Readings 1 Samuel 26:2, 7-9, 12-13, 22-23; 1 Corinthians 15:45-49; Luke 6:27-38

“Do to others as you would have them do to you.” St. Luke recalls it all in that one line, I guess that’s all I need to say for my homily today.

Wait a minute, I think there is more to say. We all know the Golden Rule that we heard in the Gospel today. If we are honest with ourselves though do we always follow the Golden Rule? I know that I struggle at times to follow that rule, it may be because the person is rude to me or it may be I am just in a bad mood.

It is great if we follow the Golden Rule in all the interactions we have with others around us. You see, the Golden rule, has nothing to do with how others treat us. It is all about how we treat others. As the Gospel reminds us today

For 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 do good to you,
what credit is that to you?
Even sinners do the same.

We all tend to treat those we like better than those we dislike, but as we just heard even sinners do that. Where Jesus is trying to get us is a place where no matter who is in front of us, we treat them with the same dignity and respect with which we hope they treat us. If we do this, we model this behavior to those we don’t like as well as to those we do like. It goes a long way to showing people that we don’t just talk the talk, but we walk the walk as well.

We must remember that as Christ hung on the cross, he forgave all those who persecuted them, how many of us would be capable of doing the same?

David shows the way we are to treat those who are persecuting us in the reading from Samuel we heard today. Let’s say we are being hunted down and persecuted so that someone can catch us because they don’t like us. All they want to do is make us look like less of a person than they are. This person was someone we thought knew and respected us. During this chase we are given the opportunity to embarrass or reverse the chase, what do we do?

If we treat them as is shown in the world today, we are going to jump at the chance to embarrass them and try and catch them being hypocritical. This is not what David does though. He has the opportunity to kill Saul easily and with no repercussions, yet he simply takes his spear and water jug and leaves the camp.

Abishai was ready to do to Saul what I would guess most of us would do in this instance, kill Saul since he seems so intent on killing our leader. Yet David prevails. This story should remind us that our relationship with Christ is personal and not based on others. This was a revelation to me. You see it does not make a difference in our spiritual relationship with Christ how others treat us or whether we like them. Our spiritual relationship with Christ is dependent on how we react to those around us.

This action means that even if we are being berated, ignored, or even being picked on, we are to treat everyone with dignity and respect. Even in the worst situations we are called to show true Love just like Jesus did on the Cross when he asked God to forgive them.

We hear from Saint Paul that Adam was the first man and was brought into the world from an earthly manner. Created by God from the natural products that were on earth. Christ is considered by many to be the second Adam. The difference is that he was brought into this world through heavenly means with conception happening through the Holy Spirit.

We are products of the natural world, but God has imprinted in us a heavenly side that is looking for something more than we are. This is where our heavenly side comes in. We are similar to Christ in that we are both of this world, the natural side, as well as the spiritual side which keeps us searching for meaning in Life.

When we can practice the spiritual side, the golden rule, regardless of the situation we are growing in our faith and our belief in a life beyond this that is without troubles. When we follow Christ, we follow the heavenly side so that we are in a relationship with God through his Son.

If we follow what we see from the politicians, the news media and social media we end up far away from what we should be looking for. We are brought into the physical world where it is okay to belittle, make fun of and allow others to control how we interact with the world.

I believe we would all want to be like the first group of people, not the second. As Fr. Tom reminded us a couple of weeks ago, this Jubilee year is a great time to work more on this spiritual side by treating everyone with the same dignity and respect. This means that we are called to treat the immigrant, the imprisoned, the elderly and children with the same dignity and respect we would like them to treat us with.

This does not mean that we must agree with everything they are involved in, or their actions. It does mean that every individual is an image of Christ. When we begin to see everyone through this lens it becomes much easier to treat everyone the same as we would like to be treated.

Christ was put in many situations where he was insulted, egged on and even crucified, yet he never returned the same treatment to those who treated him that way. He treated everyone equally while still disagreeing with those who he needed to. He just did this with respect for the person as a child of God. This is really what it means to treat others as you would like to be treated.

The next time we are tempted to treat others differently because they look or sound different, we are falling into the trap of this physical world. The biggest question we need to ask ourselves in those situations’ is would we want them to treat us according to this world? When they act in a way in accordance with social media then they will probably treat us differently since they are working from the physical world mindset. This means we need to concentrate on treating them from a spiritual world mindset. Treating them as we would like them to treat us.

This is not an easy thing to do, especially if the treatment has been occurring over a long period of time. While not easy this is what Christ emulated in all his interactions, even when he was interacting with those who despised him. Are we willing to begin to practice this way of behaving in all situations during the Jubilee year? “Do to others as you would have them do to you.”