Father John McGinn

Saint John’s Episcopal Church 

Sandwich, Massachusetts

Pentecost 10       August 13, 2006

 

 

I’d like to begin with a story this morning about a woman who sued her husband for divorce.  She told the judge she had nagged and nagged but she couldn’t get him to do right.  The judge wondered if she had tried using kindness.  Referring to the biblical passage which says that “When we show kindness to our enemies, it is like heaping burning coals on his head.”  He asked her if she had tried heaping coals on his head.  She answered “No, but I don’t think it will work anyway.  I already tried scalding water and that didn’t do any good.” 

 

I am not sure this woman understood the meaning of kindness. 

 

On vacation I read a wonderful book called   A Team of Rivals by Doris Karns Goodwin it is a book about Abraham Lincoln.  And in that book it describes how Abraham Lincoln, no matter what the circumstance, managed to deal with his critics and those who opposed to his views, even members of his cabinet, he seemed to overcome that through kindness.  Even with the horror of the Civil War, he was able to have kindness toward those who had broken away from his beloved Union. 

 

Kindness. 

 

In the epistle from the Ephesians, just read by John, Saint Paul says “Get rid of all bitterness and rage, anger, brawling and slander along with every form of malice.  Be kind and compassionate to one another, forgiving each other just as in Christ, God forgave you.”

 

I want to talk for a few moments this morning about something I am going to title “Strategic Kindness.”  There are some people who are going to hear these words from the epistle, about living a life of love, and they are going to think to themselves “What mush!”  It is too soft, too effeminate.  Don’t you know you have to be tough to survive the real world?  Kindness and compassion are for wimps, not for real life. Read the record in the bible and you will discover that Jesus wad no wimp.  Neither was Saint Paul.  These were men of courage.  They knew how to stare danger and death in the face, yet they also knew that little is to be gained by escalating anger and malice into a more serious confrontation.  They knew that if you lived by an eye for an eye credo that it can only produce a downward spiral of revenge and resentment.

 

The best way to defeat an enemy is to make them an ally. So Jesus would teach in the Sermon on the Mount; “You’ve heard it was said ‘an eye for an eye and a tooth for a tooth.’ But I tell you not to resist that evil person.  If someone strikes you on the right cheek, turn to him the other also.  And if someone wants to sue you and take your tunic, let him have your cloak as well. If someone forces you to go one mile, go two miles.”

 

This is what I would call “strategic kindness.”  It is not a justification for being a wimp.  It is not a call to be soft.  It is simply a recognition that violence breeds violence.  Whether it is physical or verbal.  Hatred breeds hatred.  We can turn a minor disagreement into a major conflict by the way we handle our anger.  Humanity has had to work very hard to curb tribal and national hatreds. We have seen that in recent years in Ireland, the former Yugoslavia, Africa, and most especially today in the Middle East. 

 

It hurts all of us to see the pain that the people of Lebanon are going through as Hezbollah and Israel fight with one another.  It also bothers us when we see the innocent people in Israel and Palestine who are beaten and killed because of hatred and prejudice.  And even this week as we watched our television or opened the newspaper and read about the plot to destroy ten airplanes that would be flying over the Atlantic.  To think of the hundreds of people who would die innocently because of hatred that is so deep inside people toward Americans and other non-Islamic people. 

 

There is an east African saying that goes like this: Me and Somalia against the world, me and my tribe against Somalia, me and my family against my tribe, me and my brother against my family and me against my brother.

 

We can see this primitive ethic at work in the world today with tragic results.  It is why our country must be very careful in how we respond to attacks on us, weather they are physical or verbal.  Somebody has to break the cycle of violence and hatred. Some one has to be the adult, in a world of children. 

 

Unfortunately we have children growing up filled with all kinds of rage.  I read the other day about a thirteen year old boy who shot his father.  His rage was learned in the home.  We have teenagers estranged from their parents, and grown men and women estranged from their siblings, and husbands and wives, who once loved and supported one another, torn by resentments that have built up over the years.

 

 This is serious stuff and you all know it.  It is serious stuff around the world, but it is also here in our own lives.  In an old monastery in Germany, one may see two pair of deer antlers permanently interlocked.  They were found in that position many years ago.  Apparently the animals had been fighting fiercely and their horns became so tangled that they could not be disengaged.  As a result both of the deer perished of hunger.

