Blue and Red Make Purple: Kindness

Are there people you love to hate?

Joshua Graves said “Before Hatfields and McCoys. Before Duke and North Carolina. Before Republicans and Democrats. Before Catholics and Protestants in Ireland. Before Alabama and Auburn or Ole Miss and State. Before In-N-Out and Whataburger. Before Taylor Swift and the Kardashians. Before Drake and Kanye. Before North and South in the American Civil War. Before Scotland and England and Braveheart. Before Yankees and Red Sox. Before Greeks and Persians. Before Manchester United and Liverpool. And way back before black and white… an ancient rivalry brewed in Palestine” between the Jews and the Samaritans. The two groups despised each other.

Enemy hatred and tribalism was a way of life. You were taught from an early age which towns you didn’t go through, which streets you didn’t walk on, and that if they aren’t for you, then they’re obviously against you.

Basically, they were raised and conditioned to respond to each other in what author Jim Wilder refers to as enemy mode. When our brains are in enemy mode, Wilder says we display behaviors such as “wanting the enemy to lose, recruiting others to attack the enemy, feeling justified in our hatred, seeing other people’s motives as ‘bad,’ turning people into objects, and using the enemy mode as a strength.” Have you ever been in enemy mode? Maybe you find yourself in enemy mode against people you haven’t met but just the thought of that person or group and the ideals they hold pricks your skin and sends your brain straight into enemy overdrive.

Those in the crowd around Jesus knew a thing or two about enemies as they were all subject to the Roman empire. Jesus was talking to the down- and out- the bereaved, the outcast, and the over-taxed. They knew what it meant to long for a leader who was going to save them. Salvation meant overthrowing the enemy right? And yet, after a series of blessing and woes, Jesus goes over the Golden Rule. Treat others as you want to be treated. The golden rule isn’t exactly an unusual principal. Diana Butler Bass keeps a poster in her cottage with 11 different versions of the it. Such examples include

“None of you truly believe until he wishes for his brother what he wishes for himself. (Islam) Hurt not others in ways you yourself would find hurtful. (Buddhism) Regard your neighbor’s gain as your own, and your neighbor’s loss as your own loss. (Taoism).”

The golden rule may be golden, but sometimes its vibrancy gets lost amid color-coded political symbols and dividing lines. Suddenly a bumper sticker with someone’s name or the shape of an elephant or donkey can cause a whole host of responses. It doesn’t take long for us to add to the list of people we love to hate.

But is there a space in-between, a space in the middle to come together? As Omid Safi asked “how can we live beautifully in an age of vitriol?” In other words, what makes the golden rule well, golden?

Marcia McFee says “Rather than stay in our monochromatic silos, the Golden Rule in scripture challenges us to engage in conversation and seek to create whatever common good we can with our relatives, friends, and neighbors who we might consider to be on the “other side” politically and ideologically. As we attempt to come together, the idea is not that we are obliterating either one or trying to change each other,… but instead the “purple space” is where we cultivate kindness, compassion, humility, respect, and love for one another and for the good of all the world, no matter what.”

Jesus isn’t being insensitive to the plight and reality of his audience. He isn’t overlooking who their enemies are. He knows their dreams, but God’s kingdom is bigger and involves a pathway that overcomes hate with the law of kindness. The golden rule in the kingdom of God is set within the context of enemy love that is bound up within the heart of God’s kindness. Our passage today ends with Jesus saying “be merciful as your Father is merciful.” Other translations say compassionate, and still others say “Be kind as God is kind.” To be kind is to literally to show goodwill to another as if they were your kin.

Others are always coming along trying to bait Jesus to choose a side. I’m not sure we are any different now, pigeon-holing Jesus into our political party as if Jesus wants to join us in our enemy-mode of us against them. But each time anyone tries to trap Jesus down into casting someone else out, he draws in the sand and invites the one without sin to throw the first stone.

Melissa Florer-Bixler says in her book How to Have an Enemy that “For the rest of his life, Jesus will call enemies out of their enmity, into a social order that eradicates the destruction into which they are embedded.” She says “We love our enemies when we extend an invitation to a form of life where those who have the power to destroy others no longer exercise the self-destruction of hatred, hoarding, and violence. We love our enemies by creating a world that releases them from the wages of their own violence. ...In the teaching to “turn the other cheek” Jesus does not call us to passive reception of violence but instead to dismantle the power of the old order in creative, life-giving ways.” Melissa shared how early in her pastorate, she “served churches that participated in a communion service on Election day. At noon, after going to the polling station to vote, we would gather to share the Lord’s Supper. The organization that promoted this service encouraged churches to embrace our unity in Jesus. No matter whom we supported in the voting booth, we left behind political identities at the door of the church. Here before the table of Christ, we were one and Jesus was Lord.”

Instead an inviting us to turn away from our enemies, Christ invites us to turn towards them in kindness.

Adam Hamilton “At a wedding I tell couples, “This is what you are signing on for- compassion, kindness, mercy, and steadfast love.” It is not just a feeling, and often it is not a feeling at all. It is an orientation toward others, a dogged determination to help, care for, and bless them.”

The spectrum of God’s kindness towards us a radically new orientation towards the other. William Willimon says in this movement, “I take the step toward and open my arms, not primarily because of my enlightened redefinition of the Other but rather because of Jesus’s redefinition of me.”

Charles Bugg says “The admonition of Luke to love even our enemies is not just a good idea where we try our best to make it happen. It is not a call to grit our teeth and make a resolution to be nicer even to those who are not nice to us. Rather, the call of Luke is to live in a way contrary to our human nature, a way that is possible only as we “live out” of a new power born from above.”

Our kindness comes out of being full of the kindness of God. Our turning towards the other comes from a deep awareness of how God has turned toward us.

In Christ, people we love to hate may be transformed into brothers and sisters in Christ whom we embrace.

Several years ago Heineken launched an ad campaign called Open Your World. They shared a video where they brought different people together who had never met and didn’t know the other. They had them build something together and share in conversation.

Then an alarm sounded and a video began to play. The video shared each person sharing ideas opposite of the person they had been spending time with. A voice announced they had a choice. They could either leave and refuse to engage or sit down over a couple of beers and talk to one another. They had a choice to turn away in enemy mode and go back to their monochromatic silos or turn toward the other.

What choice will you make over these next few weeks? Who might God be inviting you to turn towards? What purple space might exist when kindness is introduced?

When the kindness of God shows up,

John Roedel says

“and now you feel your numbness leave

and now you cry for strangers

and now your fists have become cups

and now you are human again

and now everybody is your neighbor

and now you can feel

it coursing through you

~ the desire to forgive your enemy

and you’ll never go back to the terrible normal you had gotten so used to.

because now you recognize that the season of kindness has only just begun

because now you remember that you were created to be the bringer of light.”