### **Introduction**
Video Ill.: Kindness and Service — Church Fuel
Video Transcript: “We need to be kind. We need to be a light. An act of kindness can have great impact. Kindness allows others to feel God’s grace through us. Let’s treat others as we would want to be treated. Be loving. Be compassionate. Be kind.”
Be kind. Be compassionate.
These are two concepts that have really escaped our world, even more so in the current political environment. Instead of talking about the issues, the political candidates attack each other’s personalities, calling each other names, like a bunch of schoolyard brats, fueling division and fostering a culture of hostility rather than meaningful dialogue.
Take a glance at any social media, and you’ll see what I’ve noticed: the vitriol overflows from the campaigns to posts and comments between friends, classmates, neighbors and family members. I’ve even seen posts that are generally un-political turn into political bashing as the comment feed gets longer and longer.
We have lost sight of decency and kindness.
We have lost our compassion.
This morning, we are continuing our series entitled Faith beyond the Ballot Box. In a world full of political division and uncertainty, one thing remains constant—our faith in Christ.
We began our study, remembering that no matter what happens on November 5, no matter the results of the election, even in times of political tension and division, we can rest assured that God's kingdom is eternal and unshakable. Jesus is Lord over all earthly powers, and our true citizenship lies in His kingdom—a kingdom not defined by political leaders but by humility, servanthood, and ultimate allegiance to God.
We saw a couple of weeks ago how our unity is not based on cultural, social, or political similarities, but rather on our shared identity in Jesus—sinners saved by an amazing grace. As believers, we are called to elevate Jesus above our differences and work together as one body, reflecting God's love and bringing hope to a divided world.
Last week, we saw that in a world where pride often drives division—especially during the election season—humility is the key to fostering unity and healing. With Jesus as our example, we saw how humility dismantles pride and invites healing, not only in our relationships but in our nation as well.
Today, in times of political division and tension, it’s easy to become hardened toward those with different views. But as followers of Christ, we are called to a higher standard—kindness and compassion. This morning, we’ll explore the power of kindness and compassion in healing divisions and bringing the light of Christ to a world in need.
**Main Idea**: In a polarized world, kindness and compassion are not just virtues—they are essential to living out our faith beyond the ballot box. And a key part of this is how we use our words.
### **I. Kindness Reflects the Heart of God**
Deputy Literally Goes the Extra Mile to Serve Citizen in Wheelchair
Source: Caitlin O’Kane, “Deputy pushes stranded woman’s wheelchair one mile to her home” MSN News (10-05-18)
https://www.preachingtoday.com/illustrations/2018/november/deputy-literally-goes-extra-mile-to-serve-citizen-in-wheelc.html
Copied from Preaching Today
Two sheriff’s deputies thought they were responding to a routine call, but when they arrived, the situation required more than what they’d initially thought.
The call mentioned a traffic hazard in the middle of the road, in the form of a wheelchair. When the deputies arrived on the scene, they did indeed find a wheelchair—and an elderly woman inside of it. The battery in her electric wheelchair was dead, leaving her without power to even finish crossing the road.
They initially offered her a ride, but the wheelchair was too heavy to fit inside their patrol cruiser, and its battery pack meant that folding it up was a non-starter. The only thing left to do was to offer to push her chair the mile long journey home. Which is exactly what Deputy Montanez did, while his partner Deputy Chapman followed closely behind.
In the dashcam footage of the event, Chapman is heard teasing his partner. “You can pick it up, you’re only going like one mile an hour.”
Kindness.
Kindness was extended in assisting a helpless elderly lady make it home.
Kindness. If we cannot extend kindness and compassion to others, we are incapable of expressing God’s heart for our neighbors, friends, family, and coworkers.
Paul instructed the church to choose compassion and kindness, as this is the way of God.
In Colossians 3, Paul said:
12 Therefore, as God's chosen people, holy and dearly loved, clothe yourselves with compassion, kindness, humility, gentleness and patience. 13 Bear with each other and forgive whatever grievances you may have against one another. Forgive as the Lord forgave you. 14 And over all these virtues put on love, which binds them together in perfect unity. (Colossians 3, NIV1984)
Kindness, compassion, humility, gentleness and patience are attributes that reflect the heart of God, who has shown us incredible kindness, mercy, grace, and compassion through His Son Jesus.