 

Some of the most precious relationships we have can be destroyed if someone is not willing to play the adult and turn the other cheek.  Uncontrolled anger can destroy our relationships.  Unresolved anger can also destroy us. 

 

When I was reading the book A Team of Rivals, I read about a fact that I didn’t realize about the Civil War.  I didn’t realize that both the Northern and Southern armies possessed bullets that not only penetrated the enemy, but exploded on impact.  These bullets had no particular advantage regular bullets disabled the enemy just as effectively, but the exploding bullet caused a much nastier wound.  Soldiers on both sides occasionally used the exploding rounds, exalting over what such a bullet could do to a hated enemy.  It turned out though that the danger was no simply to the enemy.  A number of Union soldiers, who were carrying these rounds at the battle of Gettysburg, in 1863, had hot shrapnel set off the rounds right next to their own bodies.  These soldiers enjoyed the same fate as people with car bombs in the Middle East whose bombs went off prematurely.  Hatred and vindictiveness bear a lot in common with the exploding bullets. They are likely to prove just as deadly to the person carrying them as they were supposed to be to the intended victim.

 

Saint Paul writes in the epistle, “Get rid of all bitterness and rage, anger, brawling and slander, along with every form of malice. Be kind and compassionate to one another, forgiving each other just as in Christ, God forgave you.”  Saint Paul adds in his epistle, “ The imitators of God therefore as dearly loved children and live a life of love just as Christ loved us and gave himself up for us as an offering and sacrifice to God.” 

 

What does he mean? “The imitators of God…”  Just this; all the anger and hatred of humanity were focused on Good Friday long ago when the innocent son of God, Jesus, hung on the cross.  What was God’s response to all of that? To wipe us off the face of the earth?  God could have done so and be totally justified; instead God played the adult to humanity’s petulant child.  God took that awful event and used it to save us from our sins.  We hated and God loved.  We struck out with blind fury, and God responded with unconditional acceptance.  We shut him out, and God brought us in.

 

If you want to imitate God, that is how it is done. 

 

I read a story about Chris Carrier, of Coral Gables, Florida who was abducted when he was ten years old.  His kidnappers, angry with the boy’s family, burned him with cigarettes, stabbed him with an ice pick and shot him in the head, then left him to die in the Everglades.  Remarkably the boy recovered, he survived, though he lost sight in one eye.  His attacker was not apprehended and finally twenty-two years later a man confessed to the crime.  Chris Carrier, by then a youth minister at his church, went to see this man.  He found the man, a seventy-seven year old ex-convict, frail and blind living in a Miami Beach nursing home.  Chris began visiting often, reading to the ex-convict from the bible and praying with him.  The ministry of Chris opened the door and allowed the man to accept Jesus into his life.  

 

No arrest was forthcoming, for the statute of limitations on the crime was long passed, but fortunately the statute of limitations had also run out on Chris’s hatred and bitterness.

Chris said; “While many people cannot understand how I could forgive my kidnapper, from my point of view, I couldn’t not forgive him.  If I had chosen to hate him all these years or spent my life looking for revenge, then I wouldn’t be the man I am today.  The man my wife and children love, the man God has helped me to be.”

 

There are many people who cannot relate to Chris Carrier’s attitude and his willingness to forgive.  In the long run, I believe it is the only hope that the world has.  We will never solve the problem of international terrorism with out bombs.  We will never shout our way to nurturing family relationships in our homes.  We will never have peace in our hearts until we understand the power of strategic kindness.  Kindness that turns enemies into friends.  How does that happen?  Jesus of course said it best; “If you are offering your gift at the altar, and there remember that your brother or sister has something against you, leave your gift in front of the altar.  First go and reconcile with your brother or sister then come offer your gift. 

 

My guess is that here at St. John’s church family there is some reconciling that needs to be done.  For someone it is a brother or a sister, for someone else it is a parent or a teenager, for someone it is a colleague at work.

 

 Unresolved anger and resentment destroys relationships.

 

 Unresolved anger and resentment can destroy our very soul.   

 

The solution, the imitators of God, lay down your anger here at the altar.  Return love for hatred and kindness for hostility and acceptance for rejection.  Be the adult to someone else’s child.  Break the cycle. “Get rid of all anger and bitterness, rage, brawling and slander along with every form of malice.  Be kind and compassionate to one another, forgiving each other just as in Christ, God forgave you.    AMEN

 

HOME