February 2, 2025
New Year Series
Finding the Middle Way: Living the Fruit of the Spirit
The Fruit of Kindness
Matthew 5:41; Titus 3:4-5; Galatians 5:22
Communion Sunday
In his book How to Know a Person, David Brooks describes our modern social condition this way, “Our problem I believe is fundamentally moral. As a society we have failed to teach the skills and cultivate the inclination to treat each other with kindness, generosity and respect.” (p104)
He tells the humorous story about two people on opposite sides of a river. One shouts to the other person, “How do I get to the other side of the river?” The person shouts back, “You are on the other side!”
(I’m glad I told you that was a humorous story so you’d know to laugh just then!) If we could see ourselves with some objectivity, I imagine we would find ourselves mildly humorous. Shouting across a divide at each other making clear who is on the “other” side while being unable, and perhaps unwilling, to find a way to bridge our divide.
Today we come to the fruit of the spirit that is critically essential to bridging our divides: kindness. Now kindness may sound like the softest of the fruit we have considered, but it stands to reason that it is the most important of all the characteristics of the fruit of the Spirit, at least those we have considered so far. For kindness is what it means to put these characteristics into action. Kindness is love expressed; joy shown; peace realized. It is what we do while practicing patience. Jack Hayford finds it meaningful that kindness follows patience. He defines kindness this way: “The ability to act for the welfare of those taxing our patience.” (The Fruit of the Spirit, Trask and Goodall, p.81) Kind is the fruit of the Spirit in action.
This makes for a good point at which to put the fruit of the Spirit in context in Paul’s Letter to the Galatians. We haven’t done that yet. Notice after Paul lists all nine features of the fruit of the spirit he says, “There is no law against such things.” (Galatians 5:23) What an interesting thought. Expressing love, joy, peace, and patience is not illegal. There’s no law prohibiting kindness. Why would Paul say this? Because the issue of Law was at the center of why he wrote this letter….
Galatia (pic of map) was a region of Asia Minor, or modern day western Turkey. Paul was probably addressing a single congregation he started on his first missionary journey. But soon after the church’s founding, Judaizers arrived. These were Jewish fundamentalists who taught that even though people believed in Christ, they were still Jewish. Their salvation depended on their following every detail of Jewish law. 2
So Paul wrote to remind them that salvation comes by grace. “You who want to be reckoned as righteous by the law,” he said, “have cut yourselves off from Christ; you have fallen away from grace.” (5:4) Grace sets us free from earning our acceptance. Grace sets us free of the need to judge.
But on the other side of the river was a different group. These were people in the church who so reveled in this novelty of grace, that they believed grace meant it doesn’t matter what you do. Grace sets you free from any responsibilities. And so, Paul said to them, “do not use your freedom as an opportunity for self-indulgence, but through love become enslaved to one another. For the whole law is summed up in a single commandment, “You shall love your neighbor as yourself.” (5:13-14)
So the Galatian church was like two groups standing on both sides of a divide, calling each one “the other,” and unable or unwilling to bridge the chasm. Could that look like the church today?
Think about that last group, the ones who believed you can do whatever you want. If you are a person of grace and someone is doing something you disagree with, it’s not your job to say anything. It’s not your job to judge. You just let it go, because you feel that’s the gracious thing to do. If someone is offensive toward you, you just let it go, because you are a person of grace. The trouble is we all have just so much let-it-go in us before we go. Eventually we just withdraw from people. We avoid them. Because we feel that is the gracious thing to do.
And then on the other side, you have the Judaizers, the rule followers. They can be people of grace, but up to a point. If they get taken advantage of, or if people don’t live by the same standards they do, then they withhold grace. Grace gets weaponized. Grace simply becomes the reward you give people who do what you want. Are there still Judaizers today?
On one side you’ve got Avoiders, and on the other side you’ve got Judgers and they’re both shouting, “You’re on the other side.” Could that describe the church today? Could it describe our world? What can bridge the gap? It’s kindness. It is love, joy, peace, patience, being put into action. Kindness becomes the timbers and nails and anchor bolts that build the bridge. But what exactly does that look like?
Jesus gave us a really good picture one day when he used an image people would have understood quite well. He said, “…if anyone forces you to go one mile, go also the second mile.” (Matthew 5:41) This was a reality of Roman occupation. A Roman soldier could conscript a civilian at any time and require that person to carry his equipment. Now to keep soldiers from abusing this privilege, the Romans established a limit so that a person was required to go just one mile. Jesus takes this reality and uses it to consider what practicing kindness might look like. He said if you get conscripted and have to carry a soldier’s belongings and get to the end of the required mile, offer to keep going. When the soldier says, “Okay, that’s as far as you have to go,” respond by saying, “Hey, why don’t I keep carrying your stuff. I’ve got some time. I’ll go another mile if it would help you.” 3
Can’t you imagine the emails Jesus got over that! “Look Jesus, I know what you meant to say, but your use of such a despised, dehumanizing practice was very offensive!”
