“The Golden Rule”

Luke 6:27-38

Pastor Deb Troester, STHPC, February 23, 2025

Little Joey was helping his grandfather dig up potatoes. “What I want to know,” he says, “is why you buried the darn things in the first place.”

Another day, Joey was found chewing a slug. Grandpa got him to spit it out, but asked, “Well…What did it taste like?” Joey answered, “Worms.”

February is nearing an end and the weather is turning a bit warmer: spring is on the way. People’s thoughts are turning to gardening. Someone mentioned to me this week that stores would be getting in their gardening supplies and that they were eager to start planting. According to the Master Gardeners of Alameda County’s website, the best time to plant fruit trees in this area is December through March, so if you had thought of planting any fruit trees, now is the time!

This brings us to our Lenten theme this year: Feasting on the Fruit - the fruit of the spirit that is! We are basing our study on Galatians 5:22-23, where the Apostle Paul lists nine fruits of the spirit. However, there are only six weeks of Lent, so we have to start a couple of weeks early.

What are these so-called “fruits of the spirit”? I don’t think Paul’s list is exhaustive, but it’s certainly a good place to start. He mentions love, joy, peace, patience, kindness, generosity, gentleness, faithfulness, and self-control. We will “pick” (air quotes) one or two of these fruits each Sunday to take a closer look. Today, we will focus on the first one listed, love. Some say that love is not a separate fruit, but is actually the main fruit, with the rest of the fruits defining what that love is. I won’t argue with that. It is certainly a possible interpretation, as all of the fruits are related in some way to love.

The New Testament was originally written in ancient Greek, and the Greeks had several different words for love: phileo is affection between friends and family; eros is romantic love, and so on. But the word used for love here in Galatians and also the word Jesus uses in his Sermon on the Plain is agape: unconditional, selfless love; love that expects nothing in return, and that is motivated by a desire for the other person’s highest good.

So how can we see this agape love in action? Jesus gives us many examples: “Love your enemies; do good to those who hate you;  bless those who curse you; pray for those who mistreat you.” And above all, the Golden Rule: “Do unto others as you would have them do unto you.”

This doesn’t sound like the warm, fuzzy feelings we usually associate with Valentine’s Day love. Agape is not a feeling, but a choice. It is action, not abstraction. It is loving someone even when you don’t feel like it, even if you don’t like them. It means treating someone you dislike with kindness, patience, tough love if necessary, but always with their highest good in mind. We can choose to do good to those who mistreat us – we can pray for them, and even bless them. Of course, that doesn’t mean we must allow them to hurt us. I don’t think Jesus is teaching a doormat kind of faith. It takes a lot of inner strength to decide to pray for someone we don’t like. Agape love is concrete, not abstract. It involves “doing,” not feeling.

We once had a neighbor who was difficult to get along with. She had four little yappy dogs, who annoyed everyone in the building.

She lived directly above us, and she fed the pigeons, so they pooped on our balcony. She kept her TV turned up loud at night, and it was right over our bedroom. I asked the women in our Bible study group to pray for me, so that I could get along with her. So I baked her cookies and our daughter Christa and I took them up to her. She seemed surprised, but her behavior did not improve. However, my heart softened a little toward her – after all, she was a lonely, unhappy person, and I’d like to think I set a good example for our daughter. This is making a choice to love. I wish it were always as easy as baking cookies.

In a world where there are too many bullies, Jesus asks us to turn the other cheek. And if someone takes your coat, let him have the shirt off your back. This is a hard teaching. Some interpreters have tried to explain it away – probably Jesus was talking to rich people, because the poor wouldn’t have had extra garments to give someone; or Jesus was telling us to shame the oppressor, because slaves and servants were hit with the back of the hand, and turning the other cheek meant that your master would have to hit you “like a man”

– thus acknowledging you as an equal. In that culture, such a response might have elicited shame on the part of the perpetrator, who might not want to be seen as mistreating his slaves or servants.

But regardless of how we interpret Jesus’ teaching, it means giving up something you consider to be a right, and indeed, no one should ever be subjected to physical violence, and everyone has a right to their basic needs, such as food and clothing. Jesus suggests that we make a choice to respond to violence with non-violence. We are to do good without expecting anything in return, because we are children of God, and God makes the sun to shine and the rain to fall on all alike, good and bad,  without expecting anything back. Furthermore, Jesus said we are to show mercy and forgive, and avoid condemning and judging others. These are all difficult tasks. It’s human nature to judge others, to condemn them, and to want to get even instead of to forgive. My Zambian colleague, Pastor Geoffrey, once said, “When you judge someone, you are not loving them.”

