Empathy and Our Mission

I planned to give the sermon last Sabbath, but what happened with Maurice didn't make that possible. This week I didn't have time to prepare something else. For those who were in Petaluma, you'll get to hear this again. I'm looking over there. You weren't going to be here last week, so I could give this here. It's interesting because every time I give a sermon, you look at that and think about the circumstances you're going through.

Think about circumstances in the world, situation, and congregation. You read the scriptures, and you can read them over and over at different times in your life, and they'll speak to you in different ways. So even in the last few weeks, what I've been through personally makes this message even more personal for me. We talked about how proud and thankful we are for Richard's accomplishment. A few weeks ago, I had the opportunity to be part of Gary and Barbara's wedding. We wished Don and Tabitha well as they moved away. I saw on Facebook that they made an offer on a house, and now they have this beautiful house they're going to move into there in Tennessee.

We rejoice when these wonderful things happen, but we also feel heavy when we hear about brethren who are suffering, or we think about Rick Dawson, and we think about his race and the life that he lived, or about my wife, Maryse, going through the situation with her terrible itching. When these things come up, a scripture comes to mind. I'd like to turn to that scripture in Romans 12, verse 15, by way of introduction, because we all have these ups and downs in our life.

As we have these ups and downs, those who are our friends, our family, and part of the body of Christ who are with us together, we go up and down together. We rejoice, as it says here in Romans 12, verse 15, we rejoice with those who rejoice. We're happy and excited for Don and Tabitha as they buy that home, and Gary and Barbara as they start their life together, and for Richard as he goes on to the next chapter of his life with this degree, and what that will mean, and the impact he can have on people.

But it also says here, we weep with those who weep, and we receive prayer requests from people in this congregation who are suffering, people who can't be with us even today because of the suffering that they're going through. And so we're with people, and there's a corollary to the Scripture in 1 Corinthians 12-26. You don't need to turn there, but you can mark it in your notes. 1 Corinthians 12, verse 26, it says, if one member suffers, all the members suffer, and if one member is honored, all the members rejoice with it.

And so members around the world have these ups and downs. And I receive prayer updates or prayer requests from people who live in other parts of the world that I don't know. People who live in the Philippines, or people who live in South Africa, or someone in Australia, certainly someone on the other end of the country, and I don't know who they are, and yet I read these prayer requests, and my heart goes out to them. And sometimes it's hard to pray for all these things.

I'll say a short prayer right there as I receive that email for them, because it's just after a while you have all these lists and so forth. But the reason that we are able to do this is the subject of my sermon today, and that is empathy. Empathy is something that allows us to walk in somebody else's shoes. And I'd like to talk about empathy. Empathy that God has for us, and empathy that should drive our individual walk as Christians, awaiting the return of Jesus Christ. And so I'm going to define this term.

We're going to talk about sympathy and empathy, and I'm sure many of you have looked at that and talked about that difference, but we're going to get into that difference, because that's an important difference. And it's a difference that can be a little bit confusing in the Scriptures. And then we're going to talk about how we have a God who can empathize with us, and how our life experiences then can drive our service to others in this life. I've put up the title of empathy, or empathy in our mission, because it's not just sort of the academics of empathy, but it's also how this should inform our lives, what the Scriptures should tell us about how we walk this Christian walk.

So let's start by defining our terms. I'd like to read you a definition from Merriam Webster that defines empathy, and I'm going to read this slowly because it's actually a pretty remarkably detailed definition. So I hope you can digest this as I describe it to you. Merriam Webster defines empathy as the action of understanding. So understanding, being aware of, being sensitive to, and vicariously experiencing the feelings, thoughts, and experience of another, of either the past or the present, without having those feelings, thoughts, and experiences fully communicated in an objectively explicit manner.

That's a pretty complicated definition, isn't it? So what that means is that I can tell you that Marisa and I are going through some difficulties right now because she has this medical issue. And I don't need to tell you the detailed medical diagnosis. I don't need to tell you all the blood test measurements. I don't need to tell you what time she got up and how many hours she sleeps at night. I don't have to go into all of those details for you to vicariously understand the difficulty of what that is.

Because you are able to experience those feelings, thoughts, and emotions of another person, you're able to do that. Now, the issue with empathy is that not all of us have experienced everything else that somebody has experienced in their lives. So we can have empathy for some things or for somebody for what they're going through, but maybe not empathy for somebody else. Because we just don't know what it's like. I haven't been to South Africa. I haven't walked in somebody's shoes in South Africa. I haven't experienced that. So for me to understand what it must be like to go through this trial living in South Africa, I just don't know.

