Last week, in a very helpful sermon, Taylor preached on three texts and reminded us all about what it means to follow the path of Jesus Christ, a path which is often so different from other paths in our world, especially in this election season. If you think of Taylor’s sermon in terms of Google map, this week I would like to hit the “+” sign to zero in on one of the words in that Ephesians passage that Taylor preached upon. A word that is also in both the Colossians and Matthew passages this week.
In his book, Travels with a Stick, Richard Frazer, a Church of Scotland pastor in Edinburgh, writes about his walk on the famous pilgrim path, Santiago de Compostela, a 1500-kilometer path across Spain walked by thousands of Christians and other pilgrims every year. The walk did not begin well as he writes: “Three days into my pilgrimage…I was broken and utterly dejected. My knees were shot by the constant up and down of the hilly terrain, I had the worst dose of tendonitis I had ever known in my left ankle, and blisters covered the soles of both my feet. I felt totally crippled and doubted I could go on. I had arrived from Edinburgh only days before, and now felt I needed to get back on a train and head home with my tail between my leg, a humiliated man who’d completely misjudged my ability.”
Now, one thing to know about Frazer, who was our daughter’s pastor when she was studying in Edinburgh, he is in excellent shape as an experienced hiker. In fact, as he later admits, “I thought I was fit and would be able to brag about the mileage I’d clock up each day, leaving all my poor fellow pilgrims in a cloud of dust behind me.” Does this sound like anyone you know?
That night, when Frazer was hobbling into bed, a man named Jacques, a banker from Grenoble, saw his feet and said, “look at your feet, you must be in a bad way.” He then made this offer: “One of the things I love to do when walking is to look after other people’s feet. It is my way of helping out. I would be honoured to take a look at your feet and see if I could be of assistance.” That night, Jacques, “with great delicacy and gentleness,” Fraser writes, “removed with a pair of scissors what looked like acres of damaged skin from my heels and soles.” Jacques then offered iodine to guard against infection, redressed Fraser’s feet, and gave Fraser a suggestion for a convent where he could stay and get needed rest for a few days. As they parted ways the next morning, Fraser addressed Jacque as “St. Jacques” and said to him, “thank you for all your kindness and help last night. I think you have put me on the road to recovery.”[1] And he had – Fraser was able to complete his pilgrimage.
Kindness. It was in the middle of the list in Ephesians 4 last week, and it is in the middle of the list here in Colossians 3: “As God’s chosen ones, holy and beloved, clothe yourselves with compassion, kindness, humility, meekness, and patience.”
The word “kindness” in Greek is “chrestos,” and literally means “good, loving…” as you might expect. But these words do not quite capture the word’s meaning in English. This word, “chrestos,” is also the same word used to describe the yoke of Christ mentioned in Matthew: “Come to me, all who labor and are heaven laden, and I will give you rest. Take my yoke upon you, and learn from me;…my yoke is easy, kind, and my burden is light.”
Now a yoke is something which a pair of oxen wears that helps them pull a heavy load. A yoke gives strength and power to go on. A good yoke that fits correctly does not chafe or rub. It is easy, it is “chrestos,” it is kind. Kindness – the word describes what Jacques did for Fraser. Jacques shared Fraser’s yoke; he gave him strength to go on.
Kindness. Kindness does not take the place of doing justice. As Archbishop Tutu once said, “There comes a point where we need to stop just pulling people out of the river. We need to go upstream and find out why they’re falling in.” Being kind and doing justice are both necessary and need to go hand in hand.
And, kindness is not the same as being “nice.” “Nice” is pleasant. “Nice” is polite – but passive. “Nice” might have smiled and even winced as Fraser hobbled to his bunk. But “nice” would not have offered to hold Fraser’s dirty, bleeding feet.
Kindness is action. Kindness, as one preacher I know once wrote, “recognizes that we are yoked together, you and I – yoked not only to each other, but to all others [made in the image of God]. Yoked because we are bound by the One who took action to make our life less difficult. The cross of Jesus Christ is our yoke, and it connects us to every living person.”[2]
Kindness is not “sweet.” Neither is kindness weak. Mean comments or name-calling on social media and the internet, mocking or making fun of others when they are not present – that is weak. But kindness requires true grit. As the playwright Wendy Wasserstein once wrote about life in New York City: “We’re told to be tough, cold…To be kind isn’t to be soft, but rather, humane. Being cold is simple…kindness takes far more courage.”
In a world such as ours, it is not always easy or simple to be kind. I recall the columnist Robert Rosenthal sharing the story of when he saw two girls, aged 5 and 8, stumbling on the sidewalk on the way to school. “Instinctively, I pulled over, got out of the car, and started toward them,” he writes. “The older girl attempted to assist her younger sister, but simultaneously, appeared to expend more energy in the way she peered at my approach. While she said nothing, her terrorized eyes said to me, ‘Please, we don’t need your help – you are a stranger.’” We live in a world where kindness can be suspect.
