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.
Indeed kindness is something we hear a lot about in
scripture. It is one of the fruit of the Spirit, something that we will be
doing when we are producing the fruit of being a disciple. And in the prophet
Micah when he asks what the Lord requires of us, it’s to do justice and love
kindness and walk humbly with our God. Love kindness. And yet, how often do we actually practice
kindness, or might I say true kindness? Probably not as much as we should, or
maybe even as much as we might like to. Sometimes we don’t because we’re
irritated, or even angry and rather than following Paul’s injunction to be
angry but not sin, we give right into that sinning part. I found myself doing
that this week. I replied to an email that bugged me from someone trying to
sell me something, repeatedly, and so I just typed out my thoughts on it, and I
know I wasn’t kind in my response. But, in the moment I felt justified in my response,
which can be a problem. And we should note here that we are not talking about
being nice.
We often treat kindness and niceness as if they are the same
thing, but they are not. While you can sometimes be both at the same time, you
can also be nice, and not be kind, and you can be kind and not be nice. Paul
says that we are to speak the truth to our neighbors because we are members of
the same body, we are in community. But sometimes we avoid having difficult
conversations, or dealing with conflict, because we want to be nice. But in
being nice and avoiding things, we are not actually being kind because we are
not actually correcting behavior or situations that need to be resolved.
Instead, the kind thing to do is to address the situation, tell the truth, but
we don’t have to be jerks about it. We can tell the truth in order to be kind
and we can also be kind in how we tell the truth. We often hear about free
speech and hate speech, but you know something we don’t hear much about and
that is Christian speech. Even though the letter of James warns us about the
power of the tongue, or the power of words, which we’ll talk about next week,
rarely do we follow that advice. But we as Christians should be very cognizant
for many many reasons about what we say, we should be talking about Christian
speech, to, as the 1st letter of Peter says, speak as if speaking the actual
words of God. And therefore our words should be words of kindness, and words of
healing and wholeness. Words that bring people into relationship rather than break
relationship.
And so that’s what the Kindness Challenge is about. The
challenge itself is about focusing on just one relationship in which you are
having difficulties. Now this is not to say that you shouldn’t practice
kindness in all aspects of your life, because you should, and if we are focused
on being kind, kindness will bleed out into every area of our lives, which is
part of the goal. But, for the sake of this challenge, it’s to focus on being
kind to one person for thirty days. To focus on one relationship that you want
to make better. It can be a relationship that you are having difficulties in,
maybe even one that’s on the rocks, or it can be one that you simply want to
make better. And so this can be for a spouse or partner, child, coworker,
neighbor, friend, anyone for whom you would like to improve the relationship, maybe
even for a minister, although if you all come and tell me that you’re doing the
challenge for me I’m going to get a complex. Now you can also start the
challenge today, once I give you the guidelines, or you may want to wait until
the end after we have walked through the details of all of the steps, the
reasons why it’s important and how to actually do it, because as I’ve already
said, and what research also shows is that we are not as kind as we think we
are. We also tend to be a lot more negative than we think we are, especially
with those with whom we are having problems. And so one of the things that the
kindness challenge does is to help us to notice all the ways that we might be
unkind, even the subtle ways like rolling our eyes, or sighs, or the negative
thoughts that we have, or even how we disengage with these relationships. And
so here are the three rules, or guidelines, whatever you want to call them for
the challenge.
The first is that for 30 days we are not going to say
anything negative about the person you are doing the challenge for, to say anything
negative either to them or to say anything negative about them to anyone else.
No negative comments about them. There is an alternative rule for men if you
choose to do this for your partner, which we will cover next week. The second
rule is to find one positive thing every day you can sincerely praise or affirm
about your person and then tell them and tell someone else. You can also write
them down in a journal, and wouldn’t that make a nice Christmas present? And
then the third part is to do a small act of kindness or generosity for your
person every day. Again, we’ll look at each of these over the next weeks. But I
do want to emphasize the importance of doing all three of these activities.
While 55% of participants in the challenge reported improvement in their
relationships by only doing one of the three steps, 89% who practiced all three
rules reported improvements in the relationship, and as scientists say, that’s
statistically significant.
Now while the rules may seem simple to some, they really
aren’t, and that’s because kindness takes effort, and the rules emphasize the
three forms, thought, word and action. Most of you are probably familiar with a
quote which has been similarly attributed to Gandhi, Lao Tzu, and Margaret
Thatcher but perhaps it Kierkegaard or maybe Dick Van Patten who said “Watch
your thoughts. They become words. Watch your words. They become deeds. Watch
your deeds. They become habits. Watch your habits. They become character.
