A New Year's Resolution
Stories
Lectionary Tales for the Pulpit
Series VI, Cycle B
Object:
Good instructions. I know we are in the middle of summer according to our lectionary cycle, but this text sounds like a perfect list of New Year's resolutions for Christians.
In the For Better Or Worse comic strip, the family is sitting around the breakfast table as Dad says, "Here we are in a brand new year. I think we should all make some resolutions, don't you?"
Mother responds, "Okay. I resolve not to criticize, to nag less, and bake more often."
The family cheers: "Right on. Neat! Yeah!"
Then Dad says, "I resolve not to lose my temper, and to fix all the things in the house that need repairs."
The family says, "Great. Okay!"
Daughter Elizabeth says, "I resolve to brush Farley (the dog), to keep my room clean, and not fight with Michael (her brother)."
Everyone says, "Good!"
Then Michael says, "I resolve to play road hockey, hang out with my friends, and watch more television."
"Wait a minute," says Mom, "we all made real promises; your resolutions are worthless."
Michael answers, "I know ... but at least mine will be kept."1
If you, by chance, are in the market already for a good resolution for next year, how about that old evergreen from the '90s that got so much attention when it was first introduced: Practice random kindness; commit senseless acts of beauty. Remember that? Practice random kindness; commit senseless acts of beauty. This world would be a better place if some folks would make that commitment.
Let's see how it works. It is a crisp winter day in San Francisco. A woman in a red Honda with Christmas presents piled in the back, drives up to the Bay Bridge tollbooth. "I'm paying for myself, and for the six cars behind me," she says with a smile, handing over seven commuter tickets. One after another, the next six drivers arrive at the tollbooth, dollars in hand, only to be told, "Some lady up ahead already paid your fare. Have a nice day."
The woman in the Honda, it turns out, had read on an index card taped to a friend's refrigerator: "Practice random kindness; commit senseless acts of beauty." The phrase seemed to leap out at her, and she copied it down.
Judy Foreman spotted the phrase spray-painted on a warehouse wall 100 miles from her home. When it stayed on her mind for days, she gave up and drove all the way back to copy it down. "I thought it was incredibly beautiful," she said. She started writing it at the bottom of all her letters.
Her husband, Frank, liked the phrase so much that he put it up on the wall for his seventh graders, one of whom was the daughter of a local newspaper columnist. The columnist put it in the paper, admitting that though she liked it, she did not know where it came from or what it really meant.
Two days later, she heard from Anne Herbert. It was in a Sausalito restaurant that Anne Herbert jotted the phrase down on a paper placemat, after turning it around in her mind for days. "Here's the idea," she says. "Anything you think there should be more of, do it randomly." Her own fantasies included:
* breaking into depressing-looking schools to paint classrooms;
* leaving hot meals on kitchen tables in poor parts of town; and
* slipping money into a proud, old woman's purse.
Said Ms. Herbert, "Kindness can build on itself as much as violence can." And the phrase started spreading -- on bumper stickers, at the bottom of letters and business cards, even on the wall of a certain pastor's study.
Can it work? Downtown, a man might plunk a coin into a stranger's meter just in time. In the barrio, a dozen people with pails and mops and tulip bulbs might descend on a run-down house and clean it from top to bottom while the frail elderly owners look on, dazed and smiling. In a middle-class neighborhood, a teenage boy may be shoveling off the driveway when the impulse strikes. What the heck, nobody's looking, he thinks, and shovels the neighbor's driveway, too. Wow!
Senseless acts of beauty spread: A man plants daffodils along the roadway, his shirt billowing in the breeze from passing cars. In Seattle, a man appoints himself a one-man vigilante sanitation service and roams the concrete hills collecting litter in a supermarket cart. In Atlanta, a man scrubs graffiti from a green park bench.
They say you cannot smile without cheering yourself up a little. Likewise, you cannot perform a random act of kindness without feeling as if your own troubles have been lightened if only because the world has become a slightly better place. And you cannot be a recipient without feeling a shock, a pleasant jolt. If you were one of those rush-hour drivers who found your bridge fare paid, who knows what you might have been inspired to do for someone else later? Might you wave someone on in the intersection? Would you smile at a tired clerk? Or could you do something larger or greater?
Some folks will have great difficulty understanding this process, but not us Christians. After all we have been recipients of the greatest kindness, that act of love that brought the God of the universe to a manger in Bethlehem, a sinless life on the hills of Judea, a sacrifice on a hill called Calvary. His kindness continues as he sustains us through his body, the church, and as he nourishes us at his table. This same one, through the apostle Paul, told us to "Be kind and compassionate to one another, forgiving each other, just as in Christ God forgave you. Be imitators of God, therefore, as dearly loved children and live a life of love, just as Christ loved us and gave himself up for us" (vv. 4:32--5:2).
