Loving God, Loving Others
Matthew 5:21-48[1]
Most of you will have
recognized Norman Rockwell’s famous depiction of the “Golden Rule” on the
splash slide for the sermon today. It was based on his previous 1953 drawing
entitled “United Nations,” which was inspired by the UN’s humanitarian mission.
His idea was to depict the United Nations as the world’s hope for the future: sixty-five
people representing the world’s nations, “waiting for the delegates to
straighten out the world, so that they might live in peace and without fear.” In
1961 Rockwell painted the oil on canvas entitled simply “Golden Rule” that
would later become a mural at the UN building in New York City. Rockwell wanted
to show that all religious have something like the “Golden Rule” in common.[2]
You might wonder why I
would be talking about the “Golden Rule” in connection with our Gospel lesson
for today. The answer is that in Matthew’s Gospel, when Jesus summarized all
that he was trying to teach the disciples about what it would mean to be a part
of the kingdom of God, he did so by saying, “in everything to do others as you
would have them do to you” (Mt 7:12). It’s easy to miss how important this
verse is, but Jesus gave us a clue by saying, “this is the law and the
prophets.” In other words, as the New Living Translation puts it, “This
is the essence of all that is taught in the law and the prophets.” And I would add
that this is the essence of all that Jesus taught in the “Sermon on the Mount”
and elsewhere.
As we’ve been
introducing the “Sermon on the Mount,” we’ve already seen that grace always
comes first in our relationship with God. That was the lesson of the
Beatitudes. And we saw last week that grace also always brings with it demands.
God’s grace claims us in a way that reshapes us into a people who will practice
God’s justice, compassion, and mercy toward one another. That’s what it means
to love, and this week we learn that the demands of grace always lead us to
love others. That’s what Jesus was trying to demonstrate in our lesson for
today. He offered concrete examples of what looks like to truly love others. It
means that we not only don’t kill, but we relate to others in ways that uphold
their worth as human beings. Following the demands of grace means that we not
only avoid cheating on our spouses, we also relate to others with pure motives
rather than using them as objects. Jesus was illustrating the principle of the
kingdom of God, the point of all that grace demands of us: to treat others the
way we want them to treat us.
It might not be
obvious at first glance, but the “Golden Rule” is basically a restatement of
the “great” commandment to “love your neighbor as yourself.” The “Golden Rule” frames
loving your neighbor as yourself in more practical terms, but the point is the
same. What sets Jesus’ teachings apart is that he insisted on love that comes
from the heart. He emphasized that what is most important is not just your
actions, but your motivations. That probably doesn’t come as news to most of
us. But we also have to recognize that if our motivations are true, it’s going
to make a difference in our actions. As I mentioned last week, Jesus’ approach
to the demands of grace makes it harder for us to love God and love others, not
easier!
I would say it’s no
coincidence that Jesus focused the demands of grace, the demands that the
kingdom of God make of us all, on the command to love your neighbor as
yourself. When we miss that, we pretty much miss the whole point of God’s grace
in our lives. That was not just the mistake of the religious leaders of Jesus’
day; it’s the mistake that Christians have made through the ages. The whole
point of the demand that God’s grace makes of us is that we love others truly and
sincerely, from the heart, in such a way that it lead us to treat them with
genuine kindness, fairness, and respect. For Jesus, that’s the core principle
for discipleship, for living in the kingdom of God, for “loving God with all
your heart.”
When we miss that, it
becomes too easy for us to do what the religious leaders of Jesus’ day did: we define
our piety solely by external actions, by what others see and not by what is in
our hearts. We focus on the letter of what Jesus taught, telling ourselves that
we’re taking his word seriously, but all the while missing the point. We make
our religion about blaming others for the wrongs in the world so that we can
justify ourselves. Our piety is focused on labelling “them” as “sinners,” using
Jesus’ very words to do so, while ignoring our own faults. That is not the way
of grace. It is not the way of the kingdom of God.
I’ve mentioned before
that I teach my confirmation classes that we won’t go too far astray from what
Jesus was trying to teach us if we truly ask ourselves the question, “What
would Jesus do?” I know it was something of a fad back in the day. But if we
take the question, “What would Jesus do?” seriously, it will lead us to the
point of all that Jesus was trying to teach us: to love others truly from the
heart in a way shows them kindness, fairness, and respect. Love requires of us
the best we have to give in order to treat other people with genuine care. It
can be painful to love others in this way, but love is the way of the kingdom.
“Do to others as you
would have them do to you.” It seems straightforward enough. Treat other people
the way you want to be treated. But putting it into practice is no simple
matter. Jesus’ examples in our Gospel lesson for today make that uncomfortably
clear. Once again, I think we have to take this lesson, as well as everything
Jesus said in the “Sermon on the Mount,” from the perspective of the principles
we’ve been discussing. When it comes to our relationship with God, grace always
comes first. But grace always brings with it a demand: that we become people
who will practice God’s justice, compassion, and mercy toward one another. That
leads us to the point for today, that the demands of grace always lead us to
love; love for God that shows in the way we love others. The true measure of
our love for God is that we treat other people with genuine care in every
aspect of our relationships with them. This is the principle of God’s kingdom;
this is the point of the grace that God gives us all so freely.
[1] ©
2023 Alan Brehm. A sermon delivered by Rev. Alan Brehm PhD on 2/12/2023 for
Hickman Presbyterian Church, Hickman NE.
[2] Cf. “Rockwell’s ‘Golden Rule,’” blog posted on the Norman Rockwell Museum
website on 2/5/2014; accessed at https://www.nrm.org/2014/02/golden_rule/
.
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