Invitation to Kindness

 A long time ago in a galaxy far, far away (Edmonton), a young lady was planning a picnic on a lovely day with a young man she had met.  She pulled out her grandmother’s cookbook to figure out how to make a delicious and unforgettable salad.  The recipe suggested adding a little zing with fruit like raisins, apples, or mandarin oranges in the salad.  She didn’t have any of those, but she did have some watermelon on hand, so cubed it up, as well as some cheese and mushrooms.  She added several types of lettuce and spinach and topped it off with croutons and bacon bits.  She thought it looked pretty with all the different colors mixed together, and proudly served it to her new beau.  The salad seemed to go over very well, but the watermelon was an odd touch and the bacon bits and croutons clung to them like thistles to a sheep.  The young beau didn’t say anything about the salad, so she was quite surprised a few months later when she talked about watermelon she learned he didn’t like watermelon one little bit!  Here she thought all those months ago that he liked her salad.  The truth was, he was too kind to tell her that he had not enjoyed it at all!

Or maybe he was too nice.  When I talk about picking hymns for our upcoming new hymn resource, I often say that a hymn that is ‘nice’ is not enough to make it into our final cut.  We have close to 2000 hymns that have been submitted and we only have room for a tenth of that.  Many of the hymns are nice but not thought-provoking, comforting, inspiring and engaging.  We can’t be nice if we’re to whittle down our big list to something as slim as the More Voices hymnbook.  We can still be kind as we let folks know which hymns make it into our final selection.

The church leader in the parable today was not nice or kind.  Nor was he a real person. He was a stereotype that Jesus was using.  There were Pharisees who invited Jesus to dinner, who listened to him, engaged him in thoughtful debate, and treated him with respect.  We need to remember them for it’s easy to paint them all as bad guys.  Jesus told this story not to say Pharisees bad, tax collectors good, but to highlight two different attitudes of prayer.  The Pharisee’s prayer was arrogant, yet he would have been nice to the tax collector in person.  Kindness does not stem from an attitude of arrogance!  The tax collector, who would be more like today's version of a loan shark, knew how he really measured up to God’s expectation of justice, was very humble in his attitude, and asked for help from God to become a better person.  As Paul put it in Romans, God’s kindness is a call to us to be humble.  Then once we are humble, we too can practice real honest kindness to our community, and not its shallower cousin, niceness.

I see this principal whenever I meet folks going to AA and Al Anon.  It doesn’t matter how smart they are, how much success they have in their professional lives, it’s the folks who join AA and Al Anon with a humble attitude that will be successful in rising above their addictions.  The ones who think they are better than others, or smarter, or more deserving are often the ones who fall off the wagon.  The ones who are humble, also become very kind.

Letting go of our senses of superiority can even be seen in the debate about what to do for the Athabasca homeless population.  Some see the homeless as lazy, some see them as manipulative opportunists, dangerous folks that should be able to fix themselves with a little hard work and will power.  Others see them as former classmates, friends, 4h members, teenagers in high school, next door neighbors, residential school survivors with tales of horrific trauma.  But how we help homeless people is something that society is uncertain of.  Incarcerate them? Force them to go back to their families?  We even struggle to understand what constitutes homelessness, and lump everyone with shelter security issues into one group.  If we are nice to homeless people, we smile and maybe say good morning, but if we are kind to homeless people, that takes a special level of empathy, time, and patience.  It may take the shape of talking to our politicians to strengthen existing mental health supports and building community infrastructure to house people in the community they grew up in.  I’m inspired by the James Smith Cree Nation and their call to increase the number of drug treatment facilities and beds for indigenous communities.  That’s kindness in action. Or kindness might take shape in the form of intervention programs targeting even younger people.

Programs like the Human Kindness Project, a curriculum developed in Toronto for elementary and junior high students which combats bullying.  Winnipeg police developed their “Cool 2Be Kind” project to also build empathy.  In Newfoundland, a volunteer organization, the “Kindness Project”, handed out valentine cards to strangers just as we did during Covid in 2020.  My friend Di who lives in Australia and was impacted by the flood last week, was amazed at the kind offers of support and help she received. Kindness is even seen as the way to break the spiral of divisiveness and polarization we seem to be sliding into in Alberta and around the world. 

Jesus taught his followers that God’s kindness is deep and unending, like a huge watermelon where there is always another slice to be shared.  God is not nice, God is kind, and God’s justice is more than just being nice.  When we humbly recognize that we don’t have all the answers, that we’re not perfect, then God’s kindness will envelop us, grow in us and bear fruit in us.  The fruit of the spirit, kindness, can heal and inspire us all.  Thanks be to God!