Love and Kindness

Love Kindness

As I’ve been exploring this verse, I’ve realized that the people who were asking Micah “What does the Lord require of [us]” must have been very disappointed with his answer. They come to him out of a tradition that is very ritualistic, very disciplined, and being ritualistic and disciplined there are definite ways that the people are supposed to be worshipping their God. When they come to ask, “What does the Lord require of us,” they probably were all prepared to hear answers completely different form the answer that he gave them. Hence the disappointment. They must have thought that he was going to say, “Well what you really need to do is instead of praying three or four times a day, you need to pray every hour,” or “What you need to do is sacrifice 10 rams, or not only sacrifice your first born but your second born.”

So what does he tell them? He says, “What the Lord requires of you, what Life expects out of you, is to do justice, love kindness, and walk humbly with your God.” He is saying to them that religion is no longer a private affair. You need to go public. You need to act out your religion in relationship to other people. Again, this is not what they wanted to hear. So, they were probably disappointed, perhaps upset. Maybe they even ignored everything he had to say.

As I was thinking about this kind of disappointment, I tended to empathize with Micah a little bit. Not that I am even near the stature of the prophet Micah, but I can empathize with the sense of disappointment that he was experiencing from his congregation. I began reflecting about times that I have disappointed you. One person came to mind that is particularly apropos of this whole idea of loving kindness. This was a member of the church who would say to me Sunday after Sunday, “When are you going to preach about love? We need to hear more about love.” I have to admit that I don’t think I have ever given a sermon about love, where love was my theme. And, this member was disappointed. She really felt that love was the answer: If we could all just love everyone, everything would be OK. I was really letting the people down, I was letting her down, by not preaching about love.

I would say to her: “I have no idea what that word means.” I do with my family and a few others, but the word is overused. I mean, we’re supposed to love our dogs and cats and their dog food and cat food and the clothes we wear, and the soaps we use, and after a point it just is so overused. What does that word mean? The meaninglessness of the word love is described by George O’Brien: “Love is one of those big words that live on the right side of human worth. But like physics and ice hockey, it has to be carried on with inadequate equipment. On the all too human level, we are not lovers up to our inner worth. Those who preach love as the world’s solution often have an extraordinarily exaggerated notion about our abilities in the field. If we make love the word for life, we are led to deny mere rations and mere rationality. In doing so, we act in a manifestly imprudent fashion. I trust you too much. I trust myself too much. Loving and being loved in a strictly human level is a prescription for frustration.”

We have created a setup for failure, because no one understands what love means. We have shaped an ideal that no one can possibly measure up to. Yet that’s what she wanted me to preach about, Sunday after Sunday. But what do we mean?

Micah gives us an answer. Isn’t it interesting that Micah doesn’t say, when they ask what does the Lord require of us, “Do justice and love everyone.” Certainly that is the message that we hear in other places, especially in the Christian scriptures, and in a lot of other sacred scripture. Micah doesn’t say, “All we need is love.” He says, “Love kindness.” Very different and more important.

What is considered kindness? The ancient Hebrew word for kindness is hesed. Like other Hebrew words – like the word for justice, mishpot—hesed has lots of nuances. Hebrews (Biblical Jews) understood exactly what the word meant. Let me unpack hesed a little bit for you. First of all, kindness meant fairness. Lawrence Kushner tells a story that embraces this understanding of hesed. It comes from a book entitled, “Invisible Lines of Connection.” It’s a short story entitled, “Stranger on the Bus.”

