Carry Out Kindness

Here is my message from Sunday. The texts were James 1:17-27 and Luke 6:27-38:

After last week’s message on practicing praise, I had a lot of people coming up to me to give me thanks, and so then I had to decide whether it was just everyone working on practicing praise, especially the injunction not to let people assume you are appreciated, but to tell them, or if there were lots of people who decided to practice the kindness challenge on me. But, since one of the things we are working on is assuming the best of intentions for others, I am going to go with the first answer. Today we conclude in our series on the Kindness Challenge, which is based off a book by the same name by Shaunti Feldhahn, and so a quick recap of the three rules of the kindness challenge. The first rule is to nix the negativity, that is we are not to say anything negative to the person we are doing the kindness challenge for, not to say anything negative about them to someone else. The second rule is practice praise, that is as we start to stop focusing on the negative we instead look for positives and to give one piece of praise or affirmation about someone else every day, and tell someone else what you praised them for. If you missed either of those messages, I would encourage you to go back and listen to them, which then leads us into the final rule, which we cover today, and that is to carry out kindness, or to do a small act of kindness or generosity for the person you are doing the kindness challenge for every day, and to do all three of these steps for 30 days, although you don’t have to stop there.

Additionally, while the kindness challenge asks you to do each of these things every day for 30 days, and really you can practice these for anyone and at any time. And the truth is if we want the world to be a kinder place, then it has to start with us. If we want people to be kinder, then we need to be kinder. And what’s more we shouldn’t be doing any of these actions with the expectation that we will get anything in return. We do them simply because they are the right things to be doing, the way that we should be living. And we of course hear that quite a bit in scripture. As we heard in James today, he says that we are to be doers of the world, not just hearers, which is a preview of him saying that faith without works is dead.

Practice Praise

Here is my message from Sunday. The text was 1 Thessalonians 5:12-23 and Luke 17:11-19:

Two weeks ago when we began talking about the kindness challenge, I said that I had originally planned on doing this series later, but felt called that we needed to be doing it now. That decision has been reinforced not just by those of you who have commented on the need to have this, and the arguments you all are having about kindness, which maybe sort of kind of defeating the point. But it was also reinforced by an email we got from the principal of the middle school this past week telling parents that one of their key emphasis to students was to be kind to one another, and then a meeting with the athletic director for the school district who said that she has a hard time retaining coaches because of the grief that they receive from some parents. And what she then basically said, although she didn’t know the language that we are using was to nix the negative, stop criticizing everything they do, give them a break, and instead start practicing praise and supporting them, and so that covers the first of the two rules of what we are being challenged to do in practicing the Kindness Challenge.

And so as a quick reminder this comes from a book of the same name written by Shaunti Feldhahn, and while the ultimate goal is to practice kindness in all areas of our lives, the challenge is to pick one relationship which you would like to improve, it could one that is only hanging on by a thread, or maybe one that’s going okay, but could be better, and then for 30 days to do three things. The first is not to say anything negative to them or about them to anyone else, and a reminder because someone asked me this week, that also includes all the non-verbal ways we express negativity or our displeasure. And there is a supplement, or another option for that rule that is really for men who are doing the challenge for their spouse, and you can hear about that or the other ways to avoid negativity by listening to last week’s message, which is available on our website and our Facebook and YouTube pages. The second rule, which is what we are talking about today, is to practice praise which is to find one positive thing that you can sincerely praise or affirm about the person you are doing the challenge for and to tell them and tell one other person, and do that every day for 30 days. And then the third rule, which we’ll conclude with next week is to do a small act of kindness or generosity every day for your person. And so while removing the negative comments is important, practicing praise, having to look for and talk about positive things in order to give praise is the catalyst to kindness because it then causes you to have to change what it is you are focusing on and paying attention to.

Nix the Negative

Here is my message from Sunday. The text was Matthew 5:21-24 and James 3:1-12:

When Charles Darwin was originally formulating his idea of evolution, he said that one of the things that almost undid it for him was the idea of kindness and altruism, let alone sacrifice. After all, if it’s about the survival of the fittest and making sure that your genes survive for future generations, taking care of your own makes sense, but why would you ever want to help others, especially strangers. But later on, according to Dr. Dacher Keltner, a professor at UC Berkeley, he says that Darwin actually came to believe that our need to be social and caring may actually be stronger than our desire for self-preservation, and it’s ingrained not socially learned. Indeed, Dr. Keltner says, “evolution [has] crafted a species—us—with remarkable tendencies toward kindness, play, generosity, reverence and self-sacrifice, which are vital to the classic tasks of evolution—survival, gene replication and smooth functioning groups.” That is, kindness is ingrained in us, and we can see this even from the earliest age.