I can guess about what that is. So empathy is that ability to connect with someone's feelings without needing that other person to explicitly outline them to you. We might say to someone, I've been there. I've been there. Because we really have sort of walked in that person's shoes. Now Webster goes on to contrast sympathy with empathy.

And I'm quoting now, sympathy and empathy are closely related words bound by shared origins and the similar circumstances in which each is applicable, yet they are not synonyms. So sympathy and empathy are not synonymous. They're not synonyms, according to Webster. I'm going to continue quoting.

For one thing, sympathy is considerably older. That is the word itself in our language. It's a much older word than empathy, having existed in our language for several hundred years. So you can go back hundreds of years and see the word sympathy being used. Before, as it says, it's existed in our language for several hundred years before its cousin was introduced. That is, its cousin, empathy. And its greater age is reflected in a wider breadth of meaning. Sympathy may refer to feelings of loyalty, for example, or unity or harmony in action or effect, meaning not shared by empathy.

In the context where the two words do overlap, sympathy implies sharing or having the capacity to share the feelings of another. While empathy tends to be used to mean imagining or having the capacity to imagine the feelings that one does not actually have. So as a man, it would be very hard for me to be empathetic with a woman going through childbirth, because I will never go through childbirth. I can't empathize with a woman who has been through childbirth, but women to women, if one woman has been through childbirth and another woman has been through childbirth, they can empathize with one another.

They have that shared experience. Now, as a man, I can sympathize with the pain of childbirth because I've seen my wife go through two labors and deliveries. So I can sympathize with women because I've seen my wife in a great deal of pain as she's gone through that. So sometimes we might be able to hear about someone's trial or rejoice in someone's success, and we can rejoice, and that's sympathy. We're sympathetic to what they went through. We can imagine all the work of what it takes to move cross-country or to go through a relationship to get to a point where you're going to get married or to finish a degree.

We can be sympathetic to all of what was involved with that and then rejoice that that person has reached that stage or those people have reached that stage in their life. But if you've not moved cross-country before, if you haven't gotten to a point where you're ready to get married, then you can't necessarily empathize with all that it takes, all that dynamic that's involved. I remember the day before my wedding and all the feelings that I had before that, and if you've been through that, you can empathize.

Now, I'd like you to turn to 1 Peter 3, verse 8 with this in mind because the Bible actually has an explicit discussion or reference to the importance of being sympathetic. At a minimum, we need to be sympathetic one towards another. 1 Peter 3 and verse 8. Let's take a look at that.

It says here in 1 Peter 3, verse 8, Finally, all of you be of one mind, having compassion for one another. Love as brothers, be tender-hearted, be courteous. Now, the New International Version translates this word, have compassion, or compassion one for another, as be sympathetic. If you have a New International Version and you're following along in your Bible, you'll see it says, be sympathetic one for another. The reason the NIV chooses to translate this compassion with be sympathetic is that the Greek word is the Greek word, sumpati. S-U-M-P-A-T-H-E-S. And that's where we get the word sympathy. That's the word sympathy comes from that Greek word. It means to be sympathetic or understanding. And the Strong's exhaustive concordance says of this word, sumpati, it says having a fellow feeling, mutually commiserative, having compassion one for another. So the Apostle Paul says that we should be sympathetic one to another. This is actually a real issue in our society today because we see less and less compassion, less and less sympathy. We hear this term narcissism thrown out a lot. But first Peter, in the second letter that Peter writes, he talks about people being lovers of themselves as one of the indications of this end time. And so this lack of sympathy, this lack of empathy, this lack of compassion is a marker of our age. And so in God's Church, we are told to be compassionate, to be sympathetic, to rejoice, and to weep one with another. It's an exhortation. So now that we've defined our terms, we understand the empathy is really having been there, and sympathy is really desiring to be compassionate, to attempt to put ourselves in that person's shoes, even if we haven't actually been in their shoes. We probably need them to describe it a little bit more for us, what that's involved, because we haven't actually been there. Let's talk about how God is empathetic towards us. I'd like you to turn to Hebrews 4, verse 15 to see this actually described in Scripture. Hebrews 4, verse 15. In my New King James Version, the word here is translated sympathize, but we're going to see here in a moment that that word is actually better translated empathize. Hebrews 4, verse 15 says, We do not have a high priest who cannot sympathize with our weaknesses, but was in all points tempted as we are, yet without sin. Now, the Greek word here for sympathize is related to that previous word that we saw in 1 Peter. It's Strong's word 4835, if you want to put that in your notes. Sympateo. The previous word we read was Strong's word 4835. So they're very, very, very closely related in Greek.

