Well, it’s been quite a week! fear and helplessness seem to haunt every conversation. ‘How will we make ends meet?’ ‘How will we survive the winter?’

In Calais, the authorities have cleared informal camps again, and replaced them with landscapes of boulders meaning the camps cannot reform. And the displaced and exiled ask, ‘when will we find welcome and safety?’ I’m going tomorrow to see for myself and talk to our team there about how we respond…

In the midst of the gloom, it is easy to despair. So I am grateful for a former student at whose induction in Nottingham I preached a fortnight ago, who pointed me to hope through a song that riffs on the beatitudes and contains these lines,

Blessed are the ones who walk in kindness
Even in the face of great abuse
Blessed are the deeds that go unnoticed
Serving with unguarded gratitude

Blessed are the ones who fight for justice
Longing for the coming day of peace
Blessed is the soul that thirsts for righteousness
Welcoming the last, the lost, the least

The kingdom is yours, the kingdom is yours
Hold on a little more, this is not the end
Hope is in the Lord, keep your eyes on him

Now, that’s worship music (from a collective called Common Hymnal) that puts a song in my heart and a spring in my step and sends me out into the world full of hope that the powerful don’t get the last word, that kindness offered with unguarded gratitude will bend the arc of history towards justice and peace because that’s what God wants and that’s what he is is working towards.

And so harvest is a good day to be thinking about kindness because harvest is about at least two things

The first and obvious one is that it reminds us that everything we have comes from God (even if we get it from the supermarket rather than directly from a field).

The second is that God is kind: he doesn’t have to do this but he chooses to. He didn’t need to make the world so wonderfully diverse in the food it produces or people so amazingly creative in what they can do with what grows. But he did. His kindness is a reminder of his abundant creative grace.

And the kindness of God leaps from the pages of scripture because it’s who God is. And because kindness is God’s character, it is something that becomes a mark of those who follow him. So perhaps it is appropriate that Paul describes it as fruit, something that grows as a result of being newly rooted in God.

So, let’s have a quick look at a little of what scripture says about the kindness of God:

We’ll start with Jesus in Luke 6:35: how can we love our enemies and lend without expecting return? (quite germane to our current circumstances!) Because we have been showered with the kindness of God and God expects that to ripple out to those around us, the ungrateful and wicked — people like us. Kindness is the root of changed lives and neighbourhoods.

Paul captures this in his letter to Titus (3:3-6). We were rescued out of being what’s described in v3 by the kindness of God (v4). He didn’t have to do it, we didn’t deserve it, but he chose to do it because he’s kind.

Paul goes deeper and more personal than that in Romans 2:4: he says that we’re a pretty judgemental bunch, writing people off because of their behaviour, but God showered us with kindness so that we might change our ways. God doesn’t write us off — as we tend to do with some people. Rather he meets us with kindness in the hope that we change our minds about him and our way of living in the world.

And Peter picks up the same theme in 1 Peter 2:3. We can leave a life of malice, deceit and hypocrisy because God has lavished his kindness on us, we’ve tasted it and it’s given us an appetite for more. So we crave the spiritual milk; we want to drink at the wells of God’s kindness so that we might be changed by it.

All these texts use the same Greek word for kind or kindness. Interesting…

And this is all rooted in Jesus; of course it is! In Matthew 11:30 he offers us his yoke, the chance to walk with him and learn from him and he says his yoke is kind (not easy but kind). Jesus welcomes us into his band of followers with kindness.

Now Jesus is contrasting his way of life with that of the religious leaders of his day. Church can be an unkind place, full of demands and brittle defensiveness, awash with judgment and condemnation. There’s none of that in Jesus. His yoke is kind.

The Message translation of this verse has Jesus inviting us to ‘learn the unforced rhythms of grace.’ No one is being squeezed into a mould in Jesus’ ramshackle band. Rather, Jesus doesn’t ‘lay anything heavy or ill-fitting on you. Keep company with me,’ he says, ‘and you’ll learn to live freely and lightly.’

Now, that is kindness in action. Kindness looks at another person and says what do you need to experience grace and freedom, support and direction? And how can I offer that?

So in Galatians 5, Paul says we are kind because Jesus is. He’s writing to a church that doesn’t get this at all, a church where people aren’t serving one another in kindness but seeking to get one over on everyone else. Look at how he describes the churches he is writing to in Galatians 5:15, 19-21, 26

It’s not pretty. It makes church a place of harm not healing. And so he urges his hearers not only to be filled with the Spirit but to walk with the Spirit, to keep in step with the Spirit. If they do that the Spirit will grow this amazing fruit in their lives; there will be a harvest of justice and peace.

And so kindness ripples out from each of us towards one another, towards our neighbours, and out into the needy world as Paul describes in Galatians 6:1-6

So, a third thing that harvest reminds us of is that, because of God’s lavish kindness, we can be kind to those around us in the way we speak and how we share all the good things God’s poured into our lives. Harvest reminds us that we don’t live in a world of scarcity but of abundance. So, let’s spread it around.

How? Here are some pointers…

Our house in Calais welcomes vulnerable refugees, women and children, to offer support and safety; we want to be kind to those displaced and exiled. But what we find is that they pour kindness into our lives. I know that tomorrow I will eat food lovingly prepared and generously shared by those living in the house — and it will be wonderful! Their kindness will warm my heart and point me to the kindness of God. 

Our harvest gifts will go to the Foodbank. Countless thousands will look to your kindness to put food on their tables this week, this month — how much of our abundance are we sharing with them?

With energy bills going through the roof have we thought about how we can share the warmth we enjoy with those who can’t afford to heat their homes and who’d like a bit of company? The God who out of his abundant kindness has given us all we need here, grows in us the desire to share it, to be kind to those who need to know they’re not on their own in this. So, let’s think about how we could be a neighbourhood warm space for those who’d benefit from such kindness. This could build on knit and natter that points the way for us in this.

Maybe kindness is seen in demonstrating to change the system, voting for the good of our neighbours, desiring to see kindness at the heart of public life. I briefly joined a Unison picket line at King’s the other day, talking with those on strike about how hard it is to make ends meet on their salaries. just because I am comfortable doesn’t mean I can’t lend my voice to amplify the cries of those struggling.

The young people at Common Hymnal capture this in a simple anthem,

Not just for me, Jesus,

you’re not just for me,                   

Jesus, you’re not just for me

You’re the God who crosses lines
To meet the ones who’ve been denied
You’re always near, no one’s too far from you
And you’re the God that knows the song of
Every tribe and every tongue, and
As we are we all belong to you

The fruit of the Spirit is kindness. So, how will we live that in the world this week in a way that everyone we connect with benefits from us simply being kind towards them because God has been kind to us?