Sermon: "Be Kind: Rewind"

 

The Rev. Maureen R. Frescott

Congregational Church of Amherst, UCC

August 12, 2018 – Twelfth Sunday after Pentecost

Ephesians 4:25-5:2

“Be Kind: Rewind”

In 2011, a grassroots organization called Kids for Peace, partnered with three elementary schools in California to launch The Great Kindness Challenge - a week long event designed to create a more positive and respectful school environment by encouraging kids to participate in simple acts of kindness.

Kids were given a pre-printed checklist containing 50 suggested acts of kindness that they might initiate during the school week - such as:

·      Help a younger student with their homework.

·      Sit with someone new at lunch.

·      Listen to your teacher when she’s talking – the first time.

Friendly competition was encouraged as students attempted to do as many acts of kindness on the list as they could during the week.

Kids also took home a “Family Edition” of the list, which included acts of kindness they could participate in with their parents and siblings, such as:

·      Pick up and recycle trash in your neighborhood.

·      Take a board game to play at a local senior center.

·      Make a thank you card for the local librarians, fire dept, or crossing guards.

While this was a challenge directed at school children, there were acts of kindness on both lists that anyone could do at any age, such as:

·      Go a whole day without complaining.

·      Smile at someone who looks like they’re having a bad day.

·      Let someone go ahead of you in line.  

What started as a grassroots project in three California schools has since grown into an international event.

Scheduled for the last week of January every year, The Great Kindness Challenge now has participants in 103 countries,

involving nearly 20,000 schools, and over 10 million students…

resulting in over 527,000,000 recorded acts of kindness during just one week each year.

If practicing kindness for one week out of the year isn’t enough of a commitment for you, and you’re ready to take on a more adult-sized challenge,  you might tackle the 30-Day Kindness Challenge –

promoted by self-help author and relationship guru, Shaunti Feldhan.

Ms. Feldhan proposes that most of the difficulties we encounter in our personal relationships – with family, friends, neighbors, and co-workers –

extend from our struggle to be kind to one another.

She suggests that any relationship, no matter how difficult, can be improved by practicing three specific acts of kindness for 30 days:

1.   Say nothing negative about the person you’re having a difficult relationship with, either to them or about them to someone else.

2.   Find one positive thing you can praise or affirm about that person every day, and tell them, and tell someone else as well.

3.   Do one small act of kindness for this person every day, either directly or anonymously.

Ms. Feldhan claims that of those who’ve tried the 30-day Kindness Challenge, 89% have seen an improvement in their target relationship,

even if the daily kindness they practiced was completely one-sided.

It may seem counter-intuitive, but if we treat someone with kindness and respect, regardless of how they treat us in return,

our interactions with them will naturally become less challenging and less strained, and we will come to see them in a more positive light.

And, the hope is, over time they will come to see us in a more positive light as well and begin to treat us with kindness in return. 

The overarching goal of both the week-long Kindness Challenge and the thirty-day challenge is to instill within us new habits and new ways of relating to others,

in the hope that we’ll continue to practice such kindness without the need for a check list or a challenge to prompt us.

As we see from Paul’s letter to the Ephesians, our struggle to simply be kind to one another is not new.

Some 2000 years ago, Paul embarked upon this great experiment –

he and his cohorts were attempting to build something unique –

a new Christian community made up of both Gentiles and Jews.

In order to promote unity, Paul urged them to “Put away all bitterness and wrath and anger and slander… and be kind to one another,

be tenderhearted, forgiving one another, as God in Christ has forgiven you.”

If Paul had lived in our time he might have called this, “The Great Jesus Challenge"...

but in Paul’s time, these new Christians had the advantage of living within one generation of the greatest personification of kindness there has ever been - Jesus himself -

Emmanuel – God with us – God stepping into our space and our time to show us what real love looks like, what true kindness has to offer.

And still these first generation Christians struggled to live up to, and into this ideal.

It’s interesting to note that the Greek word Paul uses for kindness is chrestos.

Which is similar to the Greek word for Messiah - christos.

The word kindness is reminiscent of Christ himself.

 “Do unto others as you would have them do unto you,”

is straight out of the Gospel – the Good News of Jesus –

We call it the Golden Rule.

And as we learned earlier, this rule predates Christianity, and finds its roots in Judaism, Hinduism, Buddhism, Taoism, ancient Egypt, Persia, and Africa, and nearly every culture and religious tradition we know.

In ancient cultures:

Egypt:  "That which you hate to be done to you, do not do to another."

Greece: “Avoid doing what you would blame others for doing."

Rome: "Treat your inferior as you would wish your superior to treat you."

