Growing Up in Christ! | Empathy

That's what makes this story perhaps the best story Jesus ever told .

These resources are perfect for your individual Lenten devotion or small group study . So week four in your Growing Up in Christ series is titled Empathy and it's based off of Matthew 22 , when we're reviewing the great commandments of loving God and loving neighbor . There's also prodigal son theme in here for this week of Lent .

It's not just intellectual , but it's an experience , authentic understanding of what the pains in life are . St Paul says we ought to be able to weep with those who weep and rejoice with those who rejoice . So empathy is really about being fully human right .

You know , I have a house , I have a roof over my head , I have food for my belly , and so , because I have those privileges and gifts , it's not hard for me to imagine what the lack of that must be like , what the hardship of that must be like , and it pains me to think about people who don't have the things that we , so many of us , just sort of take

for granted . And so I think , you know , empathy can come out of a deep appreciation of the benefits of life that we enjoy and then begin to appreciate the lack of what that must be like , right ? I mean , I think that God is always calling us down into humanity at its fullest expression .

And so if I enjoy the benefit of all these things , then , conversely , maybe I can have a deep appreciation of the lack of those things and then maybe I can move towards my neighbor , at least in understanding

that and hopefully in trying to relieve some of that burden .

And , bishop , I just went to a demonstration standing up for immigrant rights and I'm shocked at the level of vitriol from professed Jesus followers for immigration rights in America . And to me , it's just an empathy thing .

Right , it's not about legality , it's about a person , and so I don't know how you see it coming out , but it's like bold and I can't help but feel critical toward people who maybe practice empathy in a different way to be , you know , sort of impacted by our empathy , right .

I think what you know , the way the debate goes around immigration right now demonstrates a profound lack of imagination and sort of a resentful and aggressive , you know , sort of you know approach . I think we're better than that . I think you know how this echoes in this story that we're looking at today .

The prodigal son story here is that you know the older brother who doesn't run off , who stays and is dutiful , right , he feels like part of his entitlement , right is indifference or even contempt for his brother and his father . You know we call him the loving father .

His father is really trying to chip away at this sort of calcified , you know , enmity that he has for his brother . I mean , you know we understand hurt feelings , we understand that legitimacy , but it seems like the father is working on something more . You know , it's interesting that the older brother says your son .

In other words , remember that time when you were vulnerable , that time when you didn't have enough food , that time when everything wasn't sorted out . Remember how vulnerable you were . Remember that God was your only hope . Remember when you were refugees .

You know , in the Pope's letter to the US bishops some time back , he reminded us that Jesus , joseph and Mary were refugees . And so I think we can thread the needle between law and legislation that makes sense and what can make us truly great as a nation , and that is our Christian heritage , and part of Christian heritage is empathy .

If there's no empathy , then the Christian heritage is a fraud , right , and so we've got to , I think , seriously , look at this and this story . You know , the sort of takeaway in this story , for me at least , is is that you know it's abounding in empathy . It's , uh , it's the empathy that the son who ran away and now comes home finally , after

abusing it , finally understands that his father has tried to be empathetic to him and now he wants to come home and depend on his father's empathy right .

And so I think that this neighborliness that Jesus teaches us in this story , and this imagination that Jesus is asking us to bring to the idea of repair a profound family riff , I mean , it's all about imagination .

And so I think part of living and loving God is about offering God our imagination , sort of submit to God , our hermetically sealed conclusions about ourselves , about other people and about the way the world should be , rather than to seek God's counsel and say God , let me just put that to the side for a second .

Let me just de-center myself and wonder with you about what is your preferred way for us to be human community . And I think that is also part of worship , right Worship being . You know , god first , right ? So if God is first and God has some ideas about how we ought to be together . And so here we are at this intersection again with you know , am I ?

You know if I'm an American citizen . If I'm , am I an American Christian or I'm a Christian who happens to be American ? You know , where is my ultimate allegiance right , where is my first order of loyalty ?

And I think this is what Jesus is working on resisting , you know , with these stories , you know our default , you know , in putting him in boxes that really are largely unimaginative , right , and he is persisting with this .

You know , sort of dangerous oddness that he brings to things , this persistent gentle boldness that he brings to things , especially these stories about how life could be . But what we've got to do is , you know , and let me confess , what we've got to do is we have to let these stories erode our pride .

I mean , because there's pride also in this prodigal son story .

It's the sons , the older son's pride , sons , the older son's pride , it's the younger son's pride and asking for his inheritance and then traipsing off , you know , to the nightclub and to God knows what , and ultimately I would say it's the father's pride at the end , because he has to hear from the son who stayed the ways in which this father , as loving as he

is , has missed the mark right to his son , his eldest son , who stayed . And so it's all about empathy .