Vincent Word Studies says about this word, it is only here and in another place that this phrase is found, the sympateo. And it means more about knowledge of human infirmity. It's a feeling that you have by common experience. And so the New International Version also translates this word as empathize. So in the NIV, it says, we do not have a high priest who cannot empathize with our weaknesses. And really, I think Vincent Word Studies and the understanding of the Greek really does bring this out a little bit better because the fact is that Jesus Christ was tempted in all points as we are yet without sin. God, who is our creator, understands us better than we understand ourselves. He can empathize with what we're experiencing, what we're going through. And if he's going to be our advocate, if Jesus Christ is going to be our advocate, if he's going to be that person who's there speaking to the Father for us, then he would need to be able to share what it's like to go through what we're going through. If we feel distant from God and our prayers, it's not God's issue because God's been there. It's our issue because God has walked where we have walked. And that's what's really amazing because, as I said, I can't relate to a woman going through childbirth because I'm a man, but God can relate to a woman going through childbirth. He can relate to a little kid who is upset about some injustice, probably some petty injustice that that little kid is feeling. And he can relate to what it means to be very old and all of the aches and pains and difficulties and frustrations of what it means to be very, very old. He can relate to every phase of our lives and what we are going through. Turn with me to Isaiah 53 and verse 3.

Isaiah 53 and verse 3 just gives a little view of what this means.

We read this during Passover. Isaiah, under inspiration, is describing what our high priest has been through as a human being. To really give a sense of how he has been there through whatever difficulty we might be going through that we can go to him. It says, he is despised and rejected by men, a man of sorrows and acquainted with grief. And we hid, as it were, our faces from him. He was despised and we did not esteem him.

Rejected can also mean forsaken. And sometimes we might feel forsaken. We might feel like nobody cares. We might feel very alone in life. He was rejected or forsaken. Sorrows can mean pain. He experienced a great deal of pain. And grief, grief in the Hebrew literally means sickness. So if he was in grief, he was in a type of sickness. So if we have been sick or we are suffering pain or we feel isolation or loneliness, Jesus has experienced all of these things. We see this here in Isaiah. He's been there. He knows what it's like to be homeless, for example, because it says in Luke 9 verse 58 that the Son of Man has no place to lay his head. He did not have a fixed place. He went from place to place preaching the kingdom of God. He knows what it's like to be single. And he knows what it's like to be married, because he created marriage. He knows what it means to suffer.

Jesus Christ has empathy for us at the highest levels, and so we can take our issues to Him and we can share our heart with Him, and He will commiserate with us. And we don't have to describe it in all the details. That's what's really interesting about this. I found that interesting about Webster's definition. We don't have to go into every detail with God, because He can put Himself in our shoes.

Now, it's natural to care about our family. It's natural to care about the people we know, but less so to care about people who we only know in passing or people we've never met.

It's quite unusual to care about someone we don't know, but Jesus Christ cares about all people.

It doesn't matter our ethnicity or our gender or our age. It doesn't matter. He can relate to us. And this brings me to my second point, which is that our life experiences should drive our service to others.

As I shared in my sermon a few weeks back, All for One and One for All, 1 Corinthians 12 gives us an analogy of a body. We're all in the body, and I talked about service and so forth. I'd like to go back there to 1 Corinthians 12 verse 14, just briefly to touch on that again, because you see, our life experiences influence how we're able to relate to others. It gives us an ability to empathize with other people. We all can't empathize with one another because we all haven't been in each other's shoes. 1 Corinthians 12 verse 14, For in fact, the body is not one member, but many.

If the foot should say, because I'm not a hand, I'm not of the body, is it therefore not of the body? And if the ear should say, because I'm not of the eye, I'm not of the body, is it therefore not of the body? For if the whole body were an eye, where would be the hearing? And if the whole were hearing, where would be the smelling? So if we consider each of us as members of the body of Christ contributing something unique, that's what I talked about in a previous sermon, well then we also have our own unique life experiences that give us an ability to empathize with someone who is in the body. What are your life experiences?

