Empathy is a virtue, among the highest of human character ideals, because it is essential to the nature of God. When we lack empathy we are in danger of losing our humanity because we are out of touch with divinity. And when we are under stress, faced with a crisis, a choice is pressed upon us: we can become as hard and sharp and dangerous as the hard times we’re living through, or we can allow the hard times to soften us, keep our hearts supple, open, and warm, nourished by divine love.
1.
There are many things we need when we face the kinds of crises we’ve faced this past year, the kinds of crises we are surely going to face for some time to come.
We need courage; without courage we can fall prey to a paralysis of spirit. We need vision, even if we can’t see where we’re going; without vision, without some sense of the direction, we’ll wander and get lost. We need flexibility so we can adjust to new realities. We need companionship so we are not alone. We need humor so we don’t wither under the weight of worry. I love what G.K. Chesterton once said: “Angels can fly because they take themselves lightly; devils fall because of their gravity.” Even when things are hard, maybe especially when things are hard, we need the gift of humor so we don’t become too grave.
This last week one of you wrote me a short, thoughtful note: “You often say, ‘We can do hard things.’ Yes, we can. But I pray you’ll not only see what’s hard. I pray you’ll see what’s soft and beautiful too. Remember to smile often and keep your sense of humor.”
Good advice. Thank you for that.
Tuesday morning at dawn, and before the rain came, I took my dog for a walk at the Cannery. Out there, under the big sky, I watched the sun rise, painting the cloud-mottled sky in roses and reds and oranges and purples against the grey and white of furrowed clouds. I lay down in the new alfalfa and I watched the sky change colors. I don’t think I’d done that for decades. A hawk flew past overhead. And then I laughed as my little terrier dashed after a jack rabbit, wondering what it is in him that makes him take off, lickety-split after a creature he’ll never catch and how he wouldn’t know what to do even if he did. The beauty did me some good. So did the humor. For a few minutes I was lost in God, caught up in wonder, and able to let go of all that’s hard, worrisome, and serious. I was lighter, softer.
When things get hard, we often become hard too—rigid and serious and sharp. And things with sharp edges can hurt. During times like these, I notice how easy it is for me to become rigid and serious and sharp—my attitude and thoughts and words can get pointed and prickly and hurtful.
I’ll bet that can happen to you too.
When a large enough number of us become hard during hard times, there are lots of sharp edges and lots of hurt. And when there’s a lot of hurt, not even humor has the power to soften the hardness that settles into our hearts and minds.
2.
But something else can. There’s another quality we need in hard times—something that is essentially human, something that not only can keep us human and humane, but also can make us alive to all that is divine. Without this something, we devolve into beasts.
This quality, let’s call it a virtue, is what the reading from Ezekiel is about.
Ezekiel is a biblical prophet, a mystical seer who lived about 2500 years ago during another season of hard times. He lived in Babylon with a large group of Jewish captives who’d seen the destruction of their country by a foreign power, the Babylonians. Their cities were crushed and those living in the land were made vulnerable not only to the elements and to illnesses and wild beasts, but a lot of them were rounded up by their enemies, beaten, and marched off to a foreign land. They were put in camps under the watchful eye of their oppressors.
The people grew hard and humorless; they were serious, grave. And they took it out on each other. What’s worse, they were leaderless. They had no one to model another way of getting through the crisis. Their leaders were corrupt, only interested in protecting themselves and getting as much as they could for themselves and their families. It was a dog-eat-dog way of life. They’d become beasts toward each other.
In this midst of the crisis, the prophet had a vision of God showing them a different way, a way through the crisis and toward a better way of being human.
In a section of Ezekiel’s prophecy that comes just before what we listened to today, we’re given a picture of how the hardness of their days had made the people hard toward one another, their sharp edges poking and jabbing and wounding each other:
“You depend on your swords, you commit abominations, and each of you defiles your neighbor. . . . those who are in the waste places shall fall by the sword and those who are in the open field will be devoured by wild beats and those who are in strongholds shall die by pestilence” (33.26-27).
And about their leaders, whom the prophet calls “shepherds,” God says: “You shepherds of Israel who have been feeding yourselves when you should have been feeding your flock: you have not strengthened the weak, you have not healed the sick, you have not bound up the injured, you have not brought back the strayed, you have not sought the lost.”
They had all become beasts to one another, lacking that key thing that makes us particularly human, especially humane, and essentially divine.
What is that thing, that quality? You may have guessed it from the reading.
That thing, that quality, is empathy.
3.
Empathy is not merely the ability to feel for someone else. Empathy is not the same as sympathy—the ability to feel pity for another. Empathy is the capacity to feel with another, to put yourself in their shoes and know what they are feeling; empathy means you can understand and share the feelings of others because you have been there yourself.
Empathy is a virtue, among the highest of human character ideals, because it is essential to the nature of God.
When we lack empathy we are in danger of losing our humanity because we are out of touch with divinity. And when we are under stress, faced with a crisis, a choice is pressed upon us: we can become as hard and sharp and dangerous as the hard times we’re living through, or we can allow the hard times to soften us, keep our hearts supple, open, and warm, nourished by divine love.
I’ve said many times before that trauma is an injury to the capacity to feel . . . trauma is an injury to the capacity to feel. Let that soak in.
When we’re hurt or afraid or unsafe, we can shut down and suppress our fears and hurt and worry. We can close in upon ourselves. We can see others as dangerous, as enemies, as competition. We can even project our fear and frustration and anger onto others. That’s when our hurt hurts others. You’ve also heard me say that unless we transform our pain, we will transmit it.
God, speaking through the prophet Ezekiel, knows all this and models better ways of being human, a merging of the divine heart with the human heart in actions of compassion and kindness borne from a fiercely empathetic nature:
“I myself will search for my sheep, and will seek them out. I will seek the lost, and I will bring back the strayed, and I will bind up the injured, and I will strengthen the weak.”
Believe it or not, this is what God is doing today.
4.
It’s true, so many of our leaders have failed us. We are in a predicament partly because those in power have been cruel, ruthless shepherds with little to no empathy—they have fed themselves when they should have been feeding the flock. They have seen power as a way to garner more for themselves, rather than more for those they are supposed to serve. They have little capacity for empathy. And our humanity has suffered.
But divinity always clothes itself in astonishing ways; it hides in our vulnerable humanity. That is what Jesus Christ is all about.
Jesus once said, echoing this prophecy by Ezekiel, “I am the Good Shepherd.” Jesus was empathy, defined. He lived an empathetic life. And then he told his followers to do the same. “I was sent as the embodiment of divine empathy,” he told them. “And just as God sent me, so I now send you.” And he breathed on them the Holy Spirit.
We need empathy today. But we don’t have to go anywhere to find it. Empathy lives in us, for God’s Spirit lives in us. Therefore, empathy is as close as our next breath, near as the beating of our heart. Divine empathy hid in our vulnerable humanity. We only have to be brave enough to open ourselves to feel pain as well as pleasure, despair as well as hope, sadness as well as joy. And then empathy rises from our hearts and works its healing mercy in us and in the world around us.
Then, with Christ, in Christ, and through Christ—even in the hardest times—we will “seek the lost, bring back the strayed, bind up the injured, and strengthen the weak,” and help give birth to a holy new humanity.
[follow the sermon with this short video meditation: https://youtu.be/PIn_8E7LRdg. Thai Life Insurance aired this in 2014. Fabulous that an insurance company would express this kind of vision for humanity]