Kindness
Luke 6:31-36
Because Jesus in scripture taught it frequently, many Christians talk a big game about loving our enemy. Preachers poniticate on the teaching, we do our best to abide by that kind of ideal, maybe we turn it into being polite or not engaging with something someone does or says that bothers us. Maybe for many of us, “loving our enemy” simply means avoiding conflict with our “enemy.”
But I wonder how deeply most of us have thought about what exactly we mean by “enemy!”
Who is my enemy? How do you discern someone as an enemy? Maybe we are uncomfortable naming anyone as an enemy, even if there are just some people in our lives we want to tackle across the dining room table.
I think we certainly find it easy to label our enemy based on politics these days. For the next few weeks, our church will be exploring the values it seems our politics have in very short supply as we approach a presidential election. This week we are focusing on kindness and Jesus’ teaching to “do unto others as you would have done unto you,” (Luke 6: 31) and “love your enemies, do good, and lend, expecting nothing in return.” (Luke 6:35)
We might read that and shrug, unimpressed. Of course we should do good, love our enemies and lend, expecting nothing in return. Of course we should abide by that “golden” rule to do unto others as we would have done unto ourselves.
I’ve always encountered these teachings as something very casual, so obviously true that we dont spend a lot of time with them (maybe because we Christians would rather argue about the interesting stuff like sex and money than, god forbid, discuss and explore something about which most of us could agree).
We know these teachings are true, but I think we spend so little time really praying and meditating on them that we might not notice how easy it is not to follow these teachings. Kindness should be a given, but these days I look around and find acts of real kindness to be kind of radical!
Jesus taught “do unto others what you would have done unto you,” but I wonder if we have ever thought to apply that teaching when we’re in our car and jammed together in traffic during the unending rush-hour on I-25. Jesus said do good and lend, expecting nothing in return, but I think we have managed to monetize, quantify, and make transactions out of almost every human activity, interaction, or exchange these days!
Jesus said love your enemies, but as far as I can tell, there are quite a number of people that seem ready kill each other in this country over who they are voting for and what political camp they are in. Jesus said love your enemies but much of our political rhetoric in this country describes desperate immigration crossing our southern border as an invasion.
Jesus said love your enemies, but all I can see us as a society doing as a whole is having contempt and disgust as we dehumanize and mischaracterize one another over our political differences.
Maybe these teachings aren’t so casual. Maybe the basic teachings about Christian behavior that lead us to kindness toward one another is more radical than we would like to admit.
This week, I want to invite you to think more deeply about these casual teachings and imagine a world that has more kindness in it. What might that world look like?
