Sermon Tone Analysis

Pray for veterans, especially those suffering from PTSD...

Intro

The Jesus Manifesto - what Jesus meant when he said “Follow me”...

The message is called Kingdom Care.

Today’s passage has been dubbed “The Golden Rule”.

Virtually everyone has heard of it and knows it, even those who have no particular allegiance to Jesus or Christianity.

Age of Therapeutic Moral Deism this is generally observed as “be nice to others”.

A common meme you’ll see on social media is “be kind”.

The teaching of Jesus is reduced to a moral axiom “treat others the way you want to be treated”.

Good advice, but is that all Jesus meant?

Like all of Jesus’ teachings, this one has teeth.

There is more to adhering to his teaching than just “be nice to others”.

With a little digging, we discover that this simple command carries profound insight into our own self-care, as well as other-care.

In this short phrase, Jesus summarizes his vision for the kingdom of God.

One where you matter, and where caring for others IS caring for yourself.

The Law and Prophets

Jesus had already condensed the entire Law into two commands - love God and love others.

For those who thought two were too many to remember, now he reduces it to one - do for others as you would have them do for you.

As Christians, we often think of the OT as something obsolete.

Worse, we can cast it as something oppressive - rules and regulations to keep God happy.

Yet this is a gross mischaracterization.

No Jewish person would ever see the Torah in this light.

It is not Law as we think of law, but instructions for a good life.

A life lived well with God and with others.

From this standpoint, the OT still has much to teach us.

It is still God’s revelation of who he is and what he thinks.

Certainly, some of the OT is obsolete, like the instructions regarding Temple worship.

And some parts are challenging to interpret, like the commands to wipe out certain people.

But what was translated into English Bibles as “Law” was really a code of ethics for how to conduct a peaceful common life.

For instance, there are instructions about what to do if you see your neighbor’s donkey running loose.

You weren’t to ignore it; you needed to capture and return it to your neighbor.

I doubt any of us has a neighbor with a donkey, but we have neighbors, and the OT tells us something about how God wants us to treat their persons and property.

The OT sets the stage for what Jesus’ vision for the kingdom of God will look like in practice.

Self-care

Begins with understanding of self-caring, or caring for yourself.

Not a narcissistic version - much of what the world calls self-care seems to be a selfish focus on the self to the exclusion of others.

A “spa day” is probably not what Jesus had in mind in this statement.

Self-care encompasses needs - how do you care for yourself in terms of spiritual, physical, and emotional needs?

Self-care also includes justice - we have a strong sense of how we want others to treat us (we learn early to go to a judge - parent - when sibling takes something of ours).

Doing for others as we would want them to do for us starts with knowing what we do toward ourselves.

You won’t do for others what you neglect to do for yourself.

Empathy

Jesus’ teaching, then, is intended to move us toward empathy.

Sympathy vs empathy.

Sympathy feels sorry for another person’s situation; empathy puts yourself in their shoes.

Sympathy means you feel bad for them; empathy motivates your actions toward them.

(Reference 46 dead migrants found last week… we aren’t to merely feel sorry for them or sorry that it happened; rather, we should try to put ourselves in their shoes, try to understand what drove them to be in this situation, and, if brave enough, even try to imagine to their horrible last hours.

And all this should lead us, at a minimum, to at least ask how we could keep this kind of thing from happening again).

This command should naturally move us to having an ability to put ourselves in some else’s shoes.

If I were the immigrant, the unwed mother, the racial minority, the unborn - how would I want to be treated?

If I was a new neighbor, a first time visitor in church, stranded on the side of the road, what would I want someone to do for me?

Doing for others as we would want them to do for us should move us toward empathizing with the pain of others.

Awareness

Jesus’ teaching implies an awareness of our surroundings.

Too often we train ourselves to look away, to not get involved.

I think Jesus implies that we are to have a heightened sense of our surroundings so that we are alert to situations calling for this kind of radical other-care.

We can’t help everyone.

We can’t get involved in every cause or crusade.

Jesus doesn’t expect us to.

But we should not remain ignorant or intentionally blind to the issues where we can make a difference.

Doing for others as we would want them to do for us calls us to a heightened awareness of those around us.

Other-care becomes self-care

Other-care ultimately turns back to self-care.

Being in a spiritual family should remove any pressure I feel about how much to put myself out for others.

The reciprocal calling of Jesus’ kingdom vision working itself out in the life of the church means that I can give of myself in other-care bc I have assurance others will be practicing other-care toward me.

In this respect, other-care turns into self-care.

You care for yourself best when you care for others well.

This is supposed to be the beautiful image of the already/not yet church that the world sees.

When they see it in reality, they will be drawn to it like a moth to flame.

Conclusion

“In everything do to others as you would have them do to you; for this is the law and the prophets.”

(Matthew 7:12, NRSV)

In this one statement, Jesus lets us off the hook in trying to remember a bunch of specific commands.

He says to do for your neighbor the way you would want your neighbor to do for you if your roles were reversed.

That is the summary of OT Law - everything else is just details.

This is Jesus’ vision of what the kingdom of God will look like.

How do we respond to this word this morning?...