Bringing the Golden Rule Back to the Gold Standard

CONSECRATE Wake up, sleeper, rise from the dead, and Christ will shine on you.  Jesus, I belong to you. I lift up my heart to you. I set my mind on you. I fix my eyes on you. I offer my body to you as a living sacrifice. Jesus, we belong to you.  Praying in the name of the Father, and the Son, and the Holy Spirit, amen.  HEAR Luke 6:37–38 NIV “Do not judge, and you will not be judged. Do not condemn, and you will not be condemned. Forgive, and you will be forgiven. Give, and it will be given to you. A good measure, pressed down, shaken together and running over, will be poured into your lap. For with the measure you use, it will be measured to you.” CONSIDER On Sundays at the Gillett Methodist Church, I feel a little bit like a doctor making rounds as the morning begins. I like to go by and visit every Sunday school class and check in and bring a word of greeting and encouragement. I go by the class I call the "Young Peoples Class," which are our senior saints. Every week I sign the twenty-seven or so cards Mrs. Rose Ella has prepared to send out all over creation to our friends in need of prayer. Then I stop by the women's class and next the men's class. Finally, I climb to the third floor and come to the class I teach each week—the middle and high school students. Afterward I try to pop into the children's class. It was in that class last week I learned they were studying the Golden Rule. It comes right in the middle of Luke's edition of the Sermon on the Mount, which we all read today in Luke chapter 6: "Do unto others as you would have them do unto you" (v. 31). It strikes me as almost synonymous with the second part of Jesus's great command—to love your neighbor as you love yourself.  Our focus text today and all the verses backing up to verse 31 and even the ones preceding that are an elucidation of this great text.  I remember learning the Golden Rule from my parents as a child and then from my Sunday school teachers. It is so simple and so profound and so wise. So how has it become so forgotten and so unobserved and so neglected? It's like the Golden Rule has lost its luster as the gold standard. If I'm honest, despite my hearty agreement with the Golden Rule, I have never thought very deeply about it. Until now. "Do unto others as you would have them do unto you" (Luke 6:31). So it's got me asking the simple and obvious question: How do I want others to treat me? And rather than coming up with vague ideals, I decided to get a little more specific about it. Here's my list of eight.  • I want others to treat me with respect without requiring me to prove myself.  • I want others to be glad to see me coming rather than ignoring my presence.   • I want others to give me the benefit of the doubt when they are apt to suspect my motives.  • I don't want others to be critical and fault-finding of me when there is a problem.  • I want others to encourage me and not assume I don't need encouragement.  • I want others to be helpful to me and let me in when I am in traffic. (Okay, we don't have traffic in Gillett, like in Houston!) • I want others to not make assumptions about me based on my past performance and reputation.  • I want others to stop trying to size me up politically and put me into a certain camp or party.  So . . .  • I will treat others with respect without requiring them to prove themselves. • I will be glad to see others coming rather than ignoring their presence.  • I will give others the benefit of the doubt when I am apt to suspect their motives.  • I will not be critical and fault-finding of others when there is a problem.  • I will encourage others and not assume they don't need it.  • I will be helpful to others and let them in when I am in traffic. • I will not make assumptions about others based on their past performance and reputation.  • I will not try to size others up politically and put them into a certain camp or party.  All of a sudden I have a bit of a creed for daily life in my interactions with others. It is specific, freighted with the intention of love, and super doable. It takes the Golden Rule out of the category of sentimental affirmation and into the realm of "on earth as it is in heaven" in a super practical way. And it can be built on. So I think I will start by simply reading it aloud every day for the rest of the Gospels series and see what happens.  And this is how the Golden Rule actually becomes the gold standard again.  So how do you want to be treated? What's the specific shape of your creed?  PRAY Lord Jesus, thank you for the Golden Rule. And thank you even more that you are the Golden Ruler. Apart from you, I have no hope of actually living out this high ideal, but in you this is not idealism but actualized realism and this because in you it shifts from an ideal to the truth. All of this will be for your glory, for others' gain, and for my good. And in your name I pray, amen.