Conspiracy of Kindness #2: Developing a Heart of Kindness and Compassion

Conspiracy of Kindness #2: Developing a Heart of Kindness and Compassion
July 29, 2007
by Don Bromley

This weekend I’m giving the second of three sermons in our “Conspiracy of Kindness” series.

I’m picking up this week where Donnell left off. Last week he talked about how kindness can break through our defensive barriers and demonstrate that God is loving, caring, and compassionate. Sowing acts of kindness is our way of joining the Father in what he is already doing.

This weekend I’m going discuss how it is that we can develop a heart of kindness and compassion—and how it involves going out into our world.

But first, I want to show a 12-minute video clip called nooma, put together by Rob Bell of Mars Hill Church. You might know Rob Bell as the author of Velvet Elvis.

In his sermon last week, Donnell shared some evangelism strategies that we find don’t work terribly well in our context. It made me think of this video, and I think it’s a good jumping-off point for my sermon.

[video nooma 009—Bullhorn 00:10 to 12:27 www.nooma.com]

I love the question that Rob Bell asks. What happens when the “good news” doesn’t come across that way? When it doesn’t appear very loving?

The Bible’s greatest command: Love God and love those around you. The defining mark of a Christian is love.

Jesus is saying that the ultimate mark of a transformed life is a compassionate heart. The writer named John, on of Jesus’ followers, writing to the early church says: “If you say that you love God, and you don’t love the people around you, you’re a liar.”

That’s a hard statement to hear! It doesn’t mean that we have to be perfect in order to claim that we love God—but it really illustrates a key point of the Bible: we love God insofar as we are loving other people.

The Vineyard Church of Ann Arbor’s mission statement is—“To humbly bear the transforming presence of Jesus into the heart of Ann Arbor through Jesus brand spirituality, community and works of compassion; to steadily reproduce reproducing churches in southeastern Michigan and beyond.”

From the moment we launched this church in Ann Arbor, back in 2000, we resolved that works of kindness and compassion would be hallmarks of who we are and what we are about.

That’s why we have what we compassion ministries, which we highlighted last weekend: single moms ministry, homeless ministry, Sunday meal, 313 ministry.

If we don’t make kindness and compassion—loving those around us—an integral part of what this church is about; then our gathering together to worship—expressing our love to God—lacks genuineness.

So how do we as individuals develop a more compassionate heart? I want to give you one thought. This comes from a man named Jim Wallis who is one of the great Christian leaders of our day.

He’s written a book recently called "Faith Works." And he gives a kind of starting point for people who want to build compassionate hearts. So I want to tell you the phrase that he offers and then kind of unpack it. "The place to start is here: You’ve got to get out of the house more often." Here’s the idea: We all tend to live in a little slice of the world where we feel comfortable.

I go to school. I shop. I work. I go to church. I play with people who are like me. Our society just divides people up that way. It puts all kinds of really subtle barriers in between different kinds of people. And as long as I don’t get out of the house, people who live in other conditions, people who are different from me–different language, different accent, different skin color, different economic conditions–they’re just not on the radar screen. They’re just not in my mind and heart.

[personal example]

Most people who are deeply committed to the ministry of compassion, who are building bigger hearts and trying to extend themselves as Jesus did, most people in that condition will trace their own transformation to some time when they went to a third world country or had a cross-cultural experience, or went to a neighborhood in the city and had some real experience with some real people who had real names and real faces.

Usually what transforms people when it comes to this business of developing compassionate hearts, is not a great talk, not a good book, not a powerful documentary or a really moving film. It’s a real life experience that grips your heart and seizes your vision and immerses you into the life of a real person. You’ve got to get out of the house.

If you'll do that, if you’ll get outside your normal world, if you know to serve and pray for a real person with a real name, your heart will be touched. God will work in you in that way, and you will want to extend your hand. You will begin to think about how you might do that, not because somebody is trying to make you or because you feel like you ought to. It will come from inside you.

Something happens when you get out of the house. Something happens in the world and something happens in you. In the book by Jim Wallis that I mentioned, he tells about a lawyer named Dale who was into big deals. He had an income in the high six-figures. He helped negotiate the contract for Dolphin Stadium in Miami.

But he began to get out of the house one day, and it changed his life. He started working at the Good News Soup Kitchen in Tallahassee, and this is what he writes.

