Love is Kind

"LOVE IS KIND"

a message by Rev. Dr. Bruce Havens

Coral Isles Church, U.C.C.

September 8, 2024

4 Love is patient; love is kind; love is not envious or boastful or arrogant 5 or rude. It does not insist on its own way; it is not irritable; it keeps no record of wrongs; 6 it does not rejoice in wrongdoing but rejoices in the truth. 7 It bears all things, believes all things, hopes all things, endures all things.

Mark 10: 13-16  NRSV

13 People were bringing children to him in order that he might touch them, and the disciples spoke sternly to them. 14 But when Jesus saw this, he was indignant and said to them, “Let the children come to me; do not stop them, for it is to such as these that the kingdom of God belongs. 15 Truly I tell you, whoever does not receive the kingdom of God as a little child will never enter it.” 16 And he took them up in his arms, laid his hands on them, and blessed them.

How do we learn to love more?  Or maybe the question is, can we love more?  Some people may think love comes in a limited quantity that we can’t increase.  Can you look back on your life and say you have grown in your ability to love?

I believe we can grow and learn to love more all through our lives.  I kind of think that is the whole point of living – to learn to love more. That’s why I chose to call this series - learning to love more.  I am using the verses from 1 Corinthians 13:4-7.  The writer, Paul, gives 15 qualities of love. I will focus on one characteristic of love a week.  This morning my focus is, “love is kind.”

That almost seems obvious, doesn’t it.  Like, duh, who doesn’t know that?  But let’s be honest.  How many times have we acted unkindly to those we claim to love the most?  Ooh, that’s tough to say, isn’t it?  I know I have spoken and acted unkindly to family members more than once.  I definitely have some confessions and some repentance to practice.  You going to be honest and join me? 

Kindness ought to begin with those we already love.  But it shouldn’t end there, right?  I mean doesn’t our Christian ethic demand we treat everyone with kindness and love, not just those we already love?  Jesus challenged us to love our enemies and pray for those who persecute us.  Wow!  Hold on, I need a water break for that.  C’mon Jesus, do good to someone who not only isn’t kind or loving to me, but who actually persecutes me?

“You have heard that it was said, ‘Love your neighbor and hate your enemy.’ 44 But I tell you, love your enemies and pray for those who persecute you, 45 that you may be children of your Abwoon in heaven, who causes their sun to rise on the evil and the good, and sends rain on the righteous and the unrighteous. 46 If you love those who love you, what reward will you get? Are not even the tax collectors doing that? 47 And if you greet only your own people, what are you doing more than others? Do not even pagans do that?

Paul takes it perhaps a step further: “Bless those who persecute you; bless and do not curse them.”  That is a very high standard, is it not?  I know, even at my age, even after 40 years of preaching this stuff, I still have to learn to love more, to grow in Christian love.

But let me start at a bit lower stage.  At the very least I want to try to remember there are two things unkindness never deserves.  I’m talking about when someone acts unkindly toward you without any provocation.  Kind of like when the bully on the school playground walks up and starts punching you in the face with no warning and no provocation from you.  Two things we cannot do:

One is we cannot return unkindness with unkindness, evil for evil.  Jesus taught us:

38 “You have heard that it was said, ‘An eye for an eye and a tooth for a tooth.’ 39 But I say to you: … if anyone strikes you on the right cheek, turn the other also, 40 and if anyone wants to sue you and take your shirt, give your coat as well, 41 and if anyone forces you to go one mile, go also the second mile.”

Remember also, though, that this does not mean to become a foot wipe or a powerless victim to evil.  Remember what I taught you a while back.  The act of turning the other cheek was an act of nonviolent resistance.  In Jesus’ time, striking someone on the cheek was an act of shaming the other person.  Normally an owner would do that to a slave, or a husband to a wife.  It was an act of someone in a superior social class to someone of a lesser class.  But if someone did that to you, to turn the other cheek was to challenge the one who has struck you to embarrass themselves by striking you in a socially unacceptable way, and therefore bring shame upon themselves after trying to shame you.  Same with someone taking your cloak and leaving you with nothing to sleep in to keep warm.  Same with a soldier forcing you to go more than the required mile.  All these were not responses of powerlessness, but of challenge to the unkindness, the insult of the other, without resorting to violence or unkindness.  We may not be clever enough to come up with such perfect responses but at the very least, our goal should be to not return unkindness with unkindness as we try to grow in love.