It's about empathy eroding pride , right , and it's about , you know , and it's about growth and you know , and I think that's why it's a really good reflection , you know , for it's about growth and you know , and I think that's why it's it's a really good reflection , you know , for for Lent this year .

To me , that's all about wholeness is becoming whole again and remembering re-member as in like putting back together again and keeping things real . So when we talk about community , when we're a member of a community , we're honoring one another , and so I don't know where that goes , bishop .

But I feel like wholeness matters here , and sometimes I think in our pride , in the way that our ego rears its other ugly head and that we want to stand out from the crowd , we often forget that we are just one of another .

You know , we're willing to settle because of pride , sometimes because of lack of faith , sometimes because of lack of faith , sometimes because of lack of courage , sometimes because of blindness . We're always willing to accept some sort of Spartan notion of life .

And here's God holding out these stories to us in the person of Jesus , saying you know , there's repair that's available to you , but it does have a cost . You know , the father sees the young son who has , you know , been away , living , you know , in dissolution , blowing his family fortune . The father keeps his eyes on the gate .

You know that's what's interesting in this story . You know , that's what's interesting in this story . You know , you can just imagine , and you can just imagine that father's

whispered prayers . But he held out . He held out a hope for repair for his family , for the return of his son .

And one wonders , you know , it's not in the story but , as Dr King said , if I use my spiritual imagination , my sanctified imagination , one wonders if the father is able to hold out empathy for this son and hope for the son , because maybe the father strayed from the straight and narrow at some point .

Right , you know , this story is about more than a narrow definition of righteousness and this is what the older son doesn't get Right . He has this righteousness , the older son does , but it's works righteousness , it's an entitled righteousness and the son comes .

The young son comes back , as Desmond Tutu says , probably smelling like high heaven , everything wrong with him comes and the older son gets a clinic about a different kind of righteousness and what seems right to God is repair .

And that changes some of us that if what is right to God is repair , then that's a different version of right than many of us know and uphold . A lot of us hold up something you know a lot less thick than that .

But the righteousness of God is about this repair for this entire family , and so that's why what I say at the very end of this story is that you know , in the story it's really easy to pick sides and whenever you preach it , you know the first . You know the first children in the room . You know they sort of immediately see and understand the .

You know the elder son's perspective who stayed and worked diligently . And also , when you're preaching , you know the kids in the room who have been prodigal , who are straight off the beaten path , who took a far-flung journey and maybe even did a lot of wrong .

They sort of take sides and of course the parents in the room are trying to figure out how to do this thing , how to thread the needle . But I think Jesus , stretching everybody in this story wide with empathy , I think that was his actual point .

This is the story that I would have to say that over my 61 years has continued to live with me , chew at it , live on it , you know , listen to what the father says and doesn't say , listen to what the sons say and don't say .

And I think now and you know , hopefully it'll continue to evolve for me , I think now the point is is that empathy is not just about intellect . Empathy is about putting flesh on Christian ideals , it's about compassion . It's about compassion enough for everybody and I think that's what makes this story perhaps the best story Jesus ever told .

So to me that's all about restoring , and I don't know if we could actually do that work . I feel like a mission is actually possible if we're doing what we need to be doing , and I can't help but wonder , listening to you , how much empathy is required in order for us to live out our mission as the church .

The older son realizes there's more . I , I think that you know , when we're talking about reconciling the world to God and to one another , I think we also have to remember that you know we are responding to a God who is reconciling in us and integrating in us all those things that are at odds and that don't come together gracefully .

And so anything that we take up , any mission that we take up , is first happening to us , is first God's mission to us and in us , and so that's what makes it authentic . So if I'm trying to produce something that is not happening in me , that is not alive and generative in me , then I'm

some kind of car salesman , then I'm commending something I have no idea about , I'm commending a vacation I've never taken right .

And so what the catechism doesn't say , but certainly implies , is that we take up this work because we're responding to what God has done and is doing in us and therefore we are a credible witness to other people about what the power of God can do , and I think that's what makes it real . Words on a page can help us , but they have to be fleshed out .

I mean , this is the point of Jesus coming among us , fleshed out . I mean , this is the point of jesus coming among us . Right , and so this is the point of , in fact , of these kinds of stories is this is so they can become real . Um , you know they can become , because we know what broken families look like . Right , we've been in them .

Um , if we're honest , some of us have helped the cr to to break some of them . Um , and so is there any hope for us is the question , and that's why these stories again are so important . That's why this mission is so important , that there is medicine in the word of God , and there is medicine first coming to us and then pours through us into the world .