Golden Rule people in a Leaden Rule world

Sermon for the Seventh Sunday after the Epiphany (February 20, 2022). Thank you to the Esteemed Mr. Andrew J. Pierce for the audio!

View the scripture readings and the Collect of the Day: Epiphany 7C

VIDEO available on Facebook via St. Luke’s Episcopal Church in Camillus. Sermon starts at 32:13.

Manuscript (actual sermon may vary, blame the Holy Spirit!)

The other day I learned a new concept, the “Leaden Rule.” As you might guess, this is kind of the inside-out of the Golden Rule, and the rule is this: When I’m at my worst, I do to others that which I most fear having done to me. For instance, if my greatest fear is that I am defective, then at my worst, I’m out there running around pointing out others’ defects. If my greatest fear is that I’m without value, then at my worst, I treat others with contempt and arrogance. If I am afraid of being controlled by others, then at my worst, I will threaten and intimidate the people around me.

We’re most likely to employ the Leaden Rule when we’re in a bad place emotionally or spiritually, when we’re suffering, when we ourselves greatly need help. We end up sabotaging the relationships that might otherwise be a source of healing and recovery.

In today’s Gospel we have Jesus giving us a teaching about what it looks like to be Golden Rule people in a Leaden Rule world.

Love your enemies: that works fine in an abstract, Sunday-school kind of way. But then we try loving our neighbor who mows their lawn without fail every Saturday morning at 7:00 a.m., or our supervisor who takes credit for our ideas, or the parents of our grandkid’s bully. It takes a deep breath and a deeeeep spirituality to bless those who curse us. To pray for someone who harms or abuses us or people we love. 

The people who were listening to Jesus on that plain were people like us. They suffered at the hands of their enemies. These were people who might be causally struck by a Roman soldier. Who might have their coat taken away by someone more powerful. People who might have very little to spare for beggars.

They probably would listen to this and have a reaction similar to ours. Does this guy want me to be a doormat? A victim?

This is a reasonable reaction for all of us who live in a Leaden Rule world: a world where fear leads to abuse, and abuse begets more fear. This is a world where love looks weak and love looks foolish.

The world God created, says Jesus, is a world where love is the way. All of us, he says, are children of God, children of the Most High, children of love. And what does love look like? Love looks like God: kind to the ungrateful and the wicked. Merciful. Full enough to have enough to spare, to give away even where we can’t hope to receive love back.

Most of us are here in this room, I suspect, because we’ve experienced God’s love that came to us at a time when were maybe not so good, not so grateful, not so deserving. We’ve experienced some kind of grace, some kind of mercy, some kind of love. Or we hope to. We have faith, even in the middle of all this Leaden Rule word ruled by fear, faith that love is the way.

There are two mistakes we can make with Jesus’ words today.

One is to use it to tell people that it’s God’s will that they suffer. You know that this word has been used to tell survivors of domestic violence that they should stay with the one abusing them. You know that this word was used to tell enslaved people to stay in their place. This is not love’s way. God created us for love, freedom, and flourishing.  

The other mistake we can make with Jesus’ Golden Rule is to think we’re supposed to live it all by ourselves, on our own.

But Jesus isn’t talking to one disciple, one person. He’s addressing a crowd. He’s addressing a congregation. He’s addressing a movement. Think of that “You” as a “y’all.” Jesus way of love works—it only works—if we are all doing it together.

That’s actually the heart of the first mistake—when we tell one person or group to turn the other cheek, but look the other way while the abuser or oppressor runs amok.

The Way of Love calls everyone to change. To set down the Leaden Rule and take up the Golden. The perfection of the “perfect love that drives out fear” is not one individual’s perfection—it’s the completeness of a community. It’s a Way that is practiced by people together, by communities. 

Is there or has there been a relationship or a community in your life where you can safely let down your guard? Where you’ve received generosity of love, even when you hadn’t exactly earned it? Maybe it’s a friend or a family member. Maybe it’s a twelve-step group. Maybe it’s this congregation. Wherever that is, imagine if the generosity of love you’ve experienced could overflow: into other relationships, and others would experience love and share it in their relationships, and that overflowing of love would embrace the world—

Then that would be a world where love is the way, a world that faithfully images God.

That is Jesus’ invitation to us today. Beginning here in church, beginning here with us, all of us—a world shaped not by fear, but by love. Amen.