Building Community in Kindness

Galatians 5:22 & Luke 6:27-36

This week we continue our series of services on the theme of building community. Each week we have been looking at the ways in which the work of God, the Holy Spirit, can be seen in the building up of our community. We have looked at love, joy, peace, and now we come to kindness.
When I was preparing for this morning, I did what all good sermon writers do when preparing sermons and went on the Internet. I can tell you now that if you Google, “kindness” you get lots of stuff, especially quoteable quotes from famous writers. I am also pleased to report that kindness is widely seen as a good thing.

This, however, is not the most important thing that I want to say today. The most important thing that I think that we need to get hold of this morning is that God is kind. Everything else that I say this morning flows out of that one, key, fact. God is kind.

Is it just me, or does that sound like a bit of an odd thing to say? I was thinking about what I was going to say this morning, and why it was that this sounds like a bit of an odd thing to say.

I think that it is something to do with the places in which the word is used today. I think that the most frequent use of the word, “kind”, is in the bringing up of children. As children grow, we are continually encouraging them, to be kind, to share, to think of others, to talk in a kind way. The other phrase the word brings to mind is, “kind old lady”. So maybe it's not surprising that it feels a bit odd talking about the creator of the universe in language that we tend to reserve for children and old ladies. We tend not to use it about adults, and especially not about men, and very rarely about God.

Having said that, we do have to get hold of this, because it is the way in which Jesus describes God.

In the part of the Bible that was read to us earlier, from the book written by Luke, Jesus is teaching his close followers. In the middle of this teaching, we hear this:

Luke 6:35
35    But love your enemies, and do good, and lend, expecting nothing in return; and your reward will be great, and you will be sons of the Most High; for he is kind to the ungrateful and the selfish.

In this verse it clearly says that God is kind. But, what does this mean? Who is God kind to, and what does God's kindness look like?

Firstly, who God is kind to? The verse I have just read says that God is kind to the ungrateful and the wicked.

But maybe we need to look a little wider to get a more complete picture. In the reading we heard several examples of Jesus saying, look, everybody is kind to those who is kind to them, but my followers are to be kind to everybody, whether or not they are kind back. Jesus takes the first bit for granted when he is talking about people. If even “sinners” are kind to those who love them, how much more will God be kind to those who love God.

Jesus takes for granted that God is kind to those who are grateful and love God, what he challenges us with is that God is also kind to those who are ungrateful and wicked.

So, God is kind to everybody.

But what does this kindness look like? How does it feel?

Whenever we want examples of what God is like, we can look to Jesus, because one of the reasons he came to earth was to show us what God is like.

Throughout the accounts of Jesus life, we have illustrations that demonstrate God's kindness. A great example is the account of Zacchaeus, told later by Luke.

Luke 19 1-10

Here we see the sensitivity that spots the lonely and outcast tax collector, Zacchaeus, hiding in a tree, desperate to catch a glimpse of Jesus but afraid to be seen in public. We see the strength of character that reaches out to the one outside the community, and invites itself round for a pizza, disregarding the mutterings of the crowd. We see kindness that breaks through and prompts an outpouring of generosity.

Later, towards the end of Jesus' life, as we watch him die on the cross we get another account that illustrates the depth of his kindness.

He is going through one of the most tortuous deaths ever devised, he is racked with pain and can hardly breathe. John describes how Jesus looks down from the cross,

John 19: 26-27  “When Jesus saw his mother there, and the disciple whom he loved standing near by, he said to his mother, “Dear woman, here is your son.” and to the disciple, “Here is your mother.” From that time on, this disciple took her into his home.”

Here is kindness that sees beyond Jesus' own personal pain and understands the pain of another. Here is kindness that makes provision for the care of another, even when there is no hope that the care can be returned.

And, in an even wider sense, God's kindness is seen most powerfully at the cross. In his death on the cross, Jesus showed us all how kind God is. God is so kind that God's Son died on a cross so that we could be included in God's family.

As we remember and celebrate in baptism, it is through Jesus' death and rising to life again that we are born into new life in the family of God, into the fellowship of believers, into the community of the church.

God is kind to everybody, and that kindness is cross shaped.

And so, as children of God, we are called to show the family likeness. As God is kind, so we are to be kind.

This is not kindness on a random basis, it is kindness at the core of our beings that governs every word that we speak and every thing that we do.

This is not kindness that is used as a tool to make a nice comfortable place for us to rest. This is kindness that reaches outside our existing community, beyond the people that we want to be close to and spends itself with no expectation of a return.

Exercising kindness builds up the community because it draws us together, but it also redraws the boundaries of the community, including those who are on the outside, drawing them in.

For all the radical depth and nature of God's kindness, it seems fairly simple to implement. It does not involve hours of prayer or fasting or cleverness or knowing religious words.

It does involve remembering that every single person we come across is a person. It means being aware of other people and their needs and desires and preferring the meeting of their needs to our own.

The story is told, by a student, of a professor at her nursing school who set an exam. She breezed through the questions until she read the last one: "What is the first name of the woman who cleans the school?" Surely this was a joke. She had seen the cleaning woman several times, but how would she know her name? She handed in her paper, leaving the last question blank. Before the class ended, one student asked if the last question would count towards their grade. "Absolutely," the professor said. "In your careers, you will meet many people. All are significant. They deserve your attention and care, even if all you do is smile and say hello." That student never forgot that lesson. She also learned that the cleaner's name was Dorothy.

Kindness involves saying kind words, not cruel ones. It means choosing words that call in rather than keep out, words that build up rather than break down.

Kindness involves caring for widows and orphans. This means looking out for those who are at the edges of our society and who need protection and care.

But, for all its apparent simplicity and the examples we have in Jesus, I still find it difficult to be kind. I sometimes store up resentment and speak in angry haste when I finally lose my temper. I am not always aware of those around me, or sensitive to their needs. I don't reach out in generosity and love because I am afraid of being hurt.

But, God is kind. And because God is kind, we are not left to struggle along trying to do these things on our own. There is a reason that “kindness” appears in the list of the fruit of the Holy Spirit. God knows what we are like, so the Holy Spirit is here to help us. It is one of the works of the Holy Spirit to grow in us, in each of us and in all of us together, kindness. God's cross shaped kindness that reaches out to everybody.

Father God, who through your Son, showed us your kindness, enable us, by your Holy Spirit, to show that kindness to others, for Jesus sake, Amen.