The Fruit of the Spirit is Kindness

Galatians 5:16-26

Jesus by Frederick Buechner
Maybe any one day of a life, even the most humdrum, has in it something of the mystery of that life as a whole.
People had been flocking up to Jesus the way they always seemed to when word got around that he was in the neighborhood. A Roman officer came up to ask if he would do something for a paralyzed servant back home, and Jesus said he’d go have a look at him. When the officer said he hated to take that much of his time and asked if he couldn’t just do something from right there where they were standing, Jesus was so impressed by the way the man trusted him that he told him he’d see to it that what he trusted would happen would happen indeed, and when the officer got home, he found his servant up and around again. Later on, when Jesus dropped in at Peter’s house, he found Peter’s mother-in-law in bed with a fever, and all he did that time was touch the old lady’s hand, but that turned out to be all it took.
A scribe showed up and in a burst of enthusiasm said he was all set to follow him any place he went, to which Jesus answered, “Foxes have holes, and birds have nests, but if you stick with me, you’ll find yourself out in the cold.” One of the disciples asked for a few days off to attend his father’s funeral, and Jesus said, “Look, you’ve got to follow me. When life’s at stake, burying the dead is for dead-heads.” When he saw a big crowd approaching, he figured he didn’t have enough steam left to do much for them that day, so he went and climbed into a boat for a few hours’ peace only to find that the disciples were hot on his heels and wanted to go along too. So he took them. Then he lay down in the stern of the boat with a pillow under his head, Mark says, and went to sleep.
Matthew leaves out the details about the stern and the pillow presumably because he thought they weren’t important, which of course they’re not, and yet the account would be greatly impoverished without them. There’s so little about him in the Gospels you can actually see.
He didn’t doze off in the bow where the spray would get him and the whitecaps slapped harder. He climbed back into the stern instead. There was a pillow under his head. Maybe somebody put it there for him. Maybe they didn’t think to put it there till after he’d gone to sleep, and then somebody lifted his head a little off the hard deck and slipped it under.
He must have gone out like a light because Mark says the storm didn’t wake him, not even when the waves got so high they started washing in over the sides. They let him sleep on until finally they were so scared they couldn’t stand it any longer and woke him up. They addressed him respectfully enough as Teacher, but what they said was reproachful, petulant almost. “Don’t you see that we’re all drowning?”
It was the wind rather than the disciples that Jesus seems to have spoken to first, as soon as he’d got his eyes open. “He rebuked it,” Mark says. CUT THAT OUT! – you can almost picture him staring it down with the hair lashing his face as he holds on to the gunnels to keep from being blown overboard. He was gentler with the sea. “Take it easy,” he said. “Quiet down.” When it came the disciples’ turn, he said, “Why did you panic?” and then “What kind of faith do you call that?” but they were so impressed to find the wind had stopped blowing and the sea had flattened out again that they didn’t get around to answering him.
On the far side there was a cemetery where a crazy man lived covered with scars from where he was always smashing at himself with stones and from the chains they tried to tie him down with when he got even more violent than usual. As soon as the boat landed, he came gibbering out from behind the graves and went tearing down to the beach, but as soon as he saw Jesus, he stopped in his tracks and quieted down. They talked together a little, and then Jesus healed him.
The Roman officer, the sick old lady, the overenthusiastic scribe, the terrified disciples, the lunatic – something of who he was and what he was like and what it was like to be with hm filters through each meeting as it comes along, but for some reason it’s the moment in the boat that says most. The way he lay down, bone tired, and fell asleep with the sound of the lapping waves in his ears. The way, when they woke him, he opened his eyes to the howling storm and to all the other howling things that he must have known were in the cards for him and that his nap had been a few minutes of vacation from. The helplessness of the disciples and the way he spoke to them. The things he said to the wind and to the sea.
Lamb of God, Rose of Sharon, Prince of Peace – none of the things people have found to call him has ever managed to say it quite right. You can see why when he told people to follow him, they often did, even if they backed out later when they started to catch on to what lay ahead. If you’re religiously inclined, you can see whey they went even so far as to call him Messiah, the Lord’s Anointed, the Son of God, and call him these things still, some of them. And even if you’re not religiously inclined, you can see why it is you might have given your immortal soul, if you thought you had one to give, to have been the one to raise that head a little from the hard deck and slip a pillow under it.

How incredibly powerful it is, an act of kindness. Nothing very dramatic. Nothing very complicated. Just a pillow slipped under the head. But powerful nevertheless.

Jesus, who throughout the day was expressing his kindness through teaching and healing, offered one of the disciples the opportunity to be kind to the one who exemplified kindness.

To see Jesus in need and to assist him in even that little way, what a privilege that would be. But in Matthew 25, Jesus taught us that whatever we do to care for someone on earth, we do that act of kindness to him. When we slip a pillow under the head of someone exhausted from their work, we slip a pillow under the head of Jesus. When we do it for anyone, we do it for Jesus.

