Jim's Sermon for 8/10

A Sermon to be delievered at the Gould City (Michigan) Community Church on 8/10 (minus a few incomprehensiable localisms)

Do Unto Others

Our faith teaches us a seamless lesson about how to conduct ourselves in this world. And sometimes it is not apparent, as it doesn’t just jump out at you and grab you and demand your attention. Yet it is a recurrent theme in Jesus’ teachings and indeed the teachings of all the great world’s religions. When this occurs, the same theme repeatedly being taught millennium after millennium, in all the world’s great religions, it is often called “perennial wisdom”. Like the flower, perennials, it comes back time and time again.
The lesson that I am talking about the theme of reciprocity that Jesus teaches us time and time again. We can start with the golden rule; “Do unto other as you would have them to do unto you”. What a simple lesson, but it is so hard to learn and to do. Several years back, a man named Robert Fulghum, wrote a best seller called “All I Really Need to Know, I learned in Kindergarten”. The golden rule could fit quite nicely into a book with that title.
If we could only stop a minute and think about what we are doing and saying, how different might the results we get in this life. Are we doing unto others as we would have others do unto ourselves? I was horrified after Hurricane Katrina when I heard people express the sentiment that we should not help our fellow countrymen, that somehow it was their fault that they either weren’t prepared for the hurricane or that they shouldn’t live in New Orleans. Can you imagine if our fellow citizens said we shouldn’t be helped if we had a horrible blizzard that stopped traffic and stranded people for a week , and we had people freezing to death in their homes, because our many of our fellow citizens and politicians thought we were foolish to live in such cold climate, so far north? How hard hearted, how uncompassionate. How UN Christ like are we sometimes to our brothers and sisters.
Jesus tells us that “If anyone would come after me, he must deny himself and take up his cross and follow me. For whoever wants to save his life will lose it but when he loses his life for me or for the gospel he will save it. What good is it for a man to gain the world and lose his soul?
At first when we hear this there is a temptation to take this overly literally and proceed to the most extreme scenario. At first literal glance it seems as if Jesus is asking us to die for him, to be crucified as he was crucified. This interpretation is an oversimplification and discounts Jewish hyperbole and metaphorical or more than literal interpretations. It is common among Jews to use an exaggeration to make a point. “If all the other kids jump of f the roof, are you going to jump off the roof, too”? We ask our children. We are exaggerating to make a point. Similarly, there is a more metaphorical interpretation to this. We are not asked to be literally crucified. When we deny ourselves we are giving up the flesh, giving up this world. You, with a small “s”, are your time dated body, commonly referred to in scripture as the flesh. By putting the flesh first, you will lose your life. The flesh is here today and gone tomorrow. But if you put Christ first and the gospel, and remember, gospel can be translated as truth, if you put the spirit first you will save your life, and like Jesus, have a resurrection in the spirit. That doesn’t mean we have to die before this can happen either. We just die to the flesh and live in the spirit. Paul said he died every day. Once again we see the law of cause and effect. Lose your small self, live in the spirit or large Self by following Jesus and you will gain your soul. Your soul or spirit is much more important than the flesh; it is the spirit that is going to go the distance, not the flesh. The flesh is here today and gone tomorrow.

“As you judge so shall you be judged”. How hard it is not to judge others. It is easy to be critical of others, to point out their flaws and shortcomings and forget about our own. Remember the story of Jesus and the fallen woman, ‘The crowd said to Jesus “Teacher, this woman was caught in the act of committing adultery. Now in the law, Moses commands us to stone such a woman. Now what do you say? He said to them “Let anyone among you who is without sin be the first to throw a stone at her.” And we remember that one by one, the crown dispersed. After they had all gone Jesus forgave the woman and told her to go and sin no more. What can we learn from this lesson? We acknowledge that we want to be the judge and throw that rock. Yet Jesus tells us to throw that stone only if we are without sin. We all know that we are not without sin. So we need to stop throwing rocks. Elsewhere, we are told to take the board out of our own eyes before we notice the speck in others. How good we are at pointing out the faults of others, but our own faults, we are usually not so good at recognizing. Once again, the same message, work on yourself, perfect yourself, do your job and let God do His.
There is a psychological theory that we project our own feelings of guilt. We are feeling guilty so we judge others as guilty, and by projecting our own guilt outward, we feel as if we have gotten rid of our guilt. Lets us follow Jesus example and not be the first to throw the stone and judge so harshly. If we are harsh judges, as these men that wanted to stone the fallen woman, so shall the world judge us harshly and we will have stones thrown at us, either literally or figuratively.
Your job description, in a simplified version, is to love God and love your neighbor as yourself. God’s job is to be the judge. Don’t get your job descriptions mixed up. All of us have worked with someone wants to do our job, or tells us how to do our job, but doesn’t do their job very well. And we would all be well served if only they would just concentrate on their job and do their job well. So it is with us and Our Lord. We need to do our job, follow our job description, and stop trying to do God’s.
Today when we say the Lord’s Prayer, say it with mindfulness. When we say “and forgive us our debts as we forgive our debtors” lets us be aware of what we are saying. We are asking God to forgive us based on how we forgive others. I don’t know about you, but after stopping and thinking about that, I am going to be an easy judge. I will let God decide who is going to burn in hell, or who is bad and who isn’t, all that judging is not in our job description.
I have been trying to let go of judgment for several years now, with a small degree of success. It is very liberating, by the way. It is a much better way of doing life’s business. We have enough to do just trying to love God and love our neighbors.
The scripture tells us “And when you stand praying if you hold anything against anyone, forgive him, so that your father in heaven many forgive you of your sins.” Can it be any plainer? Don’t ask God to do for you what you will not for others. And what did Jesus say when asked by his apostles, how many times should we forgive, seven? No, Jesus said seventy time seven. If Jesus instructed his apostles to forgive seventy times seven, would He do any less? And it is going to be He that will be sitting at the right hand Of God to judge the living and dead. Perhaps we can all breathe a little easier.

The good book says “What comes out of a man is what makes him unclean. For from within, out of men’s hearts, come evil thoughts, sexual immorality, theft, murder adultery, greed, malice, deceit, lewdness, envy, slander, arrogance, and folly. All these evils come from inside a man to make him unclean.” We see a law of cause and effect here also and Jesus explaining how it works. The Israelites of his day were obsessed with their laws and rituals. They were all from without, concentrating on the exterior. Jesus tells us the law of cause and effect works the other way. It is what comes out of the mouth and the mind that defiles, not eating the wrong food or failing to sacrifice the wrong animal. Correct thoughts and actions resulting from what comes from within, is what defines us as Christians and followers of Jesus.
Jesus says “With the measure you use, it will be measured to you, and even more. Whoever has will be given more, whoever does not have, even what he has will taken from him.

At times it doesn’t seem as if we all get what we deserve but in the end, if you examine closely, we do. An employer may fire someone for no good apparent reason, or a made up reason, and career wise it seems as if nothing happens to them. They just continue to make money. Yet, you may look at their personal life and you may see a failed marriage with children involved and just a nightmarish life. They got the measure they dished out and even more of it back.

What can we do today to work with God’s law of reciprocity? Do unto others as you would have them do unto you. Acknowledge the holiness of all of God’s children. Jesus said that whatever you do to the least among you, you do unto him. That means what we do to prisoners and foreigners, to people from downstate, and people of other races and, Democrats and Republicans, depending on which one you don’t like, or just people we don’t agree with, we do to Him. The Kingdom of God is within, so says the scripture. If the kingdom of God is within, then each and every one of us carries that kingdom with us and we need to respect that in ourselves and each other.