And who can you empathize with? Not just sympathize with. Have you lost your job because of the Sabbath, for example? Have you suffered through a divorce?

Well, if you've lost your job or you suffered through a divorce and another person in the body is having that experience, you can walk with them. Have you lost a child? You can share the burden with someone who has lost a child. You know, in my personal case, I lost both my parents.

Dad, when I was much younger, and my mom recently. And there's a certain feeling you have when you've lost both your parents. If you haven't lost both your parents, you can empathize with that. But if you have, you know what I'm talking about. I faced illness, could have killed me. I'm a child of divorce. I've moved a lot. I think one time I counted 30 times in 35 years. You know, when you go through that, and if you've moved a lot, you're going to nod your head like, yeah, that's like...

These are the highs and the lows. Now, I've been blessed to be married for many years. I've been blessed to have children, and now I'm blessed to have a grandchild. And so I can also empathize with people who have grandkids. I'm connecting to that world.

But, you know, when my mom had her first stroke, I suddenly stepped into the world of adult children who have parents who've had a stroke. And I had no idea that that was a world. And suddenly, oh yeah, oh yeah, what was it like for you? Oh yeah, what was it like for you? Okay, what are you doing? And how is the caregiver? And suddenly there's this whole world of people that I never knew existed. That just knew exactly what I was going through and had all sorts of thoughts. Oh yeah, you could consider this. Let me give you this number for this caregiver. They're very good. I was in this world.

Where have you been? What have you been through? Because we've all been through something. We've all had life experiences. Our trials, our sufferings, and our great highs in life, too, at some point, those will be important to comfort and strengthen the body. Because at some point, somebody is going to have had that experience, and they're going to need you to walk with them. They're going to need you to walk beside them. And empathize, comfort, be compassionate.

Being empathetic is more than just being there for people. Being empathetic means that you really have a passion to help and to serve. Now, some people can be so compassionate or so empathetic that it can actually be difficult. My wife is a little bit that way. She's a massage therapist. She really just has a way of connecting with people, really, even on a physical level there, she's massaging people. And so some people like that. My mother-in-law is like that. My mother-in-law just can't watch the news. If she watches the news, she's just depressed, because she's just feeling everything she sees on the news. Oh, it's so terrible what's going on in every part of the world. And so maybe you're like that. Maybe you can't watch the news because it's just too hard on other people less so. Other people just can't relate. And if you're like that, then that's something that you need to work on. Because we need to have sympathy. We need to have compassion. And in situations where we walk with people, we need to open up and let ourselves be vulnerable and walk beside somebody.

You might know the current president of the United Church of God, Victor Kubik.

Well, he was a Ukrainian refugee, right? You've probably heard him tell those stories. His parents were enslaved by the Nazis in work camps. And he has shared publicly that his life experience led him to found LifeNets, a LifeNets charity which has distributed tens of millions of dollars to individuals around the world to better their lives. So his experience of being a refugee led to his desire to serve in that way. And that's a very concrete example of someone's life experience leading to something like that. But, you know, there are people who see family members suffering from some medical condition and then go on to become medical doctors through training. And that inspired them to do that. Some people go into these professions because they've had that life experience. That's an example of where you take this life experience and you turn it into something very positive that can help others. You don't let that negative life experience of, let's say, having a very ill parent growing up cause you to just be very down and depressed. You take it and you turn it into something positive.

Now let's see how this all comes together. And I want to give credit to Mr. Bob Dick because he brought out some of these insights in a speaking club that we were in.

I want you to turn to James 1, verse 2 because James 1, verse 2 is one of these scriptures where it can be kind of confusing. And it's often quoted, and many of you probably already know it by heart, James 1, verse 2 says, My brethren, count it all joy when you fall into various trials. Now outside of the church, people would just think this is crazy.

