Sunday, February 23, 2025, Seventh Sunday after Epiphany
“Genuine Gold”
Malachi 3:1-4; 1 Corinthians 15:35-42; Luke 6:35-45
Responsive Prayer 2, p. 285
Hymns: #904 “Blessed Jesus, at Your Word”; #783 “Take My Life and Let It Be”; #709 “The King of Love My Shepherd Is”; #857 “Lord, Help Us Walk Your Servant Way”; #689 “May We Thy Precepts, Lord, Fulfill”; #912 “Christ Is Our Cornerstone”
Dear Friends in Christ,
Grace, mercy, and peace to you, from God our Father and from our Lord and Savior Jesus, and from the good Holy Spirit, living and active in the world. Amen.
You’ve all heard of “The Golden Rule,” right? “Do unto others as you would have them do unto you?” It sounds easy enough, just on paper, but the person who can actually keep it in any decent kind of way is, well, rare as gold.
Gold is highly valued in this world we live in because it is somewhat precious and rare. It’s shiny and beautiful, and the whole world seems to run on the stuff. Having a little gold in your pocket means you can buy necessary things, like shelter and clothing and food and such. Having a lot of gold can buy you power and influence over other people, if that’s the kind of person you want to be.
But gold is also a very beautiful Biblical metaphor. Gold, in the Scriptures, stands for everything on earth and in heaven that’s holy and precious and good. “The Word of the Lord is flawless, like gold refined seven times,” the 12th Psalm says. “How much better to get wisdom than gold,” says King Solomon in the Book of Proverbs. St. Peter tells us “the genuineness of our faith is more precious than gold.” The Book of Revelation says that heaven is a golden place, and that the streets of God’s holy city, where we all hope to be one day, are paved with gold so pure it’s transparent as glass.
Jesus, in giving us the Golden Rule in our Gospel, is calling us to be good and holy and righteous; that is, to be “good as gold before God,” pure in our thoughts, our words, our deeds, ours attitudes, and our behavior. The Golden Rule is a simple enough rule, straightforward as can be: “Treat others as like you’d like to be treated yourself.” But for sinners like us, that’s hard to do. Living out the Golden Rule - actually, purposefully putting it into practice - would mean putting others ahead of everything else in our lives, and putting the needs of others always ahead of our own, and actually doing all that knee-bending and cheek-turning and mercy-giving that Jesus talks about.
And according to what Jesus says in St. Luke’s Gospel, it’s only love – the love that God puts in us – that makes even beginning to keep that Golden Rule possible. And Jesus, you’ll notice, isn’t asking for the ordinary “if you love me, I’ll love you back” kind of love. Instead, He’s asking for love to a high, uncommon degree, out-of-this world degree. “Love your enemies,” for gosh sakes? Lord Jesus, who of us can manage to do that? I have enough trouble loving the people closest to me the way I should, the people who I know love me, let alone saving enough love for people who don’t love me back.
Another thing the Scriptures say about gold, though, is that it can be refined. There’s gold in us, and good in all of us, because the God who made us is good, and God doesn’t make junk. But along with the gold in us, we know there’s also sin and selfishness and hatefulness and meanness, and all the other crud that goes along with being a sinful human being.
But God in His love and mercy is working to refine us, which is another really lovely biblical metaphor. The Book of Malachi says God is like “a refiner’s fire or a launderer’s soap.” Jesus says in the Book of Revelation, “Behold, I am making all things new!”
Becoming more and more “golden,” more and more like Jesus, is a process, the work of
a lifetime. “Sanctification” is the word we use to describe how God works to make us more pure and holy. None of us are there yet, as far as being truly “golden” goes.
But the Lord, again because He loves us, and considers us worth the effort, is always working to refine us and purify us; and He does that by running us through that fiery smelter of His that we call “life.” And His goal is to transform what we are into something more beautiful. That’s what St. Paul is getting at there in 1st Corinthians, when he says, “The body that is sown is perishable, it is raised imperishable; it is sown in dishonor, it is raised in glory; it is sown in weakness, it is raised in power; it is sown a natural body, it is raised a spiritual body.” What God has in mind when He looks at us isn’t what we are (thank goodness for that), but what He has in mind for us to one day be. Don’t get me wrong; God does love you just the way you are; but He loves you enough not to leave you as you are.
Have you heard about the alchemists, those ancient scientists who were always trying to turn lead into gold, but could never manage to do it? They could never do it, but God can! Jesus came to this world to die on a cross for our sakes; to purify us, to refine us, to smelt the imperfections out of us, painful as that process may sometimes be. But along with taking away our sins and our failures and our imperfections, He also takes away our fears and our doubts and our sorrows and our grief and our pain. And His goal for all of us is that we come out solid gold in the eyes of our Father in heaven.