So if agape love is a fruit of the Spirit, how do we cultivate it in our lives? There’s a story about a man who took over a weedy, untended patch of land, and began to cultivate it as a garden. The beds were overgrown with weeds. There was a dilapidated shed and a greenhouse that was just a frame with broken glass. As the man began his work, the local pastor stopped by and said, “May you and God work together to make this the garden of your dreams!”

A few months later, the pastor stopped by again. Lo and behold, the plot of land was completely transformed. Healthy vegetables were growing in neat rows. The shed had been expertly rebuilt and the greenhouse had been re-glazed and was full of plump, ripe tomatoes.

“Amazing!” exclaimed the pastor. “Look what God and you have accomplished together!”

“Yes, reverend,” said the man, “but remember what the place was like when God was working it alone!”

In the case of a garden, God provides the sunshine and rain, seeds to plant, and the soil.

We couldn’t grow a garden without these God-given elements. Yet, gardens still require work. Over the next few weeks, we will be talking about some of the work we can do in our fruit garden of the Spirit, but I will conclude with a few ideas for weeding. These are from the book Tending the Wild Garden: Growing in the Fruit of the Spirit, by Eugenia Anne Gamble. In her chapter on “Tending the Shoots of Love,” she discusses three weeds that we must root out if we hope to allow agape love to grow. She bases her thoughts on what Jesus says are the two greatest commandments: to love the Lord our God with all our heart, soul, mind, and strength; and to love our neighbor as ourselves. There are some weeds that may grow in our garden that will strangle out agape love every time.

For example, the weed of violence is incompatible with loving God. She writes, “At the heart of the Ten Commandments is  God’s rock-solid value that we are not to kill, damage, or disrespect others.” We may not be guilty of physical violence, but we are tempted to disrespect others when we fail to see that they, too, are children of God.  We may not do violence, but we are capable of getting even or wishing that something bad would happen to someone.

Recently some people swooped in and took a parking place that Joe and I were patiently waiting for. I was furious and found myself wishing that something bad would happen to their car – like four flat tires, maybe. I didn’t think it was right to wish something bad would happen to them – after all, I’m a pastor, but their shiny new white SUV? That’s fair game! I need to root out this vengeful streak out before it gets worse. You can pray for me. Agape love will not grow where this weed is nourished.

Gamble also writes that love of neighbor cannot flourish where the weed of injustice grows. She says, “Biblical justice is agape’s action plan in community… Justice is the work of ensuring that all of God’s children, and the entire created order, are free to become all that God has dreamed for them to be.” Justice fights against “the systemic weeds of prejudice, hate, and power…that deny persons what is needed for a life of dignity and fullness.” Justice is something we must work together on, as a church and as a society, but we can eradicate the weeds of prejudice and hate in our hearts and plant seeds of empathy and compassion in their place.

Finally, Jesus said that we must love our neighbors as ourself. That means loving ourselves in a healthy way. We, too, are beloved children of God. The weed of self-hate will crowd out agape love in our garden. Gamble writes, “People who inwardly despise themselves, especially if that animosity is unacknowledged…will usually project that animosity outward onto others.” If we don’t love and respect ourselves, it is hard to love and respect other people. She tells how once when she was blaming and criticizing herself to a trusted friend, her friend responded, “Stop being so mean to my friend!” We all need to give ourselves grace and forgive ourselves, just as we would forgive a beloved friend. After all, God has declared us forgiven in Christ – so who are we not to forgive ourselves?

Gamble writes, “When we open to agape and allow it to flow through us, then it is not really our love at all.

It is the Spirit loving in and through us…We awaken to what we always are, even when unaware, the hands, feet, and hearts of God loving the world into wholeness.

Jesuit Pierre Teilhard De Chardin wrote: “Someday, after mastering the winds, the waves, the tides and gravity, we shall harness for God the energies of love, and then, for a second time in the history of the world, we will have discovered fire.”
Let us pray:

Inexhaustible source of love and life, be with us as we seek the love it takes to walk in the ways of your Son. Help us love our enemies and bless those who wrong us, for we cannot do so alone. Teach us the joy of treating others with all the same respect and goodness with which we hope to be treated. May our every word and deed make known that we are your beloved children. May the fruit of love grow in the garden of our soul. Make us vessels of your love. Amen.

©Deborah Troester, 2025