Kindness is not just expressed through our actions, though. Kindness must be expressed through the words we speak.
Solomon said in Proverbs 18:
21 The tongue has the power of life and
death,
and those who love it will eat its fruit.
(Proverbs 18, NIV1984)
Our written and spoken words can either build others up or tear them down.
**Key Point**: Kindness is a deliberate choice we must make to reflect the character of Christ in how we treat others, especially in our words. In a divisive political climate, the words we use carry power, and we must use them to bring life, not death.
As TobyMac has said, “speak life!”
I challenge each of us to consider the words we choose — I pray that we will choose to speak life, not hatred, not anger, not condescension.
People are looking to what we say. The world is watching us as the church. May we clothe our conversations, especially in the political realm, with kindness and compassion.
May our words truly reflect the heart of God and not the division in our world today.
### **II. Kindness is an Act of Compassionate Service**
We have many wonderful freedoms in our country today.
Freedom
By Tim Smith
Copied from Sermon Central
In the Mariners’ Museum in Newport News, VA, there’s a special display for a rickety, home-made aluminum kayak. This tiny, makeshift boat seems oddly out of place in the midst of displays for impressive Navy vessels and artifacts from significant battles on the sea. But a bronze plaque tells museum visitors the story behind this kayak’s heroic makers. In 1966, an auto mechanic named Laureano and his wife, Consuelo, decided that they could no longer live under the oppression of Cuba’s dictatorship regime. After spending months collecting scrap metal, they pieced together a boat just barely large enough for two small people. Then, Laureano jury-rigged a small lawn mower engine on the back of the kayak. After months of planning and on a moonless night, they set out into the treacherous straits of Florida with only their swimsuits on. They had enough food and water for two days. After 70 hours, the U.S. Coast Guard rescued the couple just south of the Florida Keys. Was it worth the risk? Laureano said, “When one has grown up in liberty, you realize how important it is to have freedom. We live in the enormous prison which is Cuba, where one’s life is not worth one crumb. Where one goes out into the street and does not know whether or not one will return because the political police can arrest you without any warning and put you in prison. Before this could happen to us, we thought that going into the ocean and risking death or being eaten by sharks, is a million times better than to stay suffering under political oppression.”
They came seeking freedom!
In our country today, we often take the freedoms we have for granted. We fail to remember that just a few short miles off our coast, just a mile across our southern border, lie countries that do not give their citizens many of the freedom we have in America today.
Not only do we take these freedoms for granted, we also take advantage of these freedoms — like the freedom of speech. Just because we can say something doesn't mean that we should.
In Jesus, we also have found freedom — through His mercy and grace we are set free from our sin — free to live a life in His service.
We also have to be cautious how we use that freedom. Paul writes in Galatians 5:
13 You, my brothers, were called to be free. But do not use your freedom to indulge the sinful nature; rather, serve one another in love. 14 The entire law is summed up in a single command: “Love your neighbor as yourself." 15 If you keep on biting and devouring each other, watch out or you will be destroyed by each other. (Galatians 5, NIV1984)
There is a whole lot of biting each other in our world.
Love Your Neighbors
Source: G. K. Chesterton, Leadership, Vol. 9, no. 2.
https://www.preachingtoday.com/illustrations/1996/november/2086.html
Copied from Preaching Today
Someone has once said, “The Bible tells us to love our neighbors, and also to love our enemies; probably because they are generally the same people.”
True Love Places Limits on Our Freedom
Source: Jake Meador, In Search of the Common Good (IVP, 2019), pp. 57 & 61
https://www.preachingtoday.com/illustrations/2022/may/true-love-places-limits-on-our-freedom.html
Copied from Preaching Today
In his book Making Sense of God, Tim Keller notes that when the national anthem is sung at sporting events, the cheering begins on the line “o’er the land of the free.” The singer quite often extends that line with a lengthy high note. Keller writes, “Even though the song goes on to talk about ‘the brave,’ this is an afterthought. Both the melody line and our culture highlight freedom as the main theme and value of our society.”
