base his ethics simply on the principle of logical consistency. He decided that rationality demands that he act on principles that he could will all other men to act upon as well.

[…The Roman] Emperor Severus inscribed the Golden Rule on his palace walls…[6]

Despite all of this or perhaps even in light of it all, Shinn insists, "the Golden Rule is not enough."

For Shinn what sets the Golden Rule apart in Christian faith and teaching is its particular setting nestled right in the middle of the Sermon on the Mount.

It is no accident that this one theologian's discussion of the Golden Rule comes in a book he's written about Jesus' famous Sermon.  

You remember the Sermon on the Mount…its that passage of Scripture that begins with the Beatitudes in Matthew chapter five, " Blessed are the meek, for they will inherit the earth… Blessed are the peacemakers, for they will be called children of God…"  The chapter continues with the teaching about being the "salt of the earth," the "light of the world" and the "city built on the hill."  The Sermon itself continues with the teaching regarding not judging others, "so that you may not be judged."[7]  And other warnings to avoid hypocrisy.

The Sermon on the Mount, ends with these teachings and this advice on the Golden Rule.  Shinn argues that it is in this context, steeped in the richness and unworldly teachings of the Sermon on the Mount of Jesus, that the Golden Rule takes on a different quality than the similar teachings adopted in the other philosophies and religions of the world.

On and off in the coming weeks, dodging and weaving among the holidays of the early spring, like Mothers' Day and Memorial Day, we will look more extensively at the rest of Jesus' Sermon on the Mount.

But today, as we focus on the Golden Rule, the end of that Sermon, let it suffice to say, that without the love, peace, mercy and sincerity themes found in this Sermon of Jesus, The Golden Rule is easily degraded.

Listen again to the writing of Roger Shin,

"Suppose you are a person with plenty of ability, well able to look out for yourself.  You may say: "I am tough.  I believe life is a dog-eat-dog struggle, with everyone out for himself.  I ask no mercy and I give none." You can still live by the letter of the Golden Rule.  You want no love or forgiveness; you do not extend it to others.  The chances are that some day you will awaken to realize your dependence on others; but for years you can live by cheap standards, all the while quoting the Golden Rule."

He also remembers that the same Golden Rule quoted in the Gospel of Matthew in the Sermon on the Mount, is recalled by the Apostle Luke as having been taught in a sermon delivered not on a mountain-top, but on a flat plain.  In the Gospel of Luke, the Golden Rule is evoked within a teaching about love.

"Love your enemies, do good to those who hate you..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.," says the Apostle Luke. [8]

An "I can take as much abuse as you can dish out" attitude does not fit in the Golden Rule theology taught by Jesus, as we find it here in the Gospels of Luke and Matthew.

For Jesus, the teaching to "do to others as you would have them do to you. Is not about macho bravado and toughness.  Its about compassion and caring and nurturing.

The difference between Christ's version of the Golden Rule and the rest of the world's can be learned in this story of the difference between heaven and hell.

A man spoke with the Lord about heaven and hell.  The Lord said to the man, "Come, I will show you hell."

They entered a room where a group of people sat around a huge pot of stew that sat in the center of a big cage.  Everyone was famished, desperate and starving.  People could not reach the pot with their bare hands.  Each one held a spoon that reached the pot, but by the time each one tried to turn the spoon around to get it in their own mouths, the thick, meaty, beautiful, hot stew would spill and splatter and fall all over the floor.  None of it would get into the mouths of the hungry people outside the cage.  The suffering was terrible. 

"Come, now I will show you heaven," the Lord said after a while. 

They entered another room, identical to the first - the pot of stew, the group of people, the cage, the same long-handled spoons.  But there everyone was happy and well-nourished. 

"I don't understand," said the man.  "Why are they happy here when they were miserable in the other room and everything was the same?"

The Lord smiled, "Ah, it is simple," he said.  "here they have learned to feed each other." [9]

In each of these two situations, "do to others as you would have them do to you," operated unhindered.  In the hellish, selfish situation where the stew ended up on the floor, nobody did anybody else any harm, nobody got in anybody's way, they did not bother each other or cause each other pain.  But they were miserable and they suffered.

In Jesus' version of the Golden Rule, there is no selfishness, no self-serving, no dog-eat-dog, isolated anguish.  The rule expects a proactive, rather than reactive stance toward others, treating each other in love, mercy, caring and nurture.

Today we've wondered about the wisdom of taking advice from horses, from counselors, from Harvard economists and business leaders, and yes even from cartoon characters.

And yet as the fictional Linus advises Lucy, his words are the most wise, steeped in reassurance for sound theology.  

The theology of Jesus, is just such a sound theology.  Both practical and compassionate.  Both loving and logical. It is the theology of community, fellowship and church.  The theology of the Body of Christ.

In the months to come, through the weeks of Spring, we will turn again and again to the theology and the advice of Jesus from the Sermon on the Mount.

In the meanwhile, lets continue to strive to live in the Golden Rule of Christ, treating each other and others with the love, mercy, compassion and nurture in which we ourselves want to held and cherished.

Amen