[reading from book]

"I showed up every day in my three-piece suit to help from 11:00 a.m. to 1:30 p.m. They assigned me door duty. My job was to make sure street people lining up to eat waited in an orderly fashion. Every day I stood at the door for an hour chatting with the street people waiting to eat.

"Before I came to Good News, street people was a meaningless term. It defined a group without defining anybody in particular from the comfort of my car, my suburban home, my downtown law office. Street people were just those people out there somewhere. Then one day an elderly woman named Helen came running to the Good News door. A man was chasing her and threatening to kill her if she didn’t give him back his dollar.

"’Tell him he can’t hit me because it’s church property,’ she pleaded. In true lawyerly fashion, I explained that Good News is not actually a church, but he still couldn’t hit her. After 20 minutes of failed mediation, I bought peace by giving them each a dollar. That evening I happened to be standing on the corner of Park and Monroe, and in the red twilight I spied a lonely silhouette struggling in my direction from Tennessee Street.

"’A poor street person,’ I thought, as the figure inched closer. I was about to turn back to my own concerns when I detected something familiar in that shadowy figure–the red scarf, the clear plastic bag with white border, the mismatched shoes. ‘My God,’ I said in my thoughts, ‘that’s Helen.’ My eyes froze on her as she limped by and turned up Park. No doubt she’d crawl under a bush to spend the night.

My mind had always dismissed the sight of a street person in seconds. I could not expel the picture of Helen. That night as I lay in my $1,500 deluxe temperature controlled waterbed, I couldn’t sleep. A voice kept asking, ‘Where is Helen sleeping tonight?’ No street person had ever interfered with my sleep. But the shadowy figure with the red scarf and the plastic bag and the mismatched shoes had followed me home. I made a fatal mistake. I learned her name."

---------

That’s what happens when you get involved. You learn somebody’s name. And when you learn somebody’s name, you’re never quite the same. Why is it that one name, one face can be so powerful? I’ll tell you why. Because that’s the face of somebody made in the image of God.

Mother Theresa used to send members of her community to a home for the dying. She wrote of a young woman from a well-to-do family who spent three hours caring for a dying man brought in from the streets who was covered with maggots. And Mother Theresa said to this young woman, "You be very careful. You be very loving as you touch him for there is Jesus in the distressing disguise."

That’s why when you get out of the house and learn a name and see a face something changes in you–for there is Jesus in the distressing disguise. Now that’s why we are utterly committed to building a community of women and men who extend themselves in works of compassion. This is just core to the message of Jesus.

So I’m here to give you just one challenge–just one. Get out of the house. I don’t know what your next step is—there are any number of ways. Two weeks ago we listened to stories from our various compassion ministries. Maybe it will be getting plugged into those.

Or maybe it will begin by participating in our Day of Kindness next Saturday, August 4. [describe Day of Kindness] That’s a low-risk, high-grace way to get out of the house and demonstrate compassion and kindness on an individual basis. It’s a simple way that we as a church can go beyond these walls and sprinkle some grace in the life of someone who might never be interested in visiting a church.

For everyone here who’s a parent, I want to make a very strong plea. Get your kids involved with you. They need it. We need to form our kid’s hearts by taking them to places where hearts will say things like, "I care. I weep. I’ve got to give. I’ve got to serve. I’ve got to make my life about something bigger than just my own comfort and success."

I promise you at the end of your life, you will not regret one act of kindness or compassion. You will not regret one moment that you spent, one dollar that you gave, one tear that you shed. You won’t regret any of it because this is Jesus’ way of life. And every one of us who knows and follows him has been on the receiving end of his compassion.

Jesus looked around at this world and saw all the needs and the hunger and the aloneness and the sin and the guilt and the poverty. And Jesus lived at the right hand of God in unspeakable glory and splendor. But Jesus said to himself, "I’ve got to get out of the house." And he crossed every barrier and boundary to extend himself in love to every human being who would receive him.

He came to the city, and he came to the suburb. He came to the hood, and he came to the barrio, and he came to the mall. He came to needy people like me and you. Jesus comes to us, and then he says, "Now why don’t you do what I do? Why don’t you devote your life to developing and building a kind and compassionate heart?

[ministry invitation]

[worship & communion]