A businessman on his way to an important meeting stops to tie the shoelace of a little boy. A preacher working on his sermon in a hotel lobby puts aside his books to help a man get his luggage up the steps. A woman doing her shopping sees that a woman is a couple dirham short of paying for the groceries and gives the two dirham to her. Someone in church notices that a man looks discouraged and takes time to write a note of encouragement to that man. At a gathering when everyone is getting coffee and a pastry, a woman sits with a squirming child in her lap and someone comes to ask if they could bring some to her. Slipping pillows under the head of Jesus.

Acts of kindness. Kindness is the fifth of the fruit of the Spirit listed in Galatians. The Greek word translated as kindness means literally “to bow the head.” The Hebrew equivalent is translated variously as loving-kindness and “love and mercy” as well as “kindness.”

When I bow my head to another person, I am saying that that person’s needs are more important than mine. I am moving from beyond my world and my needs and my pressures and my problems into that other person’s world. I am putting into action what Paul called us to in Philippians 2

Do nothing out of selfish ambition or vain conceit, but in humility consider others better than yourselves.  4 Each of you should look not only to your own interests, but also to the interests of others.

Kindness is the quality that allows us to think more of each other than we do of ourselves. Kindness allows us to consider the needs of others as being more important than our own needs.

Notice that Paul says “look not only to your own needs.” We are not oblivious to our own needs, but we consider in addition to our own needs the needs of others and sometimes choose to put the needs of others first.

This is relatively easy to do when everything in our own world is running smoothly. When there is little difficulty in my life, it is relatively easy for me to look around and see how I can help someone who is in need.

But it is much more difficult to do this when I am consumed with worry and anxiety and fear because of difficulties and problems in my own life.

When I was a new pastor in Smithfield, Ohio, in the United States, we lived across the street from Lois Henderson. Lois was in the advanced stages of cancer and confined to her bed by the time I arrived. She lived with a lot of pain and yet when I went to visit her, I was the one who was cared for. She encouraged me who came to encourage her.

This was amazing to me. Here was a woman in a great deal of pain and facing an imminent death and yet she was the one who encouraged me in my ministry.

Where did this come from, that she was able to look to my needs as a new pastor in town and make those more important than her own needs?

I had tremendous respect for her and was surprised to hear some of the people in the community tell me she had not been a pleasant person. She had been, in some ways, an unpleasant person to be around.

What made the difference? How was she able to be kind to me when I visited in the midst of her pain when she had not been always kind before she developed cancer?

The answer, I discovered, was that while Lois had been a regular church attender throughout her life, it seems that she experienced the love of God in her life in a more powerful way after she was aware of the cancer that was attacking her. She had been religious for all of her life but the God she heard and sang about became personal to her when the cancer got her attention and she began to grow in her faith. As she experienced God’s love, she was able to love those who came to see her in the midst of her pain.

Lois was able to be kind to those who visited her because she was growing in her relationship with God. She was developing the fruit of the Spirit in her life.

Kindness, as with all the fruit of the Spirit, is one of the characteristics of God. When we grow in the fruit of the Spirit, we take on more of the characteristics of God, we become more God-like. The qualities of God begin to be evident in our own lives.

Ephesians 2:6,7
And God raised us up with Christ and seated us with him in the heavenly realms in Christ Jesus, in order that in the coming ages he might show the incomparable riches of his grace, expressed in his kindness to us in Christ Jesus.

When God was born as a man, God in the flesh, the coming of Jesus was an expression of God’s kindness. God “bowed the head”, thinking more of us than he did himself.

I read the passage from Philippians about looking not only to our own interests but also to the interests of others. Paul goes on to use Jesus as an example of one who did that.

Your attitude should be the same as that of Christ Jesus:     6 Who, being in very nature God,
did not consider equality with God something to be grasped,
7 but made himself nothing,
taking the very nature of a servant,
being made in human likeness.
8 And being found in appearance as a man,
he humbled himself
and became obedient to death—
even death on a cross!

God’s kindness has been expressed to us in Jesus Christ and when we grow to be more like him, his kindness becomes more and more a part of our lives. We are kind because God has been kind to us. As we read in I John 4:19

We love because he [God] first loved us.

As we grow in our awareness of God’s love and kindness and experience that love and kindness in our lives, we begin to reflect God’s love and kindness to others.

We don’t start out that way. A baby is very self-absorbed. The world of a baby consists of his or her own needs and is ignorant of the needs of others. What baby have you ever heard of who lies in a crib with a dirty diaper and hungry who decides to be quiet because the parents have had a hard day and need their rest?

As babies become children, the world around them grows and there is an awareness of the needs of others around them, but I can tell you from my own experience that even through high school and my early college years, I focused on my own needs without taking into consideration the needs of others.