A light snow was falling and the streets were crowded with people. It was Munich in Nazi Germany. One of my rabbinic students told me that her great aunt Susie had been riding a city bus home from work when SS Stormtroopers suddenly stopped the coach and began collecting the identification papers of the passengers. Most were annoyed, but a few were terrified. Jews were being told to leave the bus and get into a truck around the corner. My student’s great aunt watched from her seat in the rear as the soldiers systematically worked their way down the aisle. She began to tremble. Tears streaming down her face. When the man next to her noticed that she was crying, he politely asked her why. “I don’t have the papers you have. I am a Jew. They’re going to take me.” The man exploded with disgust. He began to curse and scream at her. “You stupid idiot,” he roared. “I can’t stand being near you.” The SS man asked what all the yelling was about. “Damn her,” the man shouted angrily. “My wife has forgotten her papers again. I’m fed up. She does this all the time.” The soldiers laughed, and moved on. My student said that her great aunt never saw the man again, and never even knew his name.

This is the story of an extraordinary example of kindness. It embodies the idea of “do unto others as you would want them to do unto you.” Treat other people the way you would like to be treated. That’s kindness. That’s fairness. There is also a quality of justice. It is an extraordinarily powerful story. Perhaps we cannot imagine ourselves ever being in that kind of situation. But each day, I believe, we have opportunities. We’re put in circumstances where we can perform little itsy-bitsy acts of justice. That’s what Kushner is really poking at, that sense of fairness, of kindness, of small acts of justice as kindness. So hesed is kindness as fairness.

Another understanding of kindness is awareness, becoming aware that this world is not our oyster. Life – our world, the universe, the cosmos – is something that is shared with all living creatures. Kindness is an awareness that there were people who came before us, who created the world that we have now, and there are people coming after us, generations and generations, and we are creating a world for them. It is a sense of awareness that is embodied in hesed.

There is a story about a villager who spent all of his free time going out to the edge of the village. He would be out there planting fig trees. Now, if you know anything about fig trees, you know that they take a long time to grow and bear fruit. Yet, he would be out there planting, an elderly man, and people from the village would go and say to him: “Why are you doing this? This is absurd. You are never going to reap the benefits of the fruit these trees bear. You will be long gone, long dead by the time these trees bear fruit. You are a foolish old man.” And he said, “I understand what you say. But I think of all the times throughout my life, as a child, as a youth, as a young adult, and even today, when I have sat under fig trees and enjoyed the fruit that someone else planted. And now I feel like I need to do the same thing for another generation, as a thank you to those who came before me. Let me do the same thing for them.” That’s kindness with a sense of awareness. We are all interconnected; we’re not here just for ourselves; we’re here for other people.

So kindness is fairness, kindness is awareness, and then a harder one. Kindness is a sense of being nonjudgmental. I think about all the times when I entered into relationships where I had prior knowledge of an individual. Or I enter into a relationship with someone and I have an immediate prejudice or reaction to them, based on a whole host of things that might prejudice me. Before I even say hello, I’ve already got a mindset about that person. How difficult it is to enter into a relationship with someone whom you don’t know and do it value-free, non-judgmentally. Just having a willingness to extend a hand to them, to support them in a kind way, can be difficult.

There’s a wonderful story that I came across about a sheik who dies and leaves behind three sons. It was the sheik’s wish that his 17 camels be divided up among his sons. The oldest son was supposed to get half the camels. The middle son was supposed to get one-third of the camels, and the youngest of the sons was supposed to get a ninth of the camels. But there were 17 camels, so what were they supposed to do. They go to their village sage, and ask his advice. The sage thinks awhile, and then says: “I really can’t help you, but what I will do is to lend you a camel so you will have 18, that way you can divide it up the way your father had wished. I just have one request. If for some reason you do not need my camel, would you please return it. Or if finally there comes a day where none of you want the camel, please return it.” The sons think this is great. So they go back and the oldest son takes his half, which is nine. The middle son takes his third, which is six. And the youngest son takes his ninth, which is two. Nine plus six plus two equals 17. They returned the 18th camel to the sage.

The sage had the wisdom not to form a judgment and say, “You idiots why are you trying to do this, Can’t you see…” He had wisdom and wasn’t judgmental. All he did was lend them a hand. He supported them in keeping the wish of their father.