But Jesus says, Paul says, the Spirit says, “clothe yourselves with kindness” anyway.
Kindness is easy to undervalue when it comes to our daily lives. Too often perhaps, we see its importance only later in life. The British philosopher and writer Aldous Huxley made this comment to a colleague near the end of his life: “You know, Huston, it’s rather embarrassing to have spent one’s entire lifetime pondering the human condition and to come toward its close and find that I really don’t have anything more profound to pass on by way of advice than, ‘Try to be a little kinder.’”
Huxley was famously agnostic, but kindness can be overlooked or undervalued by Christians too. After all, kindness does not sound dramatic or heroic compared to self-sacrifice, or doing justice, or taking up a cross. But taking on a yoke – kindness – keeps getting mentioned in the Bible because it is the way of Christ.
Kerry had hanging over her desk on a wall in our joint office in the Pottstown church a line from George Eliot’s novel, Middlemarch, a line that is worthy of being part of any personal or congregational mission statement. What Eliot wrote was this: “What do we live for if not to make the world less difficult for each other?”
At this year’s General Assembly of our denomination in Salt Lake City, one of the most moving speakers by all accounts was Owen Gibbs, a member of First Presbyterian Church in Salt Lake City. At 12, he came out as transgender. As he told the several thousand gathered delegates, “The same kids I had been friends with in Sunday School are still my friends now. The same old ladies who would ask me questions about school and give me candy and cake at church parties still do that. When I changed my name and pronouns, our church didn’t miss a beat.” “Every queer person deserves the kind of love and support that I’ve received – especially in Utah, where being queer can be so, so difficult.”
What do we live for if not to make the world less difficult for each other? How can we do that, how can we show kindness? Simple things sometimes:
By going with a friend to the doctor so that you can take notes of what the doctor says about the friend’s treatment.
By letting the parent with a crying child go in front of you at the store.
By learning the names of children sitting near you in the pews or by inviting the new student to sit at your table, or the new co-worker to go out to lunch.
God knows it takes time to be kind and we can often feel like we do not have enough time. It is a matter of doing what we can, whenever we can, and wherever we are. Just as with a musical instrument or a sport, kindness is something we need to practice.
Practice kindness: Call someone by the name they want to be called; use the pronouns they would like for you to use.
…Learn how to pronounce that person’s name which may sound so strange at first to your ears.
…Stop the flow of spiteful talk along the grapevine.
…Find a way to let your friends or co-workers know that those jokes that put down other people for whatever reason – are not jokes you think are worth sharing. But you can do that too – not with self-righteousness, but with kindness.
Speak the truth – but with gentleness.
Find ways to affirm and encourage others.
Bark less and wag more.
Unkindness can be contagious. As Owen and too many people who identify as LGBTQ+ can testify; as too many people who are members of racial or ethnic minorities can attest to; as too many people who don’t look as good or talk as well as others with more money and education can witness to: one cruel joke can lead to another; one trolling comment can multiply as fast as algorithms can spread them.
The greatest way to stop the spread of unkindness is to practice kindness. Because kindness, the way of Christ, is even more contagious. Kindness can send ripples out from the center like a pebble in a pond. And, you never know how far that kindness may reach, or the impact it may have.
“Mark was walking home from school [in middle school] when he noticed the boy ahead of him had tripped and dropped all of his books, along with two sweaters, a baseball bat, a glove, and a tape recorder.” So began a story about Mark and that other boy in a newspaper story that ran a few years back. Mark helped the boy, who Mark learned was named Bill, pick up the scattered articles. As they were walking in the same direction, Mark helped carry the burden. On the walk, Mark learned that Bill liked video games, baseball, and history, and that he was having a lot of trouble and that he had just broken up with his girlfriend. They spent the afternoon at Mark’s home, playing video games and talking.
The boys continued to see each other around school and had lunch together several times. They would later end up at the same high school, where they had brief contacts over the years. Finally, the long-awaited senior year came. Then three weeks before graduation, Bill asked Mark if they could talk.
“Bill reminded him of the day years before when they had first met. ‘Did you ever wonder why I was carrying so much stuff home from school that day?’ he asked….I had cleaned out my locker because I didn’t want to leave a mess for anyone else. I had saved up a couple dozen of my mother’s sleeping pills and was going home to take them. But after we had such a good time together, I realized that life could still be good. Mark, when you were kind enough to stop and pick up my books that day, you did a lot more. You saved my life.”[3]
Friends, what did Christ live for, after all, if not to make the world less difficult for us? What do we live for, then, if not to make the world less difficult for others?
Amen.
Watch the Livestreams
[1] Richard Frazer, Travels with a Stick (Edinburgh: Birlinn, 2019), 1-8.
[2] From a sermon by Rev. Kerry Pidcock-Lester, preached at First Presbyterian Church, Pottstown, PA on October 25, 1998. Her sermon was an important starting point for this sermon.
[3] From an Ann Landers’ column, date and source unknown.