In a study done with six-month-olds, they were shown a round piece of wood that had eyes glued onto it and it was struggling to climb up a felt mountain. After seeing the circle struggling, a triangle piece of wood, also with eyes glued on it, came along and tried to help push the circle to the top. But then along comes a square piece of wood, with eyes, that tries to push the triangle and the circle down so they can’t make it to the top. What experimenters wanted to know was how the infants would respond, and while they couldn’t verbalize how they felt about the pieces of wood, they could express it by which blocks they played with, and which do you think they refused to play with? The square. The block that wasn’t kind. They even introduced a neutral observer block who did nothing to hinder or help, and the children still preferred the triangle to the others. So, even before we know what’s happening, we have a natural preference for those who help and are kind over those who are unkind. And what scans of the brain have also found is that when we participate in acts of kindness that the pleasure centers of our brain are activated, and so kindness in and of itself can be its own reward. And so with that we continue in our series on the Kindness Challenge, which is based upon a book of the same name by Shaunti Feldhahn.

Be Kind to One Another

Here is my message from Sunday. The scripture passage was Ephesians 4:25-5:2:

If it seems like flying the friendly skies is a little less friendly these days, you’d be right. The FAA began keeping records of referrals made to them of unruly passengers on planes in 1995.  A few weeks ago they released statistics on those unruly passengers on planes so far in 2021. In less than six months this year, there have been more reports than in any full year since they began keeping those records. This has included a Southwest flight attendant being punched in the face, losing two teeth. A Delta flight being diverted to Albuquerque after a passenger threatened to bring the plane down and tried to get into the cockpit. There have been multiple incidents of passengers fighting with each other. Southwest and American have delayed bringing back alcohol sales, and United only sells beer and wine, and then only on long flights, to try and eliminate alcohol exacerbating the already high tensions. Long time flight attendants have said it’s worse than they can ever remember it. And then we could talk about increasing altercations in grocery and big box stores, which are also on the rise. It seems like we’ve just forgotten how to get along with others.

And so with all of that in mind, today we begin a new worship series entitled The Kindness Challenge, which is based upon a book of the same name by Shaunti Feldhahn. I initially read the book a number of years ago, and even did a series on it at my last church, but with our current climate and situation I decided to dust it off and do it over again. I was going to do it later in the year, but decided to move it up now because I think it’s necessary for us as Christians to be showing a different way of living. As was said in the introduction to the passage from Ephesians today, when we put on the clothes of Christ, something we’ve heard a lot of in the past few months, then we are to put away the ways of the world, and to live like Christ, to imitate Christ, and one of the ways we do that Paul says is by practicing kindness.

The Kindness Challenge: Carrying Out Kindness

Here is my sermon from Sunday. The text was Matthew 25:31-46:

After last week’s message on practicing praise, I had a lot of people coming up to me to give me thanks, and so then I had to decide whether it was just everyone working on practicing praise, especially the injunction not to let people assume you are appreciated, but to tell them, or if there were lots of people who decided to practice the kindness challenge on me. But, since one of the things we are working on is assuming the best of intentions for others, rather than the worst, I am going to go with the first answer. Today we conclude in our series on the Kindness Challenge, which is based off a book by the same name by Shaunti Feldhahn, and so a quick recap of the three rules of the kindness challenge. The first rule is to nix the negativity, that is we are not to say anything negative to the person we are doing the kindness challenge for, not to say anything negative about them to someone else. The second rule is practice praise, that is as we start to stop focusing on the negative we instead look for positives and to give one piece of praise or affirmation about someone else every day, and tell someone else what you praised them for. If you missed either of those messages, I would encourage you to go back and listen to them, which then leads us into the final rule, which we cover today, and that is to carry out kindness, or to do a small act of kindness or generosity for the person you are doing the kindness challenge for every day, and to do all three of these steps for 30 days, although you don’t have to stop there.

Additionally, as we are doing the kindness challenge for one person, if that’s what we choose to do, we will also find that we can do these steps for everyone so that we are seeking to bring kindness into all our interactions. But, one thing to keep in mind as we think of ways to be more kind is that except for this third rule, you can do the first two rules for anyone, even if you never come into contact with them. So, you can be more kind to that certain politician you can’t stand, by removing negativity and practicing praise, and remember first is that you don’t have to like someone in order to be kind, and everyone is deserving of kindness even if they are not being kind to others. You can do it for someone who has died, and you need to bring some healing to that relationship, or to someone you have cut out of your life because of something that they did to you. Kindness, and practicing acts of kindness, can be the first steps to bringing about healing and forgiveness, and remembering that forgiveness is not about condoning, enabling or forgetting a hurt, or even saying that it didn’t hurt, but about freeing ourselves from carrying that burden any more so that the perpetrator no longer has control over our lives. Nor is forgiveness about denying that we have the right to be resentful, but for us to say that we are going to put aside that right in order to practice kindness, compassion and forgiveness, with the big caveat that Jesus never said that we only had to forgive people up to a certain point, but that if they crosses our line in the sand, that we didn’t have to forgive. Instead he tells us not to forgive 7 times, but 70x7 times and that unless we learn to forgive then we will not be forgiven. And kindness, acting in kindness can play a significant role in that, because kindness is not just about what we think, but it is about what we say and what we do.

