Time for Faces--November 16, 2022

Time for Faces--November 16, 2022

"Love is kind..." [1 Corinthians 13:4b]

The thing about kindness is that I don't think it can be impersonal.  Kindness stops to see faces. Kindness asks your name--and commits to learning it, so it can call you by your name the next time you meet.  Kindness learns your likes and dislikes.  Kindness notices when you have a lot to carry and holds the door or lends a hand.  Kindness pauses to listen, and it makes the effort to find a word to lift your spirits.  These may be small graces in the big scheme of things, these sorts of gestures, but I think that is where kindness shows up: in small acts of goodness, offered just because they might lift up another person's heart.

Other things we call "virtues" can be rather abstract.  We talk about "justice" being blind--that is, we want a legal system that doesn't preference the rich over the poor, or give special treatment to people with a certain color hair, or eyes, or skin.  To some degree, then, that means that justice has to be impersonal.  The same could be said about being "prudent" or "wise" or "self-controlled."  We might recognize each of those qualities as virtues, but they don't need to see your face or hear your story.  You can be "prudent" in an empty room, but it's hard to be "kind" without another person around.  Wisdom can deal in abstractions and justice can speak absolutes, but kindness needs faces.  And kindness takes the time to see them, rather than walking on by or turning away.

Oddly enough, that doesn't mean that practicing kindness is always easy--it often isn't.  Nor does it mean that being kind can never be controversial or provocative.  Because kindness insists on seeing people's faces, it has a way of seeing those who others have conveniently chosen to ignore or leave out.  Because kindness is willing to go out of its way for others, it will not accept, "But why would I choose to be inconvenienced for someone else?" as a meaningful excuse not to go the extra mile.  Because kindness is capable of seeing the humanity even of those who would call themselves our "enemies," it will insist on doing good to people who won't say thank you and succumb to meanness themselves.  And all of those things can upset people.  

It was, after all, the choice to practice kindness that led folks to wear masks for their neighbors' sake during the height of the pandemic, even when it was unpopular or felt tedious, or you risked being made fun of or looked down on for wearing one.  It is kindness that has led people to welcome refugees fleeing war in Ukraine, or Syria, or any of a number of other places, even though it brings challenges to open up your community to newcomers from other lands.  And it is what Jesus calls God's "kindness" that leads God to be good, not only to well-behaved polit Respectable Religious people, but to "the ungrateful and the wicked."  Kindness sees faces where others only see "not my problem," "not my kind of people," or "not on my side."  And then kindness makes the effort to do good to the ones it sees.

In the last several years especially, I've seen a lot of folks with t-shirts, bumper stickers, coffee mugs, and tote bags all with some variation of the slogan, "Be kind."  And I'm glad so many have gotten the message that far.  But we should be prepared, in all honest, for how we will be changed if we dare to take that slogan seriously.  Practicing the kindness of love means a new kind of vision--a deeper one--that is unhurried by its own affairs, so that no one is overlooked.  Practicing kindness doesn't always win you a pat on the back or a round of applause from an approving crowd.  Sometimes people will feel provoked when your kindness compels them to see people they had found a way to conveniently forget.  Sometimes they will not like the way your choice to go the extra mile for a stranger puts pressure on them to do the same.  Sometimes they will not like that kindness turns "enemies" into "people who still bear the image of God, no matter how unkind or rotten their behavior is."  Kindness, in other words, ain't easy.

But it is worth it.

Today, let us make the effort that kindness calls for, and get a glimpse then of God's own heart, since God is kind to even the ungrateful and the wicked [Luke 6:35]... even to stinkers like you and me.

Lord Jesus, slow us down enough to practice kindness the way you do.