But listen, here’s the second thing I want to emphasize when someone does something unkind.  We must never accept that we deserved someone treating us unkindly.  Even if we have done something wrong, that does not give the other person the right to demean us, to take away our dignity by being unkind.   Too many women, too many children, too many people who were in some way less powerful than someone else have suffered because they believed that the other person was right about them, that they deserved to be treated unkindly.  Too many people spend their lives believing they were not worthy of kindness or basic human courtesy.

Let me offer one more thing to think about.  Perhaps it is exactly in these situations when we find a way to respond with kindness to unkindness that we win.  True victory isn’t to beat the other person down more than they beat you down.  It is to show that we are able to rise above their unkindness and respond with kindness.  But most of all we cannot accept the belief that we deserve to be treated unkindly or worse, abusively.

Enough with the negative side of love is kind, for now.  Let’s take the rest of our time to focus on how we can grow in love, how we can love more, by being kind.  Harold Kushner, who wrote the famous book, “When Bad Things Happen to Good People,” once shared this thought: “when you are kind to others it not only changes you, it changes the world.”  Think about the power in that statement.  When we are kind to others it changes the world.  In fact, I think I would reverse the order of his statement just to make the personal part of it the most important:  when we are kind to others it changes the world, but it also changes us.  I believe the more we practice kindness, and I need a lot more practice believe me, the more it changes us.  Perhaps another way to say that is we become more kind by being kind.  Kind of like, “practice makes perfect.”  The more we practice kindness the more we become kind.  And in so doing we learn to love more.

He was sitting with his grandson, side-by-side in the old rocking chairs out on the dock looking over the lake.  His grandson was 7 or 8 years old.  He was a sweet boy, sunny disposition, loving with none of the irony, sarcasm or anger that boys often use as defenses once they reach a certain age.  The grandfather marveled at the boy and the boy idolized the grandfather.  But the grandfather could see a cloud cross the boy’s face, something unusual for him - sadness or anger or fear, he wasn’t sure.  It stayed there longer than the old man had ever seen before.  He hated the thought that the boy might lose that essence of kindness and love that was so present in him.

Finally, after a long silence, the old man looked down at the boy and said gently, “Look at me son.”  The boy looked up at his grandfather, and the old man said, “you are perfect.  God made you that way.  You are loving and kind and good to everyone.”  Then he turned and looked up at the sky and pointed to it.  He said to the boy, “look up, you see those clouds up there?”  The boy nodded, squinting up at the bright sky with some random clouds, mostly bright white, a few gray or even darker.  They were blowing across the sky with the wind.

The old man said, “That sky is perfect.  God made it that way.  The bright blue and the clouds too, even the gray or rainy ones.  And the sky is still perfect even with the clouds.  But the clouds don’t stay.  They blow away with the wind.”  He turned back to the boy and spoke softly, as softly as the wind blowing the clouds.  He said, “any time something is troubling you, someone’s been mean, or you feel bad about something you may have thought or said or done, look up at the sky.  Watch the clouds blow by.  And remember the sky is perfect, because God made it that way.  And you are perfect the way God made you.  Let whatever clouds your mind blow away.  And just keep on being loving, and kind, and good to everyone.”  The boy looked up into the old man’s eyes a few moments longer and then smiled, and they both turned and looked back up at the sky, and the clouds blowing away with the wind. 

Love is kind my friends.  Every act of kindness is a sign of God’s love, of God’s presence.  The good news is that God’s love excels above all the clouds of unkindness.  Every time we show kindness to others we help blow away the clouds of darkness and let the love of God shine through.  If we want to love more, let’s practice being kind more.  It really is that simple.  AMEN.