Tag Archives: kindness

On Walking toward Christ through Kindness…

13 Wednesday Feb 2019

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Many people I encounter, both church-going and non-church-going, tend to think my role as a priest is to teach people how to live holy lives.  The expectation is not unfounded.  When I was ordained, the bishop asked me several questions in front of the congregation.  One of them was, “Will you do your best to pattern your life and that of your family in accordance with the teachings of Christ, so that you may be a wholesome example to your people?”  Not only does the Church anticipate I will teach my community how to live holy lives, the Church expects me to exemplify how to live a holy life.

The reality of that expectation sneaks up on me sometimes.  This week has been one of those times.  On Sunday, I challenged our church community to participate in Random Acts of Kindness Week, doing at least three acts of kindness this week, and reporting back next Sunday.  Just a few days in, two funny things have struck me.  One, I have felt a pressure to do kind acts myself.  As a servant leader, I need to set the tone with my own behavior.  And so, I have been plugging away – purchasing food for our local food pantry, collecting prom dresses and accessories for a program that helps low-income teens, and writing some kind notes.  But planned acts are almost easy.  It is the everyday inculcation of kindness that I am not as sure about.  Just two Sundays ago we heard the passage from 1 Corinthians, “Love is patient, love is kind.  Love is not envious or boastful or arrogant or rude.  It does not insist on its own way; it is not irritable or resentful; it does not rejoice in wrongdoing, but rejoices in the truth.  It bears all things, believes all things, hopes all things, endures all things. Love never ends.”[i]  Although I may be performing kind acts, I have a bit further to go before I am living a life of kindness:  of patience, humility, flexibility, and generosity.

The second thing that struck me this week is how often I have been the recipient of kindness since we started honoring this week.  Already a parishioner has offered to cook me and my family a meal – just because.  Another parishioner sent me a thank you note for my kindness and work on behalf of the church.  Two classmates came to support me on Sunday, even though they have their own church homes.  And the kindness is not limited to people I know.  I have noticed people holding doors for me, waiting patiently for me as a pull out of a parking space, asking how I am doing (and really wanting to know).  I am not sure if people are inspired by this week, or if they are already living faithful lives of loving-kindness.  Either way, I find myself inspired by those around me, who are managing to be kind in the mundane parts of life.

If anything, this week is teaching me that the work of modeling faithful living will go way beyond a week.  And although the intentional acts I am doing this week are great, they are just a small part of transforming my entire life into a model of kindness and graciousness.  The other thing I am learning is that all of the modeling does not have to come from me.  In fact, I am also a student of Christ, still on the path to learning how to walk in Christ’s path.  The good news is that I have more than a week to master this transformation.  In fact, Hickory Neck will be taking up a Lenten kindness challenge this year.  I am so excited to see what forty days of living a life of kindness might teach me.  If they are as powerful as this first seven, then Hickory Neck is in for some incredible inspiration.  I cannot wait to hear what you are learning about this week too!

[i] 1 Corinthians 13.1.13

On Kindness and Holy Healing…

06 Wednesday Feb 2019

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KINDlogo_final-01This past Friday, our LEAD Greater Williamsburg Class launched our kindness initiative.  About 200 people from Williamsburg, James City County, and York County gathered to learn how they could commit to kindness.  One of the highlights was keynote speaker former Mayor Tom Tait.  Mayor Tait served for many years on City Council in Anaheim, California.  He described his work with City Council as a game of “Whack-a-Mole,” where they were constantly trying to snuff out “symptoms,” whether they be drug abuse, homelessness, or violence.  What he slowly came to realize was this model of treating the symptoms was not getting to the root of the problem – the fact that the whole body was sick.  And so, he ran for Mayor on a campaign of kindness.  He believed kindness would transform the entire body, or system, in such a way that the symptoms would go away – because the entire body would learn to operate in a healthier way.

