Now that we’ve received the Holy Spirit, the question is what we do with it. Whether heaven’s gift is for me or the world. His courage restored by Jesus Christ’s mighty Resurrection and glorious Ascension, Peter was pretty clear. Citing the prophet Joel, he said that once we’re in the Spirit, we prophesy — young and old, the enslaved and free, every gender. We raise our voices for God’s vision of righteousness, justice, and love, because that’s what prophets do. St. Paul is just as clear in 1 Corinthians: “To each is given the manifestation of the Spirit for the common good.”
Some argue that Paul was just talking about the good of the church. So let’s hear what Jesus has to teach about the Spirit’s work. When he appears on the evening of Resurrection Day, Jesus twice offers his friends his shalom, gives them the Holy Spirit, the first fruits of Pentecost Day, and says that what they forgive on earth will be forgiven in heaven, while the sins they retain will be retained in heaven.
This is absolute apostolic authority. Heaven itself will affirm our gracious ministry. But if we don’t forgive, trauma lodges in our throat, choking grace off for both sinners and those sinned against. It’s like situations where we’ve fallen out with someone and insist that the other apologizes. It’s better when both offer a measure of forgiveness. Mutuality releases our trauma and reignites our love.
John’s gospel is about Jesus preparing his apostles to teach a harsh, unbelieving world the true nature of God and God’s love. He has to have been thinking far beyond the good of the church or the baptized. And to give us all we need to accomplish this work, to get us through life, to help us work for a better world, Jesus offers his 21-word sermon in Matthew 7:12: “In everything do to others as you would have them do to you; for this is the law and the prophets.” Jesus didn’t invent the golden rule. It’s been part of human philosophy and belief for as long as anyone can remember. But he proclaimed it and then gave himself up on the cross and walked out of the tomb to prove it.
The golden rule is Jesus saying that every word of the Hebrew Bible he knew so well, every name and narrative, every bloodcurdling slaughter and hard to believe miracle — Adam and Eve eating apples, Mose parting the Red Sea and drawing water from a rock, Noah building an ark and gathering up koala bears and rhinoceroses, the donkey talking in the book of Numbers, all the things we wonder about with our modern scientific minds — Jesus said it all added up one thing.
If you want to be treated kindly, be kind. If you want to receive love, give love. If you want to be safe, help others find safety. If you want to be fed, start a food pantry for your neighbors, like at St. Andrew’s. If you don’t want to be alone, then find someone else who’s alone and lay waste to their loneliness.
The golden rule is the moral dimension of cosmic balance. During Artemis II, when the astronauts were in orbit and burned their repurposed space shuttle engine for just five minutes, they knew the moon’s gravity would bring them home to splash down off the coast of Catalina. We too were designed to be in balance with the bodies around us. It’s the law of the universe and the only thing that works. It’s the wellspring of justice and the source of all contentment. It’s what the Holy Spirit is sending us forth today to accomplish, knowing that Resurrection takes away all the risk of loving recklessly.
Without the golden rule, without thinking of others first, without the self-sacrificial care of others, we couldn’t have driven here safely this morning. We can’t keep a happy home for more than two weeks. We can’t pick a movie or restaurant without an argument with our spouse. We’ve been talking about the golden rule for thousands of years, sometimes going overboard with the guilt and shame. Yet we still haven’t found a vocabulary for insisting that those who wield the power of life and death over millions should obey what most of us take to be the law of nature. If it applies to us, the moon, and the stars, at long last let us proclaim that it applies to Trump, Putin, and Xi.
This has nothing to do with the separation of church and state. The establishment clause of the First Amendment was designed to protect people from the imposition of a state religion, namely Anglicanism, since most of the founders were affiliated with our beloved Church of England. The Constitution protects the people from government, not government from the people. It doesn’t shield an indecent government from being judged in the light of decent values God and people of faith hold dear.
The golden rule is neither conservative nor liberal, Republican nor Democratic. Political and policy practitioners will tell you that a dangerous world is not the place to default to idealism and think the best of your enemy. But somewhere between the poles of naïveté and cruelty for cruelty’s sake lies a golden mean where humanity and decency always get their due.
We can secure our borders without cruelty to immigrant workers. We can protect our nation without reckless wars. We can balance the budget without cutting off humanitarian aid to millions of our global neighbors. We can learn more about our trans and non-binary siblings without dehumanizing them and exposing them to danger and death because of sadistic words and policies.
So from Fullerton and Echo Park, as from Cappadocia and Pamphylia, let all those who wear cherry red 50 days after Easter go forth and say that’s the Spirit has been poured on us like butterscotch and chocolate fudge. That we see visions of justice and dream dreams of love. That we are prophets of the common good, devoted to the dignity of every human being and liberty and justice for all, in anticipation of the Lord’s great and glorious day when our God in Christ will call us home and wipe away the tears from every face, when once again, for all time, we’ll be all together in one place.
[A portion of my Pentecost Day sermon at St. Andrew’s Episcopal Church in Fullerton]