02/23/2025 ~ Seventh Sunday after the Epiphany ~ Genesis 45:3-11, 15; Psalm 37:1-11, 39-40; 1 Corinthians 15:35-38, 42-50; Luke 6:27-38 ~ YOUTUBE VIDEO: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=xtHMdJ9cDVE
VIDEO OF FULL SERVICE: https://vimeo.com/showcase/7960701/video/1061258659

Golden Rules

“Do to others as you would have them do to you.” — Luke 6:31

One of my professors at Bangor Theological Seminary had an interesting background. Dana Sawyer was a Native American who grew up on the Penobscot reservation near Old Town. And he had a Ph.D. in Far Eastern Religion.

After acquiring the Ph.D. and numerous trips to the Far East he returned to Maine to teach at the University level. At Bangor he appropriately taught World Religions. In that class he said something more fascinating than his background. The religion most practiced in the world and most practiced in America, said he, was called folk religion— he called it folk religion— most practiced world wide and most practiced in America.

Further, he labeled fundamentalism as an American folk religion. Why? Fundamentalism has absolutely no basis in historic Christianity and began only in the late 19th and early 20th centuries. And it started here in America.

Following the Civil War, tensions developed among Christians here. Scholarly Biblical criticism, a practice which dates back millennia, was unacceptable to some because scholarly Biblical criticism examines social and cultural changes within the Scriptures. Why was that unacceptable to some? The implication was studying this reality in Scripture might encourage social and cultural change today.

And so The Fundamentals, a series of papers, was published in Los Angeles between 1910 and 1915. The publication was funded by an oil baron who wanted to resist social, cultural changes perhaps because of his status. The bottom line: Christianity had never seen anything like organized Fundamentalism before and big money supported and helped organize it.

Many think Fundamentalism is ancient but it’s a little more than 100 years old and it’s an American idea. Islamic Fundamentalism did not exist before that time and the idea eventually spread East. I’m sure the irony of that is not lost on you.

To put all this another way, fundamentalism is not a theological reevaluation of Christianity. It is a social, cultural movement whose mission was to resist change in society. I am not saying people who follow Fundamentalism are insincere. I am saying the movement, itself, stems from social and cultural resistence and has late origins. (Slight pause.)

From time to time many of you have heard me say I have Jesuit training. Since my father taught at a Jesuit High School for his entire working career, Jesuits were my friends. They came to family parties. I played softball and basketball with Jesuits. Jesuits staffed the Summer camp I attended.

Question: most of the time how do we really learn, learn about life, learn about how to behave, about how life should be lived? We learn from family and we learn from friends.

A competent teacher will tell you a significant chunk of learning happens outside of any classroom wall. When Jesuits are friends of the family, it’s hard to not be influenced by their thinking, to not learn from their thinking. (Slight pause.)

The Jesuit order defines their mission with these words. To work for reconciliation every day. To work with God, with humans and with the environment. To respond with intellectual rigor to the most challenging issues of our times.

To employ discernment in decision-making. To care for the poor, the vulnerable and the earth, the common home of all humanity. To serve God and the Church with creativity and fidelity. To bridge societal divides.

To foster understanding among diverse people and cultures. To collaborate regionally through partnerships and in networks in an effort to serve the people of God— that is the mission of the Jesuits. (Slight pause.)
This is what we find recorded in the work known as Luke/Acts in the portion called Luke: “Do to others as you would have them do to you.” (Slight pause)

The quote you just heard is often called The Golden Rule. It’s found in many faith traditions, in many social traditions, in many cultures. It dates at least back to the Code of Hammurabi, 1,700 years before the birth of Christ. (Slight pause.)

Now, I think most of you are aware I had what might be called multiple careers before seminary. One piece of that was a stint working on Wall Street.

This is The Golden Rule on Wall Street: those who have the gold make the rules. A corollary: those who have power hoard power. Another corollary: those who dominate strive to perpetuate dominance.

These are cultural, secular golden rules. The question that presents to us is simple: do we follow a cultural, secular golden rule, or do we follow the golden rule to which God calls us and calls the church? (Slight pause.)

Occasionally someone will say to me there are liberal interpretations of the Bible. Others will say there are conservative interpretations. Nether position is accurate.

The challenges with which Scripture presents us are not that empty minded. The challenges are multiple, especially when it comes to the culture. The first challenge: identify the cultural trappings which are in Scripture because of the era in which Scripture was written.

That alone is not easy. Why? In the first five books of the Bible, the Pentateuch, there are at least four different documents written over the course of a number centuries and then stitched together, effectively a fifth layer.

When these documents are read only in translation and not in the original language they appear to be one, single, singular document. In the original languages differences jump out at you.

Each of those documents, each written in different eras, need to be unpacked for the cultural content based in the era in which they were written. After we strive to identify and eliminate the cultural noise, the question for us becomes to where does God call us, right here, right now?

The next challenge: what does our culture, today, say to us? To identify what our culture today says to us— fundamentalism, for instance— and identify the influence of our culture on us, is an even harder task than looking at ancient cultures in the Scriptural text.

We may not be fully able identify all aspects of an ancient culture but we can identify many of them. Identifying today’s culture is a daunting challenge because we are living in and with our own culture. It’s just second nature to us. We don’t even notice it.

Just like we need to identify and neutralize cultural practices found in Scripture, we need to identify and neutralize practices in today’s culture. Once today’s cultural noise is located we yet again need to ask ‘to where does God call us?’

So a key question becomes ‘will we be overcome, be overwhelmed by today’s culture which surrounds us when we read Scripture?’ (Slight pause.)

That brings me back to my friends the Jesuits. This is a précis of the Jesuit mission in several words: discernment; reconciliation among all people and justice; be creative and faithful; strive to create a hope-filled future; care for the earth, our common home. (Slight pause.)

As I said, Scripture is neither liberal nor conservative. That summation of the Jesuit mission is neither liberal nor conservative. Why? Living into and with these ideals is about a way of life, about a way to learn about life, a way to learn how to behave, a way to learn about living together— that’s what these are about. (Slight pause.)

Christianity is not about rules. Christianity is not about the culture. Christianity is about a way of life.

Will anyone ever be perfect at the practice of life? No. The idea is to practice every day. Perhaps the important idea here is to strive, as well as we are able, to see the world as God sees the world. How does God see the world?

Certainly one step is what Jesus says in Luke: “Do to others as you would have them do to you.” That is, however, not just a golden rule. That is a counter-cultural idea since those words are about God’s culture, not about human culture. Amen.

02/23/2025
Elijah Kellogg Church, Harpswell, Maine

ENDPIECE: It is the practice of the Pastor to speak after the Closing Hymn, but before the Choral Response and Benediction. This is a précis of what was said: “This is a quote from theologian Reinhold Niebuhr: ‘Nothing worth doing can be achieved in our lifetime; therefore we must be saved by hope. Nothing true or beautiful or good makes complete sense in any immediate context of history; therefore we must be saved by faith. Nothing we do, however virtuous, can be accomplished alone; therefore we must be saved by love.’— Reinhold Niebuhr. The culture is temporary. God is not.”

BENEDICTION: Let us go in joy and in love and in peace. God reigns. Therefore, let us go forth in the name of Christ proclaiming the peace of God which surpasses understanding. And may the face of God shine upon us; may the presence of Christ be with us; may the fire of the Spirit burn within us this day and forevermore. Amen.