August 10, 2021
Editor’s note: This homily for August 8, 2021 was originally published on Fr. Mark-David’s Facebook page.
“Be kind to one another, tender hearted, forgiving one another.” (Ephesians 4:32)
Be kind.
I wonder why Paul had to remind this little church at Ephesus
To be kind?
Why wouldn’t they be already-this dear group of believers?
Acts of kindness quickly slip away, vanishing, mist.
Deeds of cruelty, what does Paul call them:
“bitterness, wrath, wrangling, slander, malice”
are bedrocks defying erosion.
True, for Christians in Ephesus,
True, well, even now, in politics and church,
at home-between friends.
We have a tendency, and always have had
To see God as magnificent, other worldly, distant
penetrable and approachable only
by mystics, saints, martyrs, heroes of the divine.
The truth is God is much closer than that,
Much simpler than that:
“Be kind, tender hearted, forgiving.”
God’s kingdom, Jesus preaches, is at hand,
Your hand and mine
Kindness the portal through which
We see God, Touch God, are with God,
As Paul says, “imitators of God, living in love, as Christ loves.”
Kindness is ordinary and accessible holiness:
A cup of cold water
A crust of bread
A blanket-a roof, a visit, a comfort.
Where else do we think we will find God?
How else do we think we will imitate God?
Be kind
so easily lost in my life’s clutter.
I have so much to do, I am late already,
Too busy to even notice you,
No time to stop if I did.
Kindness is feared.
Does it make me look weak, a pushover, a chump?
How often must I forgive the same damn person?
These fears are trade winds blowing kindness away.
Wrangling, slander, anger, bitterness, even malice
Are more reliable tools in a competitive world.
“Live in love as Christ loved us”
Is a noble aspiration,
kindness is how we do it.
Amen.
I came across this poem, worth a read:
Small Kindnesses
Danusha LamerisI’ve been thinking about the way, when you walk
down a crowded aisle, people pull in their legs
to let you by. Or how strangers still say “bless you”
when someone sneezes, a leftover
from the Bubonic plague. “Don’t die,” we are saying.
And sometimes, when you spill lemons
from your grocery bag, someone else will help you
pick them up. Mostly, we don’t want to harm each other.
We want to be handed our cup of coffee hot,
and to say thank you to the person handing it. To smile
at them and for them to smile back. For the waitress
to call us honey when she sets down the bowl of clam chowder,
and for the driver in the red pick-up truck to let us pass.
We have so little of each other, now. So far
from tribe and fire. Only these brief moments of exchange.
What if they are the true dwelling of the holy, these
fleeting temples we make together when we say, “Here,
have my seat,” “Go ahead — you first,” “I like your hat.”