When Henry James, of all people, was saying goodbye once to his young nephew Bill, his brother William's son, he said something that the boy never forgot. And of all the labyrinthine and impenetrably subtle things that that most labyrinthine and impenetrable old romancer could have said, what he did say was this: "There are three things that are important in human life. The first is to be kind. The second is to be kind. The third is to be kind."
In the unlikely event that as the years go by anybody should ever happen to ask you what it was that the speaker said when he was telling you goodbye on this commencement day, I would be willing to settle for that. Be kind. That is what in his own labyrinthine way the speaker tried to say at least.
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Be kind because though kindness isn't the same thing as holiness kindness is next to holiness, because it's the door that holiness enters the world through, enters us through -- not just gently kind but sometimes fiercely kind.
Be kind enough to yourselves not just to play it safe with your lives for your own sakes but to spend at least part of your lives like drunken sailors for God's sake, and thus to come alive truly.
Be kind enough to others to listen, beneath the words they speak, for that usually unspoken hunger for holiness which I believe is part of even the unlikeliest of us and, by cherishing which, you can help to birth both in them and in yourselves.
Be kind to this nation of ours by remembering that New Haven, New Hope, Shalom, are the names not just of our oldest towns but of our holiest dreams which most of the time are threatened by the madness of no enemy without as dangerously as they are threatened by our own madness.
"You have tasted of the kindness of the Lord," Peter wrote in his letter, and ultimately that, of course, is the kindness, the holiness, the sainthood and sanity we are all of us called to. So that by God's grace we may "grow up to salvation" at last.
The sounds of the birds. The way the light falls through the trees. The sense we have of each other's presence. The feeling in the air that one way or another we are all of us here -- you who are graduating and we your well-wishers -- to give each other our love. This kind moment itself is a door that holiness enters through. May it enter you. May it enter me. To the world's saving. Amen.
From Best Sermons 2, (c) 1989 by Harper & Row, Publishers. Used by permission. Available at local bookstores or call (800) 638-3030.