Practice random kindness; commit senseless acts of beauty.
____________
1. Quoted in Pastors Professional Research Service.
In the For Better Or Worse comic strip, the family is sitting around the breakfast table as Dad says, "Here we are in a brand new year. I think we should all make some resolutions, don't you?"
Mother responds, "Okay. I resolve not to criticize, to nag less, and bake more often."
The family cheers: "Right on. Neat! Yeah!"
Then Dad says, "I resolve not to lose my temper, and to fix all the things in the house that need repairs."
The family says, "Great. Okay!"
Daughter Elizabeth says, "I resolve to brush Farley (the dog), to keep my room clean, and not fight with Michael (her brother)."
Everyone says, "Good!"
Then Michael says, "I resolve to play road hockey, hang out with my friends, and watch more television."
"Wait a minute," says Mom, "we all made real promises; your resolutions are worthless."
Michael answers, "I know ... but at least mine will be kept."1
If you, by chance, are in the market already for a good resolution for next year, how about that old evergreen from the '90s that got so much attention when it was first introduced: Practice random kindness; commit senseless acts of beauty. Remember that? Practice random kindness; commit senseless acts of beauty. This world would be a better place if some folks would make that commitment.
Let's see how it works. It is a crisp winter day in San Francisco. A woman in a red Honda with Christmas presents piled in the back, drives up to the Bay Bridge tollbooth. "I'm paying for myself, and for the six cars behind me," she says with a smile, handing over seven commuter tickets. One after another, the next six drivers arrive at the tollbooth, dollars in hand, only to be told, "Some lady up ahead already paid your fare. Have a nice day."
The woman in the Honda, it turns out, had read on an index card taped to a friend's refrigerator: "Practice random kindness; commit senseless acts of beauty." The phrase seemed to leap out at her, and she copied it down.
Judy Foreman spotted the phrase spray-painted on a warehouse wall 100 miles from her home. When it stayed on her mind for days, she gave up and drove all the way back to copy it down. "I thought it was incredibly beautiful," she said. She started writing it at the bottom of all her letters.
Her husband, Frank, liked the phrase so much that he put it up on the wall for his seventh graders, one of whom was the daughter of a local newspaper columnist. The columnist put it in the paper, admitting that though she liked it, she did not know where it came from or what it really meant.
Two days later, she heard from Anne Herbert. It was in a Sausalito restaurant that Anne Herbert jotted the phrase down on a paper placemat, after turning it around in her mind for days. "Here's the idea," she says. "Anything you think there should be more of, do it randomly." Her own fantasies included:
* breaking into depressing-looking schools to paint classrooms;
* leaving hot meals on kitchen tables in poor parts of town; and
* slipping money into a proud, old woman's purse.
Said Ms. Herbert, "Kindness can build on itself as much as violence can." And the phrase started spreading -- on bumper stickers, at the bottom of letters and business cards, even on the wall of a certain pastor's study.
Can it work? Downtown, a man might plunk a coin into a stranger's meter just in time. In the barrio, a dozen people with pails and mops and tulip bulbs might descend on a run-down house and clean it from top to bottom while the frail elderly owners look on, dazed and smiling. In a middle-class neighborhood, a teenage boy may be shoveling off the driveway when the impulse strikes. What the heck, nobody's looking, he thinks, and shovels the neighbor's driveway, too. Wow!
Senseless acts of beauty spread: A man plants daffodils along the roadway, his shirt billowing in the breeze from passing cars. In Seattle, a man appoints himself a one-man vigilante sanitation service and roams the concrete hills collecting litter in a supermarket cart. In Atlanta, a man scrubs graffiti from a green park bench.
They say you cannot smile without cheering yourself up a little. Likewise, you cannot perform a random act of kindness without feeling as if your own troubles have been lightened if only because the world has become a slightly better place. And you cannot be a recipient without feeling a shock, a pleasant jolt. If you were one of those rush-hour drivers who found your bridge fare paid, who knows what you might have been inspired to do for someone else later? Might you wave someone on in the intersection? Would you smile at a tired clerk? Or could you do something larger or greater?
Some folks will have great difficulty understanding this process, but not us Christians. After all we have been recipients of the greatest kindness, that act of love that brought the God of the universe to a manger in Bethlehem, a sinless life on the hills of Judea, a sacrifice on a hill called Calvary. His kindness continues as he sustains us through his body, the church, and as he nourishes us at his table. This same one, through the apostle Paul, told us to "Be kind and compassionate to one another, forgiving each other, just as in Christ God forgave you. Be imitators of God, therefore, as dearly loved children and live a life of love, just as Christ loved us and gave himself up for us" (vv. 4:32--5:2).
Practice random kindness; commit senseless acts of beauty.
____________
1. Quoted in Pastors Professional Research Service.
