Love Kindness | Michah 6:6-8

There is a cliché in our culture that I wish were not so true: No good deed goes unpunished. It probably would not have survived as a saying if it were not quite so true.

Recently, as Kate and I were getting settled into our new house, I was determined to get pictures on the wall, and things in their places as soon as possible, so that we would feel at home as soon as we could.

Kate had hung up in the kitchen a small calendar that I took to be one of those toss-away freebies given out by the drug store. So when I was browsing around in Mazel Tov, the Jewish bookstore in San Francisco, I found a beautiful, oversized wall calendar filled with full-color reprints of medieval Jewish manuscripts from the British Library. When I got home, I tossed the little cheepo calendar, and proudly hung the gorgeous calendar filled with Judaic antiquities in the kitchen.

I was proud of my find, and imagined Kate squealing with delight when she stepped through the door. So you can see why, when she finally did get home and walked into the kitchen, I was shocked and horrified when she pointed to my new beautiful calendar and exclaimed, "What is THAT! What did you do with my gardening calendar??!"

I was taken aback, "Your what?" I asked.

"My gardening calendar," she said angrily, "The one Kelly gave me as a housewarming present."

As you can imagine, I was casting around for an appropriately sized rock to hide under. Finally I gave up the search, and went poking around in the recycling bin for the calendar, which was safe and sound. Looking at it closely, I saw that it wasn't cheap, just small, and beautifully illustrated with many different English gardens.

Of course, when I explained to Kate that I thought it was a throwaway, she was still feeling a little hurt, but she understood that I thought I was doing something sweet, something to make our home feel warmer and more like "us."

Kate did eventually appreciate the gesture, dappled as it was. My intentions were pure, and this is what, in the end, really mattered. In the end, the thoughtfulness won out over the thoughtlessness, thank goodness for me!

Now, although this is a story about kindness gone awry, it is about kindness, nonetheless. Kindness is something of a disparaged notion in our culture. In youth culture, it is especially obvious. Kids are likelier to revere someone for their toughness than for their tenderness. When a bunch of teenagers sees someone they admire coming towards them, they are much more likely to say "He's bad!" than to say "He's kind!" Kindness is not a badge of honor in our dog-eat-dog business culture either. I wouldn't say that kindness has gotten a bad rap, but I would say that it has been "dissed" to use the modern vernacular. Lot's of lip-service may be paid to the idea in the classroom or on the Barney the Dinosaur show, but actually "doing" kindness out where people can see you? Let's just say that kindness is not likely to buy you much street credibility.

Last week in our discussion of Justice, I made the point that is not, in the end, what we believe or what we say that matters. It is what we do. Micah's admonition begins with acts of justice, and then quickly balances this with acts of mercy, or lovingkindness.

The Hebrew word for lovingkindness in Micah's verse is "Kheh'-sed" which means "kindness, lovingkindness, mercifulkindness." It is not so much a state of mind as it is a spiritual discipline, to be acted upon on a daily basis.

Our Jewish forebears were very perceptive. They knew well that what we say is often not congruent with what we do, and moving the people from words to action was an important emphasis in their spirituality.

To give you an idea of just how important this concept of lovingkindess was to them, I'd like to tell you a story from the Talmud:

Once Rabban Yohanan be Zakkai was leaving Jerusalem, and his student Rabbi Joshua followed him. Seeing the Temple in ruins, Rabbi Joshua said: "Woe are we! For we see in ruins the place where Israel's sins could be atoned for!" Then Rabban Yohanan told him: "Be not upset, my son. There is another way of gaining atonement that is just as effective. That is: deeds of lovingkindness." For it is written, "I desire lovingkindness, not sacrifice."

This is an amazing reading, because it elevates the act of kindness to having the same cosmic efficacy as the fire of sacrifice. Now on the one hand, you could brush this reading aside and say, "Well, the Romans destroyed the temple in 70 AD. The Jews had to justify their continued existence somehow. They had to deal with their sins in some fashion."

But think of all they ways the need for atonement could have been fulfilled. It could have been filled by meditation, as in India where meditation, or internal, mental sacrifice supplanted the earlier practice of the Fire Sacrifice. Or by obedience, a sacrifice of the will upon the altar of the heart. Or a sacrifice of fasting, as so many faiths do.

But no. The Jews replaced sacrificial atonement with a sort of atonement that brings its own blessing: acts of love and kindness.

Now this was quite a switch. It traded the vertical sacrificial relationship between God and humanity and laid it down horizontal. Now atonement would come not by what we do for God, but what we do for our brothers and sisters. What we do to each other, and the earth. Instead of erecting another barrier, another altar to separate God and humankind, the theology of lovingkindness brought God into the milieu of everyday human life.

