Kindness challenges us.

Last weekend I got to teach at church as part of our series on the fruits of the spirit. I was assigned kindness and to be honest, it wasn’t a topic I wanted to cover. Kindness? Live laugh love. Mean people suck. Don’t be a jerk. I don’t know. Be kind. What else is there to say about it?

If you have 30 minutes and want to watch (or listen) to my sermon, you can find that here. There are aspects I covered there that I won’t get into here but I figured it was still worth sharing in this space since we could all use a little bit of kindness and, truthfully, maybe a little kick in the kindness pants. I broke it into 3 main points so this will be a series of sorts. (Or a series exactly, I suppose, since that’s what a series is!) Come back for the other two or be sure you’re signed up for the email list and I’ll let you know as soon as they’re available.

If we look at kindness as a fruit of the spirit, which is exactly what Galatians 5 explains it to be, it becomes supernatural. Meaning, it’s about more than just our effort. It’s about a kindness that’s rooted in God and comes from the Holy Spirit working through us. Jesus was essentially God’s kindness to us, the gift of a permanent connection to Him that we did not deserve. (Nor will we ever do enough to deserve it, but it was that exact kindness of being undeserving yet still receiving Jesus that makes this gift so kind!) If we want to attempt to live from that type of kindness, it becomes more than just compliments and volunteering our time. That kindness challenges us to more.

I’m gonna use an example here that I completely edited out of my sermon. It’s probably not appropriate but you are my people and you know what you get here so let’s roll with it. Have you ever seen Influencers in the Wild? Like, maybe you yourself have caught people talking to their phones or having impromptu photo shoots in public. That’s not what I mean. There is an entire social media account and website dedicated to Influencers in the Wild. Y’all, it is a mess. It’s bananas over there. If you choose to check it out, be warned, because these influencers like to reveal it all. Anyway! These people are completely unaware that anyone else lives on their planet. They walk through conversations, they place actual furniture in the middle of streets for photo opps, they twerk in the middle of restaurants. It’s a dark place. But it was the perfect example to me of how some of us choose to live our lives - completely unaware of others.

Kindness challenges us to be aware and to see those around us.

Did you know that Jesus’ first recorded miracle was turning water into wine? Before you’re like “whoa, Kristin, that was a hard right turn” bear with me. His first miracle was turning water into wine because his mom asked him to. They were at a wedding for a friend and culturally, providing a feast for lots of people was thought to bring honor to the family. On the flip side, running out of food and wine for your guests would bring shame. So Mary notices that they’re running out of wine & asks Jesus to do a miracle. Jesus is like “Mom, not yet” and then I imagine they have one of those nonverbal conversations with looks back and forth, ending with the mom look, leaving Jesus to feel defeated and say “okay, fine!” Yes, he’s the son of God but he’s also the son of Mary. (Has your mom ever asked you to do anything? We all know it’s never really a question.) Had she seen him do other miraculous things that hadn’t been observed by others or written down? Or was she just so confident in who he was that everything within her believed he could do anything? I’m not sure. But I do very much enjoy asking myself these questions that I would’ve never dared ask before. So Jesus asks the servants to fill the water jars and as they’re being carried to the host, they become wine. Like, a lot of wine. 600-900 bottles worth of wine. I did the math twice to be sure.

Why does this matter? Because it kind of didn’t. Jesus wasn’t saving a life or moving the heavenly realm by providing wine for the wedding feast. He just did a kind thing by providing for a need, because the moment required it. Have you ever seen someone in a group of people start crying? Usually someone else will get up and find some tissues or a napkin for that person. Getting tissues isn’t a morality issue - it isn’t right or wrong. If no one gets the tissues, no one gets the tissues and the crying person is a bit of a mess. This is the same thing. If Jesus hadn’t turned the water into wine, they would’ve run out. The party would’ve ended. His friends may have been in a little bit of a mess but eventually things would move on.

I also love that Jesus used other people to perform his first miracle. He could’ve made a big deal - as I most likely would have - but instead, he didn't even tell anyone he had done it. Only Mary, and maybe the servants who watched it happen before their very eyes as they carried the changing liquid, knew. He used the servants. He used regular people. And that’s pretty cool too.

Jesus was aware of other people. And kindness challenges us to be aware as well. It’s easier to walk through life with blinders on. We’re happier and less burdened when we can keep our eyes on our own things, our own lives and our own needs. But while ignorance is bliss, it also keeps us in a bubble and one day when that bubble pops, we’re going to need to know what is happening in the world around us. If we want to be like Jesus, we have to be willing to see other people. We have to be aware of their pain, hear their cries and acknowledge hurts, especially those we may have contributed to.

Out all the scriptures I read on kindness, this one stuck with me the most:

Be kind to each other, tenderhearted, forgiving one another, just as God through Christ has forgiven you.
Ephesians 4:32 NLT

I love the thesaurus and use it often. I looked up the word tenderhearted because I seemed to feel it when I read it. Some other words for tenderhearted are compassionate, forgiving, affectionate, charitable, sympathetic, understanding, gentle, merciful, considerate and humane. Humane.

Kindness challenges us to see the humanity of people.

We have to be aware of others but we also have to be self-aware enough to know why we don’t see people. We have to be willing to acknowledge what the blinders are that are keeping people out of our sight. What group of people or which individual person are you trying to pretend doesn’t exist? Who has been on your heart or your mind that you keep pushing away, waiting for someone else to take care of them? And what blinders are on your eyes - or heart - to keep them out? Is it a learned prejudice that you’ve always believed but you’re not really sure why? Is it for self-protection to keep yourself from being hurt?

Think about it because we’ll talk about that next time.