After the event, as I spoke with clergy about the theology of kindness, we came to a few conclusions.  First, we agreed that embodying kindness is one way that people of faith can embody God – the same God that is regularly described as showing loving-kindness, or hesed, in Hebrew.  Our acts of kindness help us to show forth and experience God in our community.  But as we talked about Mayor Tait’s analogy, we realized that showing kindness gets to the root of Jesus’ work.  Jesus was often seen healing what may be seen as symptoms – leprosy, blindness, hemorrhaging.  But what Jesus was really doing was healing entire systems.  Each healed person was restored to wholeness in the community, with no barriers to full membership in the community.  Christ was concerned about the presenting symptoms and suffering of individuals – but what his work was really about was restoring the entire body to wholeness.

The kindness campaign #WMBGkind is an incredible movement because it seeks to do just the same thing – transform our entire community from one that can be divided or cynical, to being a community transformed to wholeness through kindness.  As members of the faith community of Greater Williamsburg, we have an opportunity to be leaders in that transformative work:  because we were commissioned through our baptism to be agents of healing and wholeness, because we can be a powerful witness of God’s love through our kindness, and because, as members of the “body” of our community, we will be transformed too.  This Sunday at Hickory Neck, you will be invited into this commitment to kindness – or as we as persons of faith would call it, into doing acts consistent with our baptismal identity.  I look forward to seeing you then, as we work toward transforming our community, one act of kindness at a time!

Sermon – Luke 2.1-14, CE, YC, December 24, 2018

02 Wednesday Jan 2019

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One of the things I love about Christmas are Christmas movies.  I know we all have our favorites, and some are related to our generation.  My two favorites are The Grinch Who Stole Christmas (the original, not the Jim Carey one) and Home Alone.  What is fun about Christmas movies is we watch them over and over again because we like something about their message.  The movies teach us something.

This year, I introduced my younger daughter to The Grinch Who Stole Christmas.  She was fascinated by the movie, asking all sorts of questions – why they play bad music when the Grinch is around, why he stole all their presents, and why he hits his dog.  But the question she asks most frequently has been about the Grinch’s heart.  For those of you not familiar with the story, the Grinch tries to ruin Christmas for Whoville by stealing all their presents, decorations, and feast items.  But when Whoville does not cry and wail about all that is lost, and instead returns to the town center to sing as a community, without their “stuff,” the Grinch’s heart is strangely warmed, growing three times the size the heart was.  My daughter keeps asking me about the Grinch’s growing heart, and her questions have allowed us to talk about what Christmas is really about, and why someone’s heart might grow.

Every year we watch our favorite Christmas movies and cartoons because we enjoy revisiting the lessons the movies teach us.  But what is interesting about those movies is, over time, the lesson the movie teaches us takes on new meaning.  We meet new Grinches over our lifetime – or sometimes we become them!  We get to know presumably creepy or scary neighbors who we eventually learn are beautiful human beings.  We experience Christmases where everything goes wrong, but we find joy in the unexpected.  We know part of what the story is teaching us, but as we age and mature, the movies speak to us in new and fresh ways.

We tell the story of Jesus’ birth every single Christmas for a similar reason.  We tell the same story every year because God did this amazing thing.  God is all powerful, and conceivably could do anything God wants – and has:  from kicking Adam and Eve out of the garden, to flooding the earth, to cursing generations for one person’s sins.   God can rule and govern and do anything God wants, and yet the one thing God does is become human.  God becoming incarnate is such an amazing thing that when we say the Creed, many people bow or genuflect during the part of the Creed that talks about God becoming incarnate from the Virgin Mary, being made man.  Becoming human is God’s ultimate expression of God’s lovingkindness, that hesed, we have been talking a lot about lately.  Becoming incarnate is the way God shows God’s love for us.