This shift in consciousness was already underway before the temple's destruction. Already the center of Jewish worship was beginning to change from the temple in the heart of Jerusalem to the synagogue in the heart of the community. This gradual change in attitude would make it possible for another insightful rabbi to say, "whatever you do for the least of these, you do to me." God, in the midst of us.

The Talmud tells us that Rabbi Elazar, expounding upon the story about Rabbi Yohanan and the temple, told his students that "Deeds of lovingkindness are superior to charity in three respects. Charity can be accomplished only with money; deed of lovingkindness can be accomplished through personal involvement as well as with money. Charity can be given only to the poor; deeds of lovingkindness can be done for both rich and poor. Charity applies only to the living; deeds of lovingkindness apply to both the living and the dead."

Rabbi Elazar is telling us that just giving money doesn't do it. We have to get our hands dirty. We have to get busy; we have to do it OURSELVES. Charity will not save us from our own sin, but lovingkindness will. That's a lot to think about.

As I suggested, this concept has it's place deep in the teaching of Jesus. The earliest testimony of Christians taught that it was Jesus' mission to call Israel to cease sacrificing; that his tirades in the temple were against the sacrifices themselves. This tradition said that Jesus' message was that obedience and kindness were more important than the shedding of blood, and predicted the temple's demise, which, indeed, took place less than a generation after Jesus' death.

Jesus' own teachings about atonement and especially judgment concur. In the Sermon on the Mount, Jesus tells the crowd about Judgment day, about the sheep and the goats, the bliss of eternal life, the gnashing of teeth in outer darkness. I'd like us to look at the criteria for salvation in this reading. Are the sheep those who offered the appropriate sacrifices? Are the sheep those who "followed the rules" and kept the law perfectly? Are the sheep those who embrace the correct "statement of faith"?

No. Jesus says, `Come... inherit the kingdom prepared for you from the foundation of the world; for I was hungry and you gave me food, I was thirsty and you gave me something to drink, I was a stranger and you welcomed me, I was naked and you gave me clothing, I was sick and you took care of me, I was in prison and you visited me.'

It is not following the rules that is going to count at Judgment Day. It is not whether or not one has made the appropriate sacrifices. It is not whether or not one embraces the "proper" teachings. It's much more simple than that. Jesus is not going to ask us about any of these things. Instead, Jesus is going to ask us about our kindness. Did we give food to the hungry, water to the thirsty, hospitality to the stranger, nurture to the ill, companionship to the lonely? This, according to Jesus, is going to be our only defense at Judgment Day.

Perhaps we are going to be asked to give an account of the kindness we offered to strangers, or to our enemies. I hope we will have some stories to tell.

My mother had great admiration for a man whom she did not understand at all. Albert Schweitzer was a brilliant theologian, a talented organist, and a notorious heretic. Schweitzer was Unitarian who rejected the idea of Jesus' divinity, and of course any notion of the vicarious atonement. He was a heathen of the highest order. He did not believe the "right" things about Jesus, and was therefore, according to my mother, "on the devil's highway."

And so because of this, my mother could only shake her head in bewilderment when she told me how this heathen had given up everything he had to practice medicine amongst the poor of the poor in Africa. And the most troubling piece of information? That Schweitzer said he had done it to "follow Jesus."

There are a lot of folks who will have trouble with this one. "We are saved by faith, not works!" they will cry, and yet I fear that they have never really read the Sermon on the Mount with their hearts. It is not what we say, it is not even what we believe that matters to God. For the proof is in the pudding: it is what we DO that matters.

God does not require perfection of you. God does not require that you be "good girls and boys" and play by the rules. God does not require sacrifice, or even that you sacrifice your critical faculties. God requires of us only this: To act justly, and to do deeds of lovingkindness, whether they go unpunished or not. In the end, Jesus promises, they will most definitely be rewarded.

Let us pray.

Gracious God, you abound with mercy,
and your face upon us is always patient and expectant.
Help us to focus on the very things in front of our faces,
the people, the places, the little things we don't usually notice;
help us to be mindful of our unity with all things and with each other
and to treat the ordinary things in our lives as the sacred things they are.
For it is in attention to the little flower, that our minds behold great beauty,
it is in attention to the poor and the weak, that our minds behold majesty,
and it is in acts of lovingkindess that we behold unspeakable mercy.
Forgive us our trespasses, as we forgive those who trespass against us,
for we ask this in the name of one who lived in kindness to all,
Even Jesus Christ. Amen.