Thomas J Parlette
“Two Sermons, Two Preachers”
Luke 6: 27-38, Psalm 37
2/23/25
When the Covid-19 pandemic was at full force in May 2020, the women operating the Navajo and Hopi Families Covod-19 Relief Fund noticed a significant increase in donations to its GoFundMe page. Almost all the new money coming in was coming from Ireland.
The uptick in contributions was so strong that Cassandra Begay, the Fund’s communications director, wondered if the website had been hacked. They eventually learned that the new donations started with a Twitter exchange between an Irish news reporter and a Navajo engineer.
Naomi O’Leary, a correspondent for the Irish Times, had tweeted, “Native Americans raised a huge amount in famine relief for Ireland at a time when they had very little. It’s time for us to come through for them now.” Aaron Yazzie, of Los Angeles, the Navajo engineer, responded by tweeting the web address of the relief fund’s GoFundMe page.
The Navajo and Hopi Families Covid-19 Relief Fund was a volunteer effort to get food and water to those tribes’ homebound elders in remote areas during the pandemic. As of May 7th, 2020, there were 20,000 Irish donors to the fund, who had donated $670,000. From all sources, the fund had topped $4 million since its inception a couple months earlier.
O’Leary’s reference was to an 1847 act of charity by the Choctaw Tribe – recently off the Trail of Tears and struggling to make its new home in what is now Oklahoma. After learning that the Irish were also oppressed and hungry, due to that country’s notorious Potato Famine, the Choctaws, despite having few resources themselves, raised $170 – about $6500 in today’s currency – and sent it to Ireland to help with food relief. That $170 was the largest donation received by the Irish during those terrible days, which saw starvation and disease claim one-eighth of the Irish population. (1)
In its report on the surge of money to the Navajo and Hopi Families Covid-19 Relief Fund, The Christian Science Monitor said, “There were thousands of unfamiliar names appearing on the team’s GoFundMe page – each donating small amounts ranging from $10 to $1000, from across the Atlantic. Many posted a common Irish proverb as a comment, “In each other’s shadows the people live.” (2)
“We’re so grateful to the ancestors of the Choctaw Nation for their generosity generations ago, and to the Irish people for paying it forward,” said Begay. “It just goes to show the interconnectedness of everything, which is our concept of K’e (kinship), and that a simple act of kindness can be profound.” (3)
For her part, O’Leary said she’s happy her tweet helped spark donations, and she added that the Irish have long felt a kinship with Native Americans. She noted that because of Ireland’s history, “Irish people identify with the oppression and dispossession of Native Americans. When Native American people talk about the importance of preserving their land, languages and culture, that’s something Irish people strongly identify with because their own heritage was nearly wiped out by colonialism.” (4)
Casey Davis, the Choctaw tribe’s director of government public relations, said her people think it’s great that the Navajo and Hopis are now benefiting from the Choctaw’s generosity back in 1847. “Any time a tribe gets help, we’re happy,” says Davis. (5)
Begay, who is Navajo, said her group would reach out to the Choctaw and thank them.
When the donations were pouring in to the Relief Fund, Begay said the present-day Irish were “paying forward” the kindness the Choctaws had shown all those years ago to the Irish people of that day. That’s a good way to describe those acts of kindness and support. Another way to look at it is to say it is the golden rule in action.
This morning, we begin with some words from Psalm 37. “Don’t fret because of the wicked; don’t be envious of wrongdoers – they will fade like the grass and whither like the green herb. Trust in the Lord. Don’t worry about the wicked – they will get what’s coming to them. Those who wait for the Lord will be saved.” Hopeful words from the Psalmist.
Next, we move to the Gospel lesson, which dovetails nicely with what the preacher in the Psalms has to tell us. Jesus echoes many of themes in Psalm 37. Once again this week, we are back with Jesus for Luke’s version of the Sermon on the Mount – known in Luke as the Sermon on the Plain. Love your enemies, do good to those who hate you, turn the other cheek, don’t judge, forgive, and you will be forgiven; give, and it will be given to you - and of course, what we know as the Golden Rule – “Do to others as you would have them do to you.”
In essence we have two preachers today – Jesus and the Psalmist. Who each have very similar sermons to preach to us. Jesus boils it all down to “Do to others as you would have them do to you.”
Interestingly, Jesus did not invent the Golden Rule. You can find it in the Leviticus in chapter 19, v 18, in a slightly different form – “You shall love your neighbor as yourself.” Jesus takes the concept out of the theoretical word of love and translates the idea into action, deeds – “DO to others as you would have them do to you – that’s what Leviticus means, my friends.”
It’s such good moral and ethical advice that many of the world’s great religions have their own versions.
- Buddhists say – “Treat not others in ways that you yourself would find hurtful.”
- Hinduism teaches – “This is the sum of duty: do not do to others what would cause pain if done to you.”
Islam says – “Not one of you truly believes until you wish for others what you wish for yourself
- The Taoists say – “Regard your neighbor’s gain as your own gain and your neighbor’s loss as your own loss.
It is said that the famous Rabbi Hillel was once challenged – “I will convert if you can tell me the whole law while standing on one foot.”