Now some texts translate this phrase not as “love kindness” but “love mercy.” Mercy as I understand it means a judgment has already been passed on an individual, and when you show mercy you overlook that judgment. So in this sense, too, kindness is being nonjudgmental. Kindness as lending a hand ties into that sense of mercy. Entering into a relationship with someone, showing kindness (showing mercy) is being nonjudgmental (looking beyond judgment), being supportive, lending a hand, setting aside your preconceived notions of what that individual is like.

So hesed is fairness, awareness, and being nonjudgmental. These make a lot more sense than trying to love everybody. Loving kindness, having kindness, being committed to kindness instead of love, these sound within our grasp.

As I was getting ready for this morning, I started thinking about times people have been kind to me. Sometimes it’s been people I love and often it’s been people I rarely know. They may not even know that what they did was kindness. I would wager that every one of you could think of at least one time (and my guess is that there are many times) that someone showed you kindness in a way that still is powerful enough that it affects the way you think and live. Not only did it change the day but this kindness actually affected your life, it made a difference.

As I started thinking about this, the question naturally came to my mind, “Why?” Why do some people get it once or twice in their lives; some people seem to get kindness once a week or at least that’s what they tell you. Why? Is it grace? Was it being in the right place at the right time, luck, synchronicity? Do you deserve it, that’s why you got it? Lawrence Kushner in another reading explains it like this:

There must have been a time when you entered a room and met someone, and after awhile you understood that unknown to either of you, there was a reason you had met. You would change the other, or he or she would change you. By some word or deed or just created by your presence, the deed had been completed. Then perhaps you were a little bewildered. A little humbled, maybe even grateful. And then it was over. Each lifetime is like the pieces of a jigsaw puzzle. For some there are more pieces. For others the puzzle is more difficult to assemble. Some seem to be born with a nearly completed puzzle. And so it goes. Souls going this way and that trying to assemble the myriad parts. But know this. You do not have within yourself all the pieces to your puzzle. But before the days when they used to seal jigsaw puzzles in cellophane, ensuring that all the pieces were there, everyone carries with them at least one and probably many pieces of someone else’s puzzle. Sometimes they know it. Sometimes they don’t. And when you present your piece, which is worthless to you, to another, whether you know it or not, whether they know it or not, you become a messenger.

For some people Kushner’s explanation is going to be a highly romantic and fantasized version of why certain things happen, be it kindness or a lot of other things. But there are two things that Kushner’s pointing to that I really like. One is the interconnectivity of all people to everything, what we call in Unitarian Universalism call the interdependent web. We are here, Einstein said, for the sake of each other. When we know this, life will be a lot better.

There’s another part I like too. Could you imagine if we actually went through life seeing ourselves as messengers with the missing pieces of each other’s lives; if we went through life with a disposition and attitude of kindness? Think of the differences we would make in other people’s lives if we acted as though they had the pieces that were going to finally make us whole, at one with ourselves, and we treated other people as though we might be the one carrying the pieces that will make their lives whole. We are messengers of kindness.

Abraham Heschel, the great Jewish mystic, social activist, and theologian once said that when he was young, he admired people who were clever. As he got older and matured, he admired people who were kind. After reading his words I recalled what I had read about Houston Smith, one of the world’s great scholars of religion. He talks about his time as a young professor at MIT, and Aldous Huxley came to the school. Smith saw this as an opportunity to meet this world-renowned fantastic mind. So he volunteered to be Huxley’s driver, driving him to nightly and weekend engagements; it was an opportunity to engage him and talk with him about his life and knowledge. One night near the end of Huxley’s stay, they were driving back from some place in northern New England and the car was quiet. They were quiet. Finally Huxley said,: “Now, you know Houston, here I am, I’ve written all these books. I’ve traveled all over the world. I’ve been interviewed by everybody. I’m famous. People want me to come lecture them. And yet the most profound advice that I can give anybody is simply, try to be a little kinder.”

Love kindness. Hesed. Fairness. Awareness. Being nonjudgmental. Love kindness. Micah’s words are revolutionary.

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