Matthew 7:12-14
The Rev. Dr. Robert S. Langworthy, preaching
October 6, 2024
To follow Jesus is to take up a journey that leads into a grand reversal of our life. To follow Jesus is to stay in step with a loving Friend who, if we match our stride with His, will reorient us by a 180˚ turnaround. He will make our life less about serving ourselves and more about fulfilling God’s purposes of love and justice for all – that is, less about gaining special privileges and advantages for ourselves and more about meeting the pressing needs of others. Even though we have special responsibilities for ourselves, by virtue of our immediate proximity to ourselves, and special responsibilities for our family members and close friends, by virtue of our relational proximity to them, Jesus pulls us out of our narrow, parochial perspective and sends us out to reach out to help as many as we can.
In verse 12, Jesus puts forth what is often called the “Golden Rule”: “Do to others as you would have them do to you.” Jesus said that “this is the law and the prophets”. It in fact constitutes the core of following Him.
So what is required of us in order to do to others as we would have them do to us? It begins with our learning to exercise empathy: that is, to imagine the feelings, needs and hopes of others, to put ourselves in their shoes, and to take to heart their concerns as if they were our own. Empathy moves us to refrain from negative actions we’d hate to be subjected to and prompts us to carry out positive actions we’d love to be blessed by. It moves us not to denigrate anyone, but to respect everyone; not to be mean, but kind; not to be stingy, but generous; not to be harsh, but gracious. It is to wish for others what we’d wish for ourselves, and to act in line with our wishful thinking.
Just over a year ago, Jen Wilkin in Christianity Today wrote an article entitled, “Jesus Transforms Our Wishful Thinking”. Jen began by describing one Friday night at her family’s home. A bunch of hungry friends and neighbors showed up unannounced for dinner. Since they were short of food for them all, the family resorted to a non-supernatural solution to their equivalent of “five loaves and two fishes”. Jen pulled aside her husband and each of their kids to whisper in their ear the secret family code none of them were surprised to hear: “FHB”. In that household, FHB stands for “Family, Hold Back”. So, after Dad prayed over the meal, they each held back in order to take a place at the end of the kitchen food line, where they put on their plates small portions to insure there’d be enough for those needing a second helping. They did that in the awareness that they’d not go without that evening, but just eat later than normal – with the worst case scenario being pizza delivery after the last guest left.
Even so, none of them liked going to the back of the line and denying themselves their fill of food when they too were hungry. But followers of Jesus, Jen wrote in her article, “understand that life is about more than doing what we want. It’s about doing what we wish.” Jen explained what she’s driving by saying, “We can all imagine times when we wanted to be treated better, when we longed for more care, recognition and grace than we received. We are not wrong to hold these wishes. They illustrate the basic human need to be known, loved and accepted.” But, Jen went on to say, what we do with our wishes determines our faithfulness as disciples of Jesus. For, as Jen put it, “Jesus invites us to live our life directed by wishful thinking, though not in the way we might anticipate.” Jen then quoted a translation of Jesus’ Golden Rule that reads: “Whatever you wish that others would do to you, do also to them.” Jen took those words to mean that Jesus was telling us to do for others what we wish were done for us if we were in similar circumstances. She elaborated that idea, saying, “We give to others the encouragement we wish we had received…and serve as we wish to be served. We step to the end of the line…we defer what we wish for ourselves and instead secure it for others.”
To follow Jesus is to look for ways to do for others what we wish would be done for us if we were in the same straits. As people well-nourished on Jesus, “the Bread of Life”, we nourish others with the decency and generosity for which they are starving; and, as those to whom He gave a life of deep meaning and high purpose, we offer others a feast of soul-satisfying significance, a banquet of opportunities to make a difference for good.
And if we don’t know where else to begin with this new approach to life, we can at least start by praying for others as we wish we were prayed for – asking God to give them what we’ve probably already been asking Him to give us: positivity, hope, peace, purpose, power and love.
Jesus wishes all of us would follow Him and fulfill His Golden Rule. But He won’t make us do what He wishes we would. He just invites us to walk in His footsteps, and then waits and hopes we’ll choose as He wishes – and do so with a decisive resolve, no matter the sacrifices, rejection, pains and difficulties it may involve. That is why He added: “Narrow is the gate and the road is hard that leads to life; and there are few who find it.”
Living out the Golden Rule is both costly and rewarding. It costs us old habits of behavior. It costs us our self-absorption, our self-indulgence, our indifference to the poor, and our delusions of self-sufficiency. It costs us our place at the head of the line and our right to always have our fill. It costs us in all the sacrifices we have to make and all the pains we have to take.
Yet, its rewards more than compensate for the prices we pay. It blesses us with the joy of serving something bigger than ourselves, with the satisfaction of making things better than we found them, with the companionship of the most loving friend we could ever want, with the grace that assures us we’ll never be alone, with access to inner power we could never drum up on our own, with a better life in the here and now and an infinitely and eternally better one in the hereafter.
As we follow Jesus and make our circle of concern as wide as the world, responding to everyone as we wish we were responded to, we undergo a grand reversal and are mightily enriched by the turnaround. No wonder Jesus said, “Those who lose their life for my sake will find it!”
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