I’m preaching in Ossian this coming Sunday (livestream/video here).  There are lots of reasons to feel honored and privileged at the opportunity, and I thank Pastor Andrew and the elders on the Session for their invitation and for trusting me with the pulpit.

The summer sermon series comes from the “fruit of the Spirit” in Galatians 5 – love, joy, peace, patience, kindness, goodness, faithfulness, gentleness, self-control, and at week five, I have been given kindness as my topic.

Kindness also appears on the virtue lists found in Ephesians and Colossians. Kindness is one of those self-evident virtues; I can’t use some exegetical magic to bring deep theological insight to the Greek word or understanding of kindness as somehow between patience and goodness.  Kindness means, well, it means kindness.  The opposite of meanness, something like that.  We think of being kind to animals and helping an elderly person cross the street.

In the sermon I will be going over to Romans 2 to develop the idea of costly kindness as an attribute of God. God’s costly kindness is meant to lead us to repentance.  We’ll see how the sermon goes.

In the meantime, I have been thinking about kindness, not meanness, and how it might manifest itself in my life.

In my sermon I am going to use some of what Martin Luther said about kindness in his commentary on Galatians:

Those who want to be true followers of the Gospel must not be sharp and bitter but gentle, mild, courteous, and fair spoken, which encourages others to delight in their company. They should wink at other people’s faults, or at least put them in the best light; they will be perfectly content to yield and give way to others, and content to bear with those who are difficult and obstinate. (Alister McGraith, J.I. Packer, Crossway Commentaries – emphasis mine)

I am not very good at winking at other people’s faults or putting them in the best light. I tend to find faults, grimace, and then put those faults and their owners in the spotlight. That other driver, those people with their social media posts, that irritating person at church – did you notice their fault? Can I point those people and their faults out to you?

In my sermon, I plan on putting some theological meat on the bones of kindness.  But I think Luther may have had it right when he stuck to winking at others’ faults and putting them in the best light.  And, yes, Luther knew all about the difficult and the obstinate even in the church.

If kindness is an attribute of God, then meanness is an attribute of our culture.  The politicians may be leading the way, but have you noticed the rise of “mean” in recent years?  The church that is a place of kindness – costly and caring kindness, but also winking and best light kindness – points a mean world to the still more excellent way.