And that may be why Jesus used it. He didn’t pick an illustration that was mildly inconvenient. He picked something hugely offensive; something that would make you want to say, “No! Not in this instance. To show kindness in this situation, to this person, would be inappropriate.” Could that be what it means to go the second mile? If so, what does going the second mile look like for you right now?
What benefit could there be in such an offensive situation to show kindness? For one, we need to. That’s not a statement of obligation. We need to show kindness when it’s really hard to do so for our own good. Showing kindness sometimes is a selfish act. We benefit from it.
Bryan Spoon is a Pediatric Staff Chaplain at Children’s Mercy Hospital in Kansas City. He wrote a book called Neuroscience and the Fruit of the Spirit. In his chapter on kindness he explains how kindness produces endorphins and neurotransmitters in the body that alleviate pain. Showing kindness reduces stress because it lowers the effects of the stress hormone cortisol. This in turn lowers blood pressure. Kindness also increases production of serotonin, which combats depression. If we just practiced kindness we’d put Lilly out of business.
On the other hand, the author says “Rage will cause muscles to tense, breathing to become fast, and cortisol to be dumped into the system to create quick energy. Rage raises the heart rate. Pupils become dilated. Rage makes access to the frontal cortex (the part of the brain that helps us think rationally) more difficult.” (p.100)
When I read that I thought of the expression “blind rage.” Rage makes us act without thinking through the consequences of our actions.
Perhaps Jesus understood the realities of the human body long before we learned them. He advocates practicing kindness because it helps us!
But there’s an even deeper reason. When we practice kindness we participate in the work of God. Our acts of kindness can be like material we give God to use.
I heard a story one time about a young woman and her husband who took in her father-in-law to live with them. His health wasn’t good. He had gout in one of his feet causing pain and limiting his ability to get around. The hard thing though, was how his pain and frustration about his situation turned into anger. And because the woman styed at home and her husband went to work, she was alone with him most of the time. He spoke rudely to her, would sometimes fly into profanities if she did something he didn’t like. She told her husband she couldn’t take it anymore. He tried to find some place for his dad to go, but there wasn’t anything available he could afford. 4
One day the woman decided to go talk to her pastor for advice. She was reluctant because he was young and single. She didn’t think he had enough experience to be of much help. He listened as she described everything she’d been enduring. When she finished he asked, “What does your father-in-law like to eat?” She thought, “What has that got to do with anything?” But she answered, “He likes brownies. The pastor said, “Next time he mistreats you, make him some brownies.”
She drove home thinking, “I knew that would be a waste of time. Young, naïve, pastor has no clue.”
A few days later she was working in the kitchen where there is a wood burning stove for heat. The father-in-law sat beside with his foot propped up to keep warm and napped. This made it very inconvenient for the woman trying to step around him as she worked. At one point, while carrying some pans she bumped his leg causing his foot to hit the floor. He flew into a rage calling her all kinds of ugly things. She quietly sat down the pans and went to her bedroom and cried. She prayed, “Lord, I can’t do this anymore. He doesn’t deserve our hospitality. I don’t care right now what happens to him.” And suddenly the words of her pastor popped in her head. All she could think was, “No way. No way.”
But after a few minutes she relented. She went back into the kitchen. He had nodded off again. She quietly got out a pan. Went to the cupboard and took out a box of brownie mix. Got some eggs and milk out of the fridge and began mixing them together. Poured it into the pan and then put it in the oven. Later she took it out cut them into pieces, put them on a plate and held them under his nose. She could see his head moving a bit as the smell of the brownies woke him up. But he didn’t look up. He didn’t say a word. Then she noticed his head moving a bit more, almost bobbing. And she realized he was sobbing.
He looked up and said, “I don’t deserve your kindness. I’ve been so hateful. I’m sorry.” And they both ate a brownie together.
I know it doesn’t always work out that beautifully. Many times we do the kind act and the cursing continues. We show kindness to someone and it doesn’t seem to change anything. But we don’t know that. The impact of repeated kindness might not be realized for awhile, but it has the power to change a narrative. It can create a new history. We don’t know what God will do with our kind acts, but that’s not our job. Our job is to be responsible with the opportunities we have. We either perpetuate the bad stories being told or we change the narrative.
Kindness has the possibility of transforming the minus signs (-)-(show just a large – sign on the screen) of our world, the things that cause people to hurt, the things that make us want to retaliate, the things that take from life.
But when we try to score brownie points. When we look to the Holy Spirit to give us the power to show kindness it is like a line from heaven that is imposed over the minuses of life (+) have the horizontal line fade in over the minus sign and turns those into pluses. 5
That’s what the cross is. The cross is God’s power to take the negative, the bad, even the evil, and transform it. This is what God did for us. God didn’t wait for us to say “I’m sorry” to offer us a cross. God took the action to show kindness first. Look at what the Bible says, “But when the goodness and loving kindness of God our Savior appeared, he saved us, not because of any works of righteousness that we had done, but according to his mercy…” Titus 3:4-5