Rabbi Hillel took up the challenge, stood on one foot and said, “What is hateful to you, do not do to your neighbor. This is the whole Torah; all the rest is commentary. Go and learn it.” (6)
The golden rule is a great summary for an ethic Christianity shares with many other faiths. Golden rule thinking can be the reason for many small acts of kindness, such as finding a wallet and instead of helping yourself to the cash and dropping it where you found it – you use the contact information to find the owner and return it intact. Golden rule thinking can also take the form of larger acts of kindness, as in the Irish – Native American connection.
There is even some science to back up the power of golden rule thinking. A recent study revealed that when teenagers are shown compassion, feel others care for them, and are recipients of kind deeds – they have a greater likelihood of treating others similarly. (7)
But the sad fact is, a lot of the world – including our own nation – rumbles along it’s merry way without paying much attention to the golden rule. In fact, in some circles, the golden rule gets twisted in a negative sense – such as “Don’t do anything to others you wouldn’t want them to do to you.”
There’s nothing wrong with that negative version, but it demands far less of us than the way Jesus taught it. This version is not really about doing good – it’s more about self-preservation. “I won’t steal from my neighbor in the hopes that he won’t steal from me.”
In fact, if you google “golden rule”, you’ll come up with a bunch of articles that praise it as an “Ethic of Reciprocity.” But is that what Jesus really means by this famous teaching? Is it just another variant of “You scratch my back, and I’ll scratch yours?” I’ll do something nice for you if you do something nice for me kind of Quid Pro Quo?
In the context of the larger body biblical teachings, including what we hear from the Psalmist, the golden rule clearly means more than that. Remember, Jesus is the one who teaches his disciples to “turn the other cheek” when someone strikes them. When a Roman soldier commands a Christian to carry his pack for a mile, Jesus says, “carry it another mile. The Psalmist says, “Trust the Lord, the wicked will get what’s coming to them.” This is not reciprocity. It’s something else altogether.
The golden rule doesn’t work when we expect the other person to turn around and do unto us right back. To truly live the golden rule is to do what we would have others do to us without expecting anything in return. (8)
The golden rule, as taught by Jesus is not an avoidance mechanism, but a deliberate involvement principle.
In other settings, the golden rule had undergone a more cynical transformation into “Do to others before they do it to you.” Instead of the golden rule, it becomes the gold rule: “I’ll get mine while the getting is good” or “I’ll look out only for number one – Me.”
This attitude is often coupled with the cynical justification that “Corruption is everywhere, so I might as well lookout for myself because no one else will.”
Unfortunately, there is some truth to the observation that corruption is widespread and the people who are supposed to working for the public good are primarily looking out for themselves. In that case, listen to the preacher from Psalm 37 – “the wicked shall be cut off… In a little while, the wicked will be no more. You will look for them diligently, but they will not be there…”
Even where sin is rampant and widespread, and is seemingly winning the day – God still calls us to be holy.
Sometimes this seems impossible. Sometimes following Jesus directives here seem weak. Russell Moore, editor –in-chief of the magazine Christianity Today tells of many pastors who have quoted Jesus words here – especially about turning the other cheek – only to have members come up at coffee hour and say, “Where did you get those liberal talking points?”
Moore said that in many of those scenarios, the pastors would say, “Well, I’m literally quoting Jesus himself.” And the response would be “Yes, but that doesn’t work anymore. That response is weak. We’ve got to be tougher.” (9)
That would seem to make more sense in our world as it is – but that’s not what either of our preachers tell us today, the Psalmist or Jesus himself. Trust in the Lord. Trust in the way Jesus shows us. Do to others as you would have them do to you. That’s the whole thing in a nutshell.
Parker Palmer is a well-known Christian writer and teacher. He tells the story of a good friend who labors at a particularly difficult assignment at the New York Catholic Worker House. One day, Palmer said to her, “All the facts I can gather and all the feelings I have tell me this work you are trying to do is just impossible. There’s no success in it. We can’t measure our results, we can’t prove the good that we think we’re doing. There’s no gratification. The tide just keeps rolling over you. Why do you do it?”
His friend answered, “Parker, the thing you don’t understand is this: Just because a thing is impossible, doesn’t mean you shouldn’t do it.” (10)
It may seem impossible to love our enemies, judge no one, turn the other cheek and do to others as we would like them to do to us. But even in the midst of our sinful world, where evil seems to be winning at every turn – God calls us to be holy, as impossible as that seems. But just because a thing is impossible, doesn’t mean we shouldn’t do it. As that old Irish proverb said, “In each other’s shadows the people live.”
May God be praised. Amen.
1. Cheyenne Haslett, “Donations flood in from Ireland to Navajo Nation in repayment of centuries-old bond,” ABC News, May 8th, 2020.
2. Harry Bruinius, “In each other’s shadows: Behind Irish outpouring of relief for Navajo,” The Christian Science Monitor, May 13th, 2020.
3. Haslett… ibid.
4. Haslett… ibid.
5. Haslett… ibid.
6. Homileticsonline, retrieved 2/3/25.
7. Sara P. Brennan, “The golden rule may get a boost when teens feel connected to others,” Penn State, Nov. 28th, 2023.
8. Homileticsonline, retrieved 2/3/25.
9. Victor Nava, “Top evangelical says churchgoers view Jesus quotes as “liberal talking points”, warns Christianity ‘in crisis.’ New York Post, August 9th, 2023.
10. Discovery YMCA, July/August 1985, p. 15.