I should be joyful because my son has cancer. No, that's weird, isn't it? But that's what it says. I should be joyful because I'm very sick right now. How can you be joyful? I can tell you I haven't been so joyful in the last couple of weeks. I should be joyful because, and you can fill in the link, this doesn't make a lot of sense. We can gloss over it sometimes. It's the Bible, so we believe it's true. But then if we dig into it, if somebody's not in the church, they come up to you and say, You really believe this? If your son was sick, you would rejoice. No, because there's something to this that we have to recognize. And we can see a glimpse of it in Hebrews 12, verse 11, which is just one page back in my Bible, so you can flip the page, hopefully, if you're turning with me. Hebrews 12, verse 11 says, Now no chastening seems to be joyful for the present, but grievous. Okay, now we're relating. Say, now, okay, my son is sick, I'm grieving. My husband is sick, I'm grieving. Okay, so nothing is joyful for the present when it's chastening, but it's grievous. Nevertheless, afterward, it yields the peaceable fruit of righteousness to those who have been trained by it. So now we have a little bit more to go on with this James 1, verse 2, because now what we understand is that there is a certain chastening, which is such an interesting word. There is a certain disciplining, as a marginal note in My New King James says, that we can experience. So nobody wants to go through a trial, but James 1, verse 2 is talking about an outcome. It's not talking about the moment, because the moment is grievous, but it's talking about an outcome. We are joyful for what the outcome will be, not about the moment. Are we able to thank God for our worst trial?

And that is a tough question to answer, because I have not been through every trial you've been through. You can't have gone through every trial somebody else has gone through. We are thanking God, according to James 1, verse 2, when it says to count it all joy or rejoice for the outcome, not for the moment when we're miserable, but when the pain is gone, when we can reflect on what we've learned. And this can lead to a heightened sense of desire to do something with it, to do something with that experience that we've had. So if we think about Hebrews 4, verse 15, when we have a high priest who can empathize with us, think about the implications now for us. So Jesus Christ is a high priest who can empathize with us. And what are we in training to do? Because Hebrews 12 talked about those who are trained by us. So what are we in training to be? Well, let's go over in Revelation 5, verse 10. And this was, we'll read this here in this translation, and then we'll talk about some of the other meanings. Revelation 5, verse 10, it says, So we're training to be priests. In fact, one translation says that we are to be a kingdom of priests. So if we're trained to be kings and priests, and we have a high priest who set us an example, and he can empathize with us, wouldn't it make sense that we should empathize as well with those people who we are going to serve both now and in the future? See, we are being trained by these things now, by this chastening, so that we can empathize, so that we can say we've been there. As human beings experiencing the things we experience, this is where we are right now. This is our home address. These are the struggles and the joys we've been through. So this is how we are being prepared to be priests. How we are prepared to be rulers, because when we talk to somebody in God's kingdom who has been through something, well, we've been there. We've been through those things. Now, we're not God like God in that sense. We didn't create all of us like Jesus Christ was part of that Creator, part of that creation. But nonetheless, we've been prepared through a life of experiences to serve. And we're going to serve now, and we're going to serve in the future. Turn with me to Daniel 12, verse 3.

And let's read about how this is described at the end time. Daniel 12, verse 3. This is a prophecy of the end time, and Daniel is describing these great momentous times. Starting in verse 2, Like the brightness of the firmament, and those who turn many to righteousness, like the stars, for ever and ever.

This is talking about us. This is talking about us. This is our credential. This is our credential. Our credential is we've walked the walk. We've been there. You don't have to tell us in all the detail because I know how you're feeling because I've been there. And let's walk through this together. Let's walk out of where you've been together. And let's rejoice together in your great accomplishments. I've been there. I've walked in those same shoes. And this gives purpose and meaning to our trials, to our difficulties, and to our highs and lows today.

See, we can hold on to the anger, the unfairness, the injustice. Why? Why does this happen to me? Why do I deserve this? We can go down that path. That's not productive. That doesn't lead anywhere. Turning that around into something of I've been there, I came back from that. I walked that walk. And now let's talk about it. Let's talk about it. We're in school. We're in school to become a kingdom of priests and to help those in the millennium to join with Jesus Christ to rule in the universe as a kingdom of priests. And so today we rejoice with Richard. We weep with the loss of Rick Dawson and thankful for your prayers for Maurice and all the challenges and joys that we've been through. And it's for our purpose. So let's go back to James 1, verse 2 and 3, and let's just finish the thought there because we can see it there as well. James 1, verse 2 and 3.

My brethren, count it all joy when you fall into various trials, knowing that the testing of your faith produces patience. But let patience have its perfect work, that you may be perfect and complete, lacking nothing. Lacking nothing. This is what we're being prepared for now, to be able to take these life experiences and use them for something powerful, something good, to come forward with it. And we support one another as the body of Christ as we go through this. Let's count it all joy when we fall into various trials, knowing that there is a higher purpose that we might empathize and serve others, both today and in God's kingdom.