I am a part of group that is creating a kindness initiative in 2019 in the Greater Williamsburg area.  We will be encouraging the faith community, business community, local schools, and nonprofits to engage in acts of kindness, with the ultimate goal of making Greater Williamsburg the next community of kindness.  I like the initiative because I know doing acts of kindness helps me get a small glimpse into God’s lovingkindness; doing acts of kindness helps me honor God, and embody God to others.  When we talk about shining Christ’s light in the world, or being Jesus to others, we are often talking about doing acts of kindness.  The ultimate form of flattery or honoring someone else is when we do acts of kindness.  When we, as persons of faith, do acts of kindness, we honor God by imitating God’s lovingkindness.  Any of you who has a sibling knows that siblings often copy what we do.  How many times have you heard the complaint, “He’s copying me!” or “She’s keeps stealing my clothes.”?  The reasons our siblings do this, besides to annoy us, is because they want to be like us – they want to honor us by imitating us – just like we imitate God.  Of course, they would never admit that reality to your face, but the truth is, imitation is the best form of flattery.

Tonight, we tell the story of Mary and Joseph, of innkeepers and registrations, of shepherds and angels because we love the story.  The story makes us feel safe, loved, and reassured.  And sometimes we really need opportunities to feel good about life, ourselves, and our God.  But we also tell the story because the story is formative – the story shapes who we are and how we behave.  Over the years, different parts of the story touch us, and as we grow and change, the lesson grows and changes.  So we listen to the story to remember who we have been and who we are.  But we also listen to this familiar story to remind us of what we will do tomorrow.  This story invites us to share God’s lovingkindness like the shepherds.  This story invites us to ponder God’s amazing love like Mary.  This story invites us to sing loudly like the angels, shouting our love for God and the world like an army of kindness.  I cannot wait to learn what hearing the story this year leads you to do in the days, weeks, and months to come!  May this favored story not just be a story of comfort, but also a story of action.  Amen.

On Leading with Kindness…

28 Wednesday Nov 2018

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Recently I have been feeling pretty defeated about the ways we have been treating one another in our country.  It happens in all sorts of ways.  It happens in the tribalism in politics that makes us unable to even listen to alternate perspectives or work toward respectful compromise.  It happens in the ways in which we give ourselves permission to believe stereotypes instead of getting to know individuals.  It happens in the ways in which truth is distorted and disregarded.  It even happens in our wonderful hometown, when people submit hateful, anonymous comments in what our local paper calls “The Last Word.”

I think that is why I have been finding such joy in a new endeavor here in this same hometown.  I am a part of the LEAD Greater Williamsburg program, a community immersion program that provides opportunities for recognized and emergent leaders to collaborate on issues of importance to the region, run through the Greater Williamsburg Chamber and Tourism Alliance.  The issue that our class is working on is kindness.  I know that may sound simple or even too ephemeral, but the more we work on helping the Greater Williamsburg Area become the next Community of Kindness, the more excited I become.

The program will launch on February 1, 2019, but already I am seeing the power of kindness.  First, the LEAD with Kindness program is already uncovering all kinds of efforts by schools, businesses, and non-profit organizations to promote kindness.  Just learning about these efforts has lifted some of that defeatedness I had been feeling.  But it has not stopped there.  The more we talk about promoting, developing, and honoring kindness, the more I have started seeing kindness.  I see it in my parishioners at Hickory Neck, I see it in my family members, and I even see it in that “Last Word” column in the paper.  And the more I see kindness, the more inspired I become to live into kindness – in fact, the more I see the loving-kindness, or hesed, of our God in others.

You will be hearing a lot more from me about this kindness project, my dreams for seeing the Greater Williamsburg area become the next Community of Kindness, and our church’s role in the movement.  But for now, I invite you to try a few things.  First, put on your “kindness glasses,” and just start looking around you for acts of kindness you see every day.  Two, acknowledge the kindness you see around you – whether it’s a high five, a pat on the back, or even a note about how someone’s kindness inspired you.  And three, perform one act of kindness today.  It does not have to be anything grandiose.  Just one small act of kindness.  And then let me know about it.  Let’s let God’s loving-kindness take root in us, transforming our community, our region, and maybe even the world!