Persia:  "Do not do to others that which angers you when they do it to you"

And in diverse religious traditions:

Buddhism: "Hurt not others in ways that you yourself would find hurtful."

Confucianism: "What you do not wish for yourself, do not do to others."

Hinduism: "If the entire Dharma can be said in a few words, it is this—that which is unfavorable to us, do not do that to others."

Yoruba  (an African Tribal Religion):

“One who uses a pointed stick to pinch a baby bird should first try it on himself to feel how it hurts.”

Judaism: In Leviticus 19 - “Love your neighbor as yourself”

And in the Talmud - "What is hateful to you, do not do to your fellow: this is the whole Torah; the rest is the explanation; go and learn."

Note that not one of these versions of the Golden Rule says

“Treat others as others treat you”….Rather, ALL of them say,

“Treat others as you would have others treat you.”

It’s not about being nice to those who are nice, while giving ourselves permission to be nasty to those who are nasty.   

It’s not about returning hurt for hurt, disrespect for disrespect, unkindness for unkindness.

It’s not about retaliation, humiliation, or confrontation.

Instead, it’s about RELATION.

God created us to live as relational beings.

Thus we crave to live in right relationship with one another.

And we thrive when we do.

And we suffer when we do not.

Given our innate relational nature, we have to wonder:

Why is it that we struggle so to be kind to one another?

If it is our deepest desire to have healthy, mutually giving relationships with one another why is it such a universal challenge to ‘do unto others as we would have others do unto us?’

Why do we have such difficulty being kind to those we love?

Why do we struggle to be civil with our neighbors?

Why do we get into arguments on the internet with strangers?

Even if we consider ourselves to be relatively kind in what is seemingly a very unkind world – we may not be as kind as we think we are.

We may hold the door open for strangers and bake cookies for new neighbors and do our best to not speak harshly to others even when they speak harshly to us, but I can guarantee you that we all find it to be a challenge to not speak harshly about others, especially when the person we’re speaking about is not present to hear what we’re saying.

The co-worker who doesn’t do their job very well, and undermines our ability to do ours.

The family member who spends too much, drinks too much, or does too little to help out when needed.

The church member who said something or did something that upset us,

to the point where we just can’t resist telling someone – or several someones - just how upset we are.

We all have the capacity to be unkind at times.

If you doubt this of yourself just get in your car and drive into Boston during rush hour (or drive to Maine or the Cape on any weekend in July or August).

Nothing brings out our capacity for kindness and unkindness like moving, and merging, in heavy traffic.

Our willingness to allow others to push their way in – out of turn and in flagrant violation of communal traffic etiquette, is directly proportional to the outrage we feel when someone refuses to give way and create a space for us when we are the one needing to be let in.  

How we react to rule breakers, space takers, and seemingly inconsiderate way makers says a lot about our capacity for kindness and forgiveness.

This is one of those situations where we might ask ourselves,

“What Would Jesus Do?”

If we could imagine Jesus driving on I95.

I imagine him driving a Prius – with a sticker on the back that says “Honk if you love ME”.

Here’s another bumper sticker you may have seen:

“Be kind – Everyone you meet is fighting a battle that you don’t know about.”

This quote originated with 19^th century Scottish author, Ian Maclaren.

Ian Maclaren was the pen name of the Rev. John Watson, a minister in the Free Church of Scotland.

In December 1897, the Rev. Watson was asked by British Weekly magazine to provide a brief Christmas message for their readers. 

Writing as Ian Maclaren, Watson wrote:

     “Be pitiful, for every man is fighting a hard battle.”

Pitiful is used here with its older meaning –

to have pity, or empathy, for our fellow travelers in this life,

to show them kindness, especially when they have wronged us in some way – because as human beings we all have struggles we’re enduring that spill over into our every day interactions,

and we inevitably end up being un-kind to one anther,

intentionally or otherwise.

We bump into each other, and cut each other off in traffic, and say and do things in the midst of anger, distraction, worry, and pain that we’re not always aware that we’re doing or saying.

This is why we struggle to be kind to one another despite our innate nature which craves right and renewed relationships.

Because our human nature often overwhelms our God nature.

Perhaps if we made it a habit to be kind to one another,

even when others are not kind to us,

the next time when our burdens have us bumping and banging into others,

and we need to be shown kindness ourselves,

someone may do just that for us.

The students and teachers who started The Great Kindness Challenge have this to say about the purpose of their event:

“At the heart of the challenge is the simple belief that kindness is strength.

We believe that as an action is repeated, a habit is formed.

And as kindness becomes a habit, peace becomes possible.”

May we all be bringers of peace in this world,

By living into our nature as relational beings,

one kind act at a time.

Thanks be to God, and Amen.