But true love imposes limits on our obsession with freedom. The film Secondhand Lions captures this well. In a scene near the end of the film, a small fatherless boy, who has been abandoned by his mother to be raised by his crazy great-uncles, tells one of his uncles, who is prone to depression and has contemplated taking his own life, that he cannot do that because he, the small boy, needs him. “You're my uncle. I need you to stick around and be my uncle.” The faithfulness of love will shape—and constrain—the freedom of love.
The freedom we enjoy in Jesus should be used to serve others in love, Paul says.
Kindness is an active way we can serve and love our neighbors, fulfilling the law of Christ.
In James 3, James uses the analogy of a ship's rudder to explain how even small things—like our tongues—can direct the course of our lives. Just as a small rudder steers a large ship, the words we speak steer the direction of our relationships, our influence, and the way we serve others.
He says it this way:
4 … [T]ake ships as an example. Although they are so large and are driven by strong winds, they are steered by a very small rudder wherever the pilot wants to go. 5 Likewise the tongue is a small part of the body, but it makes great boasts. Consider what a great forest is set on fire by a small spark. 6 The tongue is also a fire, a world of evil among the parts of the body. It corrupts the || whole person, sets the whole course of his life on fire, and is itself set on fire by hell. (James 3, NIV1984)
**Key Point**: Kindness is more than just being nice—it’s a form of service, an act of compassionate love toward others, and it often starts with our words. Our words can either serve others or harm them, and in times of division, we must use them to build bridges.
This morning, why don’t we look for ways we can serve others through kindness, both in deed and in word? What ways can we encourage someone, instead of attacking them because of their differences of opinion? How can we lift up someone instead of tearing them down?
Let’s demonstrate the compassionate love of God in tangible ways, using our words to heal, rather than divide.
### **III. Kindness Brings Healing to a Divided World**
In the parable of the Good Samaritan, Jesus tells the story of a man who showed kindness and compassion to someone who was supposed to be his enemy. The Samaritan’s kindness brought healing to the injured man, showing that kindness transcends boundaries of race, politics, or culture.
Follow along, as we read the story from Luke 10:
25 …[A]n expert on the law stood up to test Jesus, saying, “Teacher, what must I do to get life forever?”
26 Jesus said, “What is written in the law? What do you read there?”
27 The man answered, “Love the Lord your God with all your heart, all your soul, all your strength, and all your mind.” Also, “Love your || neighbor as you love yourself.”
28 Jesus said to him, “Your answer is right. Do this and you will live.”
29 But the man, wanting to show the importance of his question, said to Jesus, “And who is my neighbor?”
30 Jesus answered, “As a man was going down from Jerusalem to Jericho, some robbers || attacked him. They tore off his clothes, beat him, and left him lying there, almost dead. 31 It happened that a priest was going down that road. When he saw the man, he walked by on the other side. 32 Next, a Levite came there, and after he went over and looked at the man, he walked by on the other side of the road. 33 Then a Samaritan traveling down the road came to || where the hurt man was. When he saw the man, he felt very sorry for him. 34 The Samaritan went to him, poured olive oil and wine on his wounds, and bandaged them. Then he put the hurt man on his own donkey and took him to an inn where he cared for him. 35 The next day, the Samaritan brought out two coins, gave them to the innkeeper, and said, ‘Take care of this man. || If you spend more money on him, I will pay it back to you when I come again.’”
36 Then Jesus said, “Which one of these three men do you think was a neighbor to the man who was attacked by the robbers?”
37 The expert on the law answered, “The one who showed him mercy.”
Jesus said to him, “Then go and do what he did.” (Luke 10, NCV)
The Unexpected Power of Random Acts of Kindness
Catherine Pearson
September 2, 2022
https://www.nytimes.com/2022/09/02/well/family/random-acts-of-kindness.html
According to an article in the New York Times, recent research published in the *Journal of Experimental Psychology* shows how random acts of kindness have a greater impact than we often realize.
The article tells the story that in late August, Erin Alexander, 57, sat in the parking lot of a Target store in Fairfield, Calif., and wept. Her sister-in-law had recently died, and Ms. Alexander was having a hard day.