The Kindness Challenge: Practice Praise

Here is my sermon from Sunday. The text was Luke 17:11-19:

There are lots of stories of Jesus healing people in the gospels, of which the healing of the 10 lepers which we heard from Luke this morning seems to be one of them, except, this story is not really about a healing. Yes, a healing does take place, but all we are told about it is that after Jesus tells them to go show themselves to the priest that “as they went, they were made clean.” That is they left Jesus before they were healed of their leprosy, which was a default term used to describe lots of skin diseases, not just the one we typically refer to today as leprosy, or Hansen’s Disease, which still infects some 200,000 people a year around the world, and most of the cases in the US are believed to come from exposure to armadillos. But, that’s just of interest, at least to me, this story is not about the healing, but about the thanksgiving and how it takes place. At the beginning of the story, Jesus is traveling, and these ten men call out in unison to Jesus, to have mercy on them. There is a subtle distinction in the major translations here that I think is significant to point out. In the NRSV, which is what we heard this morning, and the translation I prefer for several reasons, the are simply referred to as ten lepers, but the NIV refers to them as ten men who had leprosy. The difference is subtle, but important, because the NIV simple makes their disease an aspect of something they have, rather than who they are. They have leprosy, rather than they are lepers. It gives them dignity and humanity that is lacking, or can be lacking, when we refer to them by whatever characteristic we choose to say that they are, which I think is important as we think about gratitude and praise and how we see and respond to others.

But Jesus hears their request, which may simply be a request for alms, or money, not a request for healing, as the story is not clear, as it is in other healing stories, that that is what they are asking for. And Jesus listens to them, and sees them, another important point, and offers them healing or cleansing, as leprosy is about ritual impurity, and then they go on their way and then are healed. As one person I read this week said, “a portion of Jesus’ ministry is his willingness to be interrupted by the intrusion of human need.” That is, he sees these people in need of his help and he takes the time to help them, regardless of what is going on, or how busy or exhausted he is, and by implication calls for us to do the same. But how often are we irritated by the intrusions we have in our life, the things that we don’t think are important, or, again, that we might attribute the worst of intentions towards the person who is coming to us for something. But what we see in this story is that just we never know who we may encounter that needs healing, even if they are not seeking it, so too we never know who will be a vehicle for God’s grace to us, as it is here. Because of the ten-people healed, only one returns to thank Jesus, to give him praise. It’s not that the others have their healing go away, they simply go on with their lives. But one returns, and he is a Samaritan at that, one of “those people”, someone not liked by Jews, and he praises God with a loud voice, and then bows down at Jesus’ feet, an act of worship, and thanks him. He sees Jesus’ act of grace towards him and responds with praise and thanksgiving. His life becomes an act of worship towards God.

The Kindness Challenge: Nix the Negative

Here is my sermon from Sunday. The text was Matthew 5:21-24:

In Jewish tradition, every sin is ultimately atoneable, or forgivable in this life, except one, and that is the sin of desecrating or profaning God’s name, which can only be atoned after death. When we think of profaning God’s name, it’s usually something about taking God’s name in vain, or cursing, but according the Rabbi Rav, the core desecration occurs when those who are most closely associated with God act in ways that would be perfectly legitimate for other people, but that are not for those who proclaim faith. That is, when representatives of God appear to act in ways that do not adhere to the highest moral standards, their behavior reflects poorly not just on the faith, but more importantly their behavior reflects poorly on God, and consequently God’s name is desecrated. In the daily baptismal prayer we have talked about, and have available, we pray that everything we do that day would honor God, but what if we thought about that not only honoring God but also not dishonoring God to others, because what we do matters.

As we continue in our series on the kindness challenge, I had a number of people come to me to tell me that the person they were going to do the challenge for, the person they were going to work on practicing kindness towards, were not believers, which means it’s even more important that our actions match what we proclaim to believe, because it’s not just that we are setting a bad example and picture of Christians, and there are plenty of people who do that already, as we see on an all too regular basis, especially in trying to use scripture to justify bad, or even illegal, behavior, but within this understanding we are also desecrating God’s name, just to add a little more pressure for us all.

The Kindness Challenge: Breaking Bread

Here is my sermon from Sunday. The text was Luke 22:14-23:

A little more than two week’s ago, former presidents Bush and Obama made speeches about the current political atmosphere in the country. Obama said “Why are we deliberately trying to misunderstand each other and be cruel to each other and put each other down? That’s not who we are!” while Bush the younger said “We have seen our discourse degraded by casual cruelty…. Bullying and prejudice in our public life sets a national tone, provides permission for cruelty and bigotry, and compromises the moral education of children. The only way to pass along civic values is to first live up to them.” Now, this decline in civility has been building up for a long time, and is clearly found in more than just politics. Just turn on the television and we see people screaming at each other on cooking shows. I’ve spent some time in kitchens, and every kitchen I’ve been in that type of behavior would not be tolerated, but it makes for good television. There is a reason why we don’t have a show called the sweetest housewives of Beverly Hills, because that’s not exciting, and people don’t want to watch two political commentators agree with each other. Instead we’d rather watch people be oppositional, except we’ve moved passed just disagreeing to being disagreeable. And as much as we say that we don’t like it and we want it to be better, the truth is our behavior says exactly the opposite because people are watching these shows.