Character is everything.” And that’s a large part of what the Kindness Challenge
does is to change us. Because what it causes us to do is to act and live
differently. Now hopefully that will be noticed and make a difference for
others, and survey results show that it does, but it’s also to change us.
Because if instead of reacting negatively to others with whom we are having
struggles, or getting angry about what others are doing, then we take control
of our own lives, our own emotions, our own actions. As Viktor Frank said, “When
we are no longer able to change a situation, we are challenged to change
ourselves.”
We have a friend who’s been divorced for more than a decade,
and I’m sure that many of you know someone like this as well, but who is still
responsible for everything that goes wrong in their life? Their ex is. More
than a decade later, and don’t even think of bringing them up because the nasty
words will follow. And so who is controlling this person’s life? It’s their ex.
They are not only still renting them space in their head, but they are paying
the rent, not the ex. And so does continuing to be angry all these years later
change anything? The answer is yes, it changes them. But, if instead they were
to put that away, or to run the kindness challenge, or at least of portion of
it, who would also be changed? They would. And so if you wonder if you can do
the kindness challenge for someone with whom you are no longer in relationship,
or maybe even for someone who has died, in order to change our mental energy
and feelings, to try and practice kindness to ourselves? The answer is yes. You
probably can’t do all three steps, such as doing a small act of kindness or
generosity, but you can most definitely at the very least learn to nix the
negative and reclaim your life and thoughts for yourself. And the great thing
is, when you have control of your feelings, or you take control of your
feelings, then you’ve taken away their power to drive you crazy, which in some
cases will drive them crazy. Bonus points.
And so as an addition to that, while Shaunti Feldhahn
doesn’t talk about this, as I’ve been thinking about this for several years, I
think you could also do this for yourself. I probably wouldn’t recommend that
as the first person to do the challenge for, but as you are progressing in
practicing and living kindness to do it for yourself, most especially if you
have a lot of negative self-talk. As Jesus says, do unto others as you would
want them to do unto you, and so just as we wouldn’t want others to be saying
negative things to us, we shouldn’t be saying them to ourselves. And let me say
again, if we are trying to be nice we might let others say or do negative
things to us and ignore it, because we don’t want to have a confrontation, but
that is not what kindness is about. But how we respond can be kind. As Paul
says, it’s okay to be angry, and scripture talks about righteous anger, but
don’t sin. Don’t return like for like. Instead we respond in love, we respond
with grace, we respond with truth given in kindness.
Being kind does not mean that we tolerate bad behavior and
when we are actively kind to people who don’t deserve it, or to someone who is
not kind to us, then we truly begin to see the power of Christ-like kindness.
And as Feldhahn says, “one of the hardest times to be kind is also one of the
most powerful: when we treat someone well who for no reason is not treating us
well.” As we heard in the gospel passage from Matthew that we are to pray for
our enemies, because everyone can pray for people they like, everyone can love
those they like, it’s when we act the same way to friend and foe alike, that’s
when we show our discipleship. It’s when we begin to imitate Christ, who even
gives forgiveness to those who are crucifying him, that we begin to understand
not just God’s call for our lives, but also our need for the power of the
Spirit to intercede in our lives to make these things possible, because it’s
not the fruit of humanity, or even the fruit of the loom, but the fruit of the
Spirit that brings about love, joy, peace, patience, goodness, faithfulness,
gentleness, self-control and kindness.
Kindness is a habit, which means it has to be worked at, and when it becomes a habit, then it becomes a lifestyle, something we live in day in and day out with everyone. And just as negativity is contagious, so too is kindness. When we are kind to others, those we love and those we don’t even know, we can change that moment, that day for them. The message on the voice mail on my cell phone says that the next thing you do for someone could change their life, so make sure it’s a change for the better. The world may be frustrated and angry, negative and irritated, and may act out of it, and people may thrill on that, after all we never watch the Sweetest House Wives of Beverly Hills, but that doesn’t mean we have to be that way. Indeed as Christians, as followers of Christ we are called to be and do something different. We are called to be imitators of Christ. And so, as we begin this kindness journey together, let us have, as Paul says, “no evil talk come out of [our] mouths, but only what is useful for building up, as there is need, so that [our] words may give grace to those who hear… Put away… all bitterness and wrath and anger and wrangling and slander, together with all malice, and be kind to one another.” I pray that it will be so my brothers and sisters. Amen.
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