Empathic Wisdom Series, Week 1: Jesus and The Way of Empathy
“You should have told us you were talking about legal immigrants this whole time. I can understand helping them. But you kept talking about immigrants and I just assume you mean illegals when you say that. I’m not sure it is the church’s job to help illegals. What would happen to our country if we did that?”
The conversation above took place after a worship service at my church on a Sunday we had welcomed in a guest speaker who works with immigrants. This non-profit provides relocation services and legal assistance to immigrants and resettlement for refugees entering our country. After the service, when people had a chance to come and ask questions of the speaker directly, I heard this conversation taking place our speaker and two of the leaders of my church. These were Spirit filled, generous, loving, servants of God, whose lives had been a tremendous blessing to me and others. When confronted with a speaker talking about immigration, however, their imagination proved very limited. They were skeptical of all the incredible work being done because they assumed refugees and immigrants were illegals and therefore this work was either unwise or ungodly.
Running headlong into the limits of love.
Moments such as these change you as a pastor because of how jarring they are. They hit you emotionally and spiritually with sudden and violent emotional impact. You can feel them long after they occur. In the past few years of my ministry, these moments have become more frequent and less surprising, but their impact lingers long after they occur. These are the moments when we encounter the limits of love within the church. Our world is filled with the wreckage of running headlong into these limits, and we are left trying to understand how to live in their wake.
How I wish that this was a one-time reality, a moment that left me shaking my head at its singular nature. Instead, it was emblematic of conversations that have taken place over and over again in the past few years; too often happening via the disembodied realities of social media. There was the moment when the children of one of our pastors, who are African American, were accosted at their bus stop. It was the day after the 2016 Presidential election, and for no discernable reason, people who were their friends the day before now felt empowered and compelled to hurl racial epithets at them. When this incident was named and prayed over during our worship service, an incident that mind you involved children and teenagers of a pastor at the church, it was met with derision and complaint. Speaking the truth of what had happened was considered divisive and political and unfair to the beliefs of others.
Another time, our youth pastor was preaching and as part of her sermon she spoke about her passion to create safe spaces for LGBTQ youth. She named the reality of how vulnerable these youth are to anxiety, depression, suicide, and bullying, and talked about her efforts to be a safe person for all youth, especially the most vulnerable among us. After her sermon a leader in our church openly mocked these efforts and the specifics that were named. They were dismissed as media induced hysterics.
While these stories are specific to my context and experience, they are far too common in their nature. Much of the turmoil within the American church, especially in evangelical circles, has come around these issues. Politics, immigration, the realities of a racialized society, the LGBTQ community, how we teach our country’s history, these are topics that continue to reveal and accentuate the divisions within the church. The question many have been asking is what these antagonisms reveal about us as followers of Christ? An equally important question might be how can what is being revealed in these antagonisms become a catalyst to the healing of the church and of a broken world?
Our world is filled with the wreckage of running headlong into these limits, and we are left trying to understand how to live in their wake.
Simple to understand, but hard to live.
Jesus summed up the commands of God in a succinct and clear manner. We are to love the Lord our God with all our heart, soul, mind, and strength, and we are to love our neighbor as ourselves. These two commands are clear, concise, memorable.. Yet, we have thousands of years of evidence that there is nothing easy about learning to love in the way described in these commands. If we are honest, we are much like the experts in the law in Luke 10 who knew that these commands were the mark of eternal life but had to keep asking follow-up questions because they knew that there must be a catch. That expert discovered that the catch, the struggle, the difficult part, was defining who was included in the category of neighbor. A simple story by Jesus blew up their ideas of the limits of neighborly love and showed them the cost of following Jesus.
This is what plays out repeatedly in the life and ministry of Jesus. The big sales pitch that Jesus gave to those he encountered was, “Follow me.” Nothing is simpler than that. “If you want to be part of what I am doing in the world, follow me.” All those who took Jesus up on this offer eventually came to a place of encountering the limits of their love for God and one another. For some it was the limit of family loyalty. For others it was the limit of religious security that clearly marked some as insiders and others as outsiders. Some found their limits around ancient ethnic animosities, while others refused to see how their oppressors could possibly be worthy of such love. The disciples, those who followed Jesus closest and for the longest time, had a hard time even loving each other. Their group was filled with arguments, posturing, and distrust.
Jesus’ call to the church is the same as it has ever been, “Follow me.” If we desire to participate in the kingdom of God, here and now and for eternity, we must follow Jesus beyond the boundaries of our own experiences, desires, understandings, and even the limits of our love. If we give ourselves over to the life of Jesus we will go through many moments when we realize that there are greater experiences of love still to be discovered.
The only way beyond the limits of our love is empathy!
What struck me most, as I untangled the antagonisms within my own church, was that the conflicts that took place weren’t with the vulnerable people who were being discussed. No one was arguing with immigrants about their right to be in our country or their needs. No one was chastising children who were being harassed for the color of their skin. No one was condemning LGBTQ youth. In all these instances Christians were upset with their own brothers and sisters, Christians who looked like them worshiped like them. They were upset at their brothers and sisters for their sacrificial love and work to protect and care for the vulnerable. Why would this cause division?
As Jesus taught his disciples his way of life, the way of love, he continually placed them in situations where they would be forced to encounter people who were different from them. In their traveling discipleship cohort, there were people that they otherwise would not have chosen to spend time with. As they followed Jesus they had to wrestle with the humanity and value of Romans, Gentiles, the sick, the exploited, the sinful, the oppressors, ancient enemies, and even…. women! Why did Jesus lead them to all these encounters? Each of these moments was an opportunity to see the love of God embodied for those they encountered. They were able to discover just how small their imagination for God’s love was through Jesus’ healing and reconciling work of love with all he encountered.
The big sales pitch that Jesus gave to those he encountered was, “Follow me.” Nothing is simpler than that. “If you want to be part of what I am doing in the world, follow me.”
If we choose to follow Jesus, we will be led far beyond our comfortable limits and social norms and into relationship with those who we do not like, know, understand, or desire to encounter. In these relationships God reveals His love for these “others”, and the value they hold in His sight. In turn, he reshapes and purifies us as we obediently learn to truly love our neighbor. Another name for this transformation, this sanctifying and cleansing work of love, is empathy. If we are going to be obedient to the very basic commands of God, commands that are easy to understand, but hard to live, we will live a life of ever increasing empathy that allows us to move beyond the limits of our love and discover the heart of God for all people.
Start your empathy journey by exploring Ideos Institute’s The Way of Empathy as a spiritual practice that can help you better love God and love your neighbor.