A barista working at the Starbucks inside the Target was also having a bad day. The espresso machine had broken down and she was clearly stressed. Ms. Alexander — who’d stopped crying and gone inside for some caffeine — smiled, ordered an iced green tea, and told her to hang in there. After picking up her order, she noticed a message on the cup: “Erin,” the barista had scrawled next to a heart, “your soul is golden.”
“I’m not sure I even necessarily know what ‘your soul is golden’ means,” said Ms. Alexander, who laughed and cried while recalling the incident.
But the warmth of that small and unexpected gesture, from a stranger who had no inkling of what she was going through, moved her deeply.
“Of course, I was still really sad,” Ms. Alexander said. “But that little thing made the rest of my day.”
While the barista may have thought it was a small gesture, it helped brighten the recipient's entire day.
**Key Point**: Kindness, no matter how small, can bring profound healing to others, just as the Good Samaritan’s compassion did in Jesus’ parable. We are called to show kindness and compassion to others using both our actions and our words, especially those with whom we may disagree. We often underestimate the power of simple acts of love and care. In today’s divided world, these moments of kindness can bridge divides and offer hope.
This morning, let us together consider how we can be like the Good Samaritan, showing kindness and compassion to people who are different from us.
What small random acts of kindness can we do? Pay for someone’s meal? Give a pat on the back? Send an encouraging text or email? Let someone who appears hurried in front of us in the checkout line? Hold the door for a family with small children? Leave a bigger tip than normal? Offer your seat to an elderly man or woman? Simply say “Thank you”?
How can we use our actions and words to bring healing and unity in our families, communities, and political discussions?
### **Conclusion:**
https://genius.com/Glen-campbell-try-a-little-kindness-lyrics
This morning, as the old song says,
If you see your brother standing by the road
With a heavy load from the seeds he sowed
And if you see your sister falling by the way
Just stop and say you're goin' the wrong way
You've got to try a little kindness
Yes, show a little kindness
Just shine your light for everyone to see
And if you try a little kindness
Then you'll overlook the blindness
Of narrow-minded people on the narrow-minded streets
Shaq the Good Samaritan
Source: Cindy Swirko, “Shaq the Good Samaritan,” The Gainesville Sun, (7-14-20)
https://www.preachingtoday.com/illustrations/2020/august/shaq-good-samaritan.html
Copied from Preaching Today
Recently, an unnamed woman crashed her car when her tire blew out on I-75 in the Gainesville, Florida, area. Police were soon dispatched to the scene, but when they arrived, they did not find her stranded alone. In dash cam footage, the screen is filled with the image of a 7-foot tall Good Samaritan.
Shaquille O’Neal was apparently driving behind the vehicle when the accident occurred. And when he witnessed the scene, the former NBA superstar did not simply call 911. He did not outsource a rescue. He pulled over and involved himself personally.
One of the kids from the car was actually outside the vehicle hanging out with the sports legend when officers arrived. O’Neal shared a fist bump with a deputy and walked back to the car with the officers to tell the family good bye.
Officer Art Forgey had this comment for reporters: “The deputies had no idea he was going to be there but they both recognized him as soon as they got there. He happened to come upon the accident ... so he stopped to see if any aid was needed. Once law enforcement arrived, he got in his vehicle and left. He didn’t stand around for any accolades. He was just a good citizen.”
Good citizens.
We need good citizens, both in our country and in God’s kingdom.
We need good citizens these days that share kindness and compassion.
Kindness reflects the heart of God, serves others in love, and brings healing to a divided world. Our words have the power of life and death, and in a world full of division and strife, kindness and compassion are essential for living out our faith beyond the ballot box.
This morning, amid the divisions in our world, in the middle of the nasty comments thrown back and forth in the political arena, may we commit to practicing kindness and compassion in both our words and deeds. I pray that we will look for opportunities to speak life, serve others, and reflect the kindness of Christ in every interaction.
When we choose kindness, life, and compassion, God will use these acts of love to heal the divisions and bring His peace and unity into our broken world.
Showing kindness and compassion is how we will maintain our faith beyond the ballot box.