I went to Germany as an exchange student after high school and my father continually sent me money to help me enjoy my year there, even though he was in a very difficult financial position himself. I look back on that year with some measure of shame because of how self-absorbed I was. I realize now how little money they had and yet I ignored their difficult financial position and wrote home asking for more money so I could go to the German pubs and enjoy myself with my friends.

Some people never get past the point of being self-absorbed. I know people in their seventies and eighties who have never got past the point of being able to “bow the head.” For too many people the world exists to serve them. They are to be the focus of attention. The world is full of people who seek their own pleasure, their own interests, their own benefit without any real consideration of the needs of others.

Fortunately for me, I became a Christian the year after my year in Germany and over the following thirty years have grown in my relationship with God and in the fruit of the Spirit. My ability to “bow the head” and consider not only my needs but also the needs of others has grown.

As we grow in our faith, as we become more like Christ, we don’t have to work hard at being kind. We don’t have to make a list each day of the five kind things we will do. Kindness, like the other fruit of the Spirit, comes from within us as we grow in our awareness of being loved by God. Kindness is the natural consequence of growth in Christ. We are kind because we have experienced the kindness of God.

Last week when you affirmed me as your pastor, that was an act of kindness. It was not the first time I have benefitted from the kindness of members of this congregation. And I am aware of many acts of kindness that take place week by week. We are a congregation of God’s children who receive his love and pass it on.

As an application of this sermon, I could ask you this week to seek out someone to whom you can express kindness but I will not do that. The application I hold out to you is to once again renew your efforts to be devoted to God in prayer, fellowship and reading the Scriptures. As you grow in your relationship with God, acts of kindness will abound. You will find God providing you with multiple opportunities to put pillows under the heads of people around you.

But if you examine yourself and see that you are absorbed in the problems and difficulties you face and are overwhelmed by them, then the solution is to turn to God and seek him and allow his love to fill you to overflowing so those around you will benefit as his love spills out of your life into the lives of those around you.

Do you want to put a pillow under the head of Jesus? Seek God and you will discover that you will be putting pillows under the heads of needy people around you.

As we grow in our love relationship with God, we grow in kindness. But at the end of the sermon, don’t forget that it is God who teaches us about kindness. Don’t forget that it is God who demonstrated and continues to demonstrate his kindness to us.

In Acts 3 and 4, Peter and John are going to the temple at the time of prayer when a beggar asked them for money. Peter said to the beggar, Silver or gold I do not have, but what I have I give you. In the name of Jesus Christ of Nazareth, walk.”

The scriptures say that Peter took him by the right hand and helped him up and instantly his feet and ankles became strong and he went walking and jumping and praising God.

This caused a stir, as you might imagine, and Peter and John were called before the religious leaders to explain what had happened.

Then Peter, filled with the Holy Spirit, said to them: “Rulers and elders of the people!  9 If we are being called to account today for an act of kindness shown to a cripple and are asked how he was healed,  10 then know this, you and all the people of Israel: It is by the name of Jesus Christ of Nazareth, whom you crucified but whom God raised from the dead, that this man stands before you healed.

It was an act of kindness on the part of God that the cripple was healed.

God continues to work in us and in so doing demonstrates his kindness. God is aware of our needs, he bows his head and ministers to us.

His greatest act of kindness was to be born as a man, to go to the cross and die in our place. God’s kindness is expressed in the way he shamelessly pursues us. We reject him and he continues to pursue us. We are indifferent to him and he continues to pursue us. He seeks after us so that we will turn to him and accept the gift of eternal life he offers. The greatest miracle any of us will ever see or experience is to be reborn into a personal relationship with God through faith in Jesus Christ.

God also continues to demonstrate his kindness to us in healing. Not everyone who prays for healing is healed, but for reasons we may not know until we are with him in eternity, some who pray for healing receive that healing from God.

I have had a sense this week that God wants to bless us this morning in a demonstration of his kindness. I believe God wants to demonstrate his kindness to us in healing this morning.

Are you in need of healing? Then I encourage you to come forward so I can pray with you.

Do you need encouragement in your Christian life? Then I encourage you to come forward so I can pray with you.

Do you want to give your life to God this morning? Do you want to be reborn into eternal life? Do you want to move past a religious understanding of Jesus and be filled with his Holy Spirit? Then I encourage you to come forward so I can pray with you.

Do you need the touch of God on your life this morning? Then I encourage you to come forward so I can pray with you.

If, as I speak, your heart has started beating a bit faster, then perhaps it is you who will experience God’s kindness this morning. Come and experience the kindness of God.

In our observation of the Lord’s Supper, I ask that you come forward to receive the elements of bread and the cup, the body and blood of our Lord who expressed his kindness by dying for you. He considered your needs as being more important than his needs and went to the cross to die in your place. Come forward to experience the kindness of God expressed to you.

We may experience a bit of holy chaos this morning with people coming forward for prayer and healing and communion and bringing tithes and offerings forward. to put in the offering plate, but that’s OK because it will be holy chaos.

Come.