So, our Lord has set the goal before us, that Golden Rule for life and happiness and joy looking at us. So how do we get there? What do we need to take a hard look at in our lives? What would the Lord have us change? Here’s where we get to the practical application of this thing. The Golden Rule, “do unto others,” is short and sweet; but like any other verse of Scripture, it has a context. It comes wrapped around other verses that make it clearly understood, that make it live and shine and sing. Jesus kept the Golden Rule to glorious perfection, and all He’s asking of us is that we do our best, by prayer and by the help of His good Holy Spirit, to become more and more like Him. What greater goal could we have for our lives than that?
So, says Jesus, “Love your enemies, and do good to those who hate you.” Jesus did that, didn’t He? “While we were still sinners, Christ died for us.” And the kind of love He calls here for isn’t some at-a-distance, detached, love-from-afar kind of love, the kind that’s easy. No, the word our Lord uses here is that “agape” kind of love you’re heard so much about - the kind of love that gives of itself until it gives itself away – even for our enemies! It’s hard to even wrap our minds around such a thing; but think about it; how would it change our families, our communities, our world, if more of us could learn to love like that?
“Bless those who curse you, and pray for those who mistreat you,” Jesus says. Quite a concept that is, completely the opposite of the way the vindictive world around us does things. But do you know what? It works! Try it sometime! If there’s someone you don’t get along with or who rubs you the wrong way, make it a point to begin praying for them (like Jesus prays and intercedes for us). You’ll find it impossible to continue to hate someone you pray for. Maybe it will change them, and maybe it won’t; but for sure it will change your heart and your attitude, and you yourself will be happier and more at peace for it. And maybe you’ll even end up making a friend.
And Jesus keeps piling it on: “If someone strikes you on one cheek, turn to him the other also. If someone takes your cloak, do not stop him from taking your tunic. Give to everyone who asks you, and if anyone takes what belongs to you, do not demand it back.” Again, isn’t that what Jesus did? He didn’t have to take the curses and spitting and abuse they threw at Him. He could have roasted the Pharisees or Pontius Pilate or the Roman soldiers on a spit, if He’d wanted to. But He chose to love them instead, even asked His Father to forgive them as they were pounding in the nails. And they did take His cloak, and His tunic, and threw dice to see who’d get them. If He can forgive like that, why can’t we do our best to do the same?
That’s the top half of what this “Do unto others” Golden rule is wrapped around. Maybe think of it as sort of an ice cream sandwich: We’ve heard about the layer of chocolate cookie on the top so far, the cheek-turning and self-giving and such; and the Golden rule is the sweet, delicious, wonderful stuff in the middle of the sandwich. And now comes the bottom layer of the cookie, the thing that nails Jesus’ argument down for us, the thing that answers the question, “But Lord, why do we have to do this?”
“Do to others as you would have them do to you,” Jesus says, because… “If you love those who love you, what credit is that to you? Even 'sinners' love those who love them. And if you do good to those who are good to you, what credit is that to you? Even 'sinners' do that. And if you lend to those from whom you expect repayment, what credit is that to you? Even 'sinners' lend to 'sinners,' expecting to be repaid in full.”
What Jesus is calling for here, as hard as we’re all going to have to work and apply ourselves to get it done, is a level of love so out of the ordinary, so uncommon in the world, that it will make us radically, ridiculously different from the world around us, so that people will see and stop and notice, and maybe come to want what we have. The Golden rule, again, calls us to be like Jesus - to live like He lived, and to love like He loves, as much as it’s in poor sinners like us to live up to such a thing. No, we’re not there yet; but may God in His Your mercy, continue to refine us!
So, says Jesus, “Love your enemies, do good to them, and lend to them without expecting to get anything back.” And then, and then, and then… “Your reward will be great, and you will be sons of the Most High, because He is kind to the ungrateful and wicked.” Our reward for all the work this is going to be (and it will be work, no getting around it) - our reward when everything is said and done for being good and kind and merciful in this unmerciful world, is that we get to be “sons of the Most High,” children of God - loved by our Lord here on earth, and looking forward to a heaven forever with Him. And maybe, just maybe, the love and joy that flows from all this “Golden Rule keeping” of ours will bring others into God’s kingdom as well, and make them all His sons and daughters, too.
Be merciful as your Father in heaven has shown you mercy. Judge others by the same standard God uses to judge you; that is, with compassion and patience and endless grace. You who’ve been so generously forgiven, always and forever be forgiving to the same high degree.
Jesus has poured out His measureless grace on us, given us everything, down to His own precious life, so that we can call ourselves forgiven and free and children of God on this good day. And now He asks us to live our lives with that same generous, solid gold Spirit. If Jesus says, “With the measure you give, it will be measured to you,” just how big should our measuring cups be?
Lord, we come before You on this day with all our impurities, imperfections and flaws, carrying the marks and the scars and the stains of our sin. Yet Lord, You love us, and You see the good in us, and You are gracious and patient and merciful. We thank You for Your grace, and for the blood of our Savior that washes away our sin. Continue to refine us, O Lord, and to apply that launderer’s soap of Your Word, until we stand clean and pure and flawless before You, and we’re everything You have called us to be. In Jesus’ name; Amen.