Are You Running on an Empathy Deficit?

 This is the Sunday before the presidential election. The United States is feeling more like the Divided States of America as we approach the ballot box. Sides have been drawn. Chasms have replaced communities, separating us from the humanity we share. Instead of being together with each other, we have “othered” one another.

We are experiencing an empathy deficit as a people, and it is literally killing us.

Empathy is the ability to enter into the joys, pains, and experiences of another. It does so fully, not from our frame of reference, but from theirs. Without empathy, we are unable to understand another’s experience and therefore give it validity. As a result, injustice increases and communication breaks down.

A lack of empathy enables one to treat another as an object, meant for one’s own pleasure or power. Sexual harassment/abuse fails to understand the impact one’s behavior has on the one being abused. It has no concept of how the behavior shames and harms. It can take years for an abused one to finally name the behavior. Someone who asks why it took so long for the abuse to be named fails to have empathy for the one who was harmed, to note the visible and invisible scars that create a deafening silence.

Perhaps more than any issue, race relations in the United States provides evidence of the empathy deficit we face. Whites have difficulty seeing beyond the privilege their race affords to seeing those whose experience is much different. Racial discrimination is often discounted or denied. There is an inability or lack of will to open oneself up to the real lived experience of another.

A recent Saturday night live skit was about the lack of will we have to be empathetic. A “new product” promised five hours of empathy. The main character couldn’t bring himself to take the product. Why?

Empathy requires a willingness to be disturbed by the reality of another. We can no longer rest in the slumber of our own comfortable world because we see the impact our living has on others. Empathy forces us to ask questions of why: why is there injustice? Why are there hungry people? Why doesn’t everyone have access to health care, housing, good schools? And when we ask these questions, we recognize that the answer lies with our willingness to work with those who are not like us to create a more just and equitable world.

Are you running on an empathy deficit?

James Fowler was a seminary professor who articulated that, much like human development, there is a faith development he called, “Stages of Faith”. There are six stages of faith, although Fowler believed that most people never get beyond stage three, in which faith conforms to authority: any conflicts with one’s beliefs are rejected because these inconsistencies are too threatening to live with.

Stage six is where faith opens us to empathy—the ability to enter into the world view of another and be moved to action by what we learn. According to Fowler, stage six is seldom reached, quite possibly because it is preceded by stage five. This stage rarely is achieved before midlife. It requires one to be aware of the limits of one’s own logic and begin to accept that there can be multiple truths, even within the same sacred story. Stage five invites us to lean into ambiguity.

It is time for our churches to become faith development centers. Faith development doesn’t end with confirmation or membership. It is a lifetime commitment to growing into a deeper love of God and neighbor. What are you doing to grow your faith? What stage are you in? How does it fill you with empathy? And how does your empathy move you to create a more just and equitable world?

How will it inform the decisions you make on election day?

Be well! Stay safe! Wear a mask!

Learning to Love Ourselves in Order to Love God and Neighbor

I don’t think we in the church are doing a good job of helping people learn to love themselves. Which makes me wonder if we really know how to love others, and especially love God.

Seriously.

I say that because of what Jesus reveals to us in this week’s Gospel lesson: He tells the Pharisees that the greatest commandment is this: “’You shall love the Lord your God with all your heart, and with all your soul, and with all your mind.’ This is the greatest and first commandment. And a second is like it: ‘You shall love your neighbor as yourself.’ (Matthew 22:37-39)

The two most important commandments have to do with love, and they are connected to each other. If we love God with all of who we are, we will love our neighbor, who is made in the image of God. AND we will commit to loving our neighbor with the same care and fullness that we love ourselves.

One look at the world around us, particularly in the midst of a highly divisive election, and the first thing glaringly evident is that love is in short supply. But, even without the stark contrasts that election fever brings, one cannot help noting that love is not clearly evident in how we treat our neighbor through the choices we make and the words we speak.

Maybe, just maybe this is all due to the fact that we don’t really love ourselves and it is easier to take it out on others than allow the self-hatred to further corrode our souls.

I want our churches to be places where people see themselves as God sees them: as beautiful reflections of the Divine.

I want churches to be places where people discover what unconditional love and acceptance feels like, and that you receive it not based on some system of merit but simply because you are you, a one-of-a-kind gift of God to the world.

I want churches to be places where people discover that power is not the same thing as love.

I want churches to be the place where everyone learns that God loves them with a love that will never let them go.

I believe that when we lean into God’s love for us, we can learn to love ourselves. And when we love ourselves, we can truly love God and neighbor in ways that are revolutionary:

--We are unable to allow systems and institutions degrade those around us.

--We become uncomfortable with our own comforts when others are without.

--We make choices—including who we vote for—that demonstrate our love of neighbor, particularly those who are on the margins, who suffer, and who are far from centers of power.

--We shift the values that guide how we move in the world from “I/me” to “We/us”.

Imagine a world where love is the North Star that guides us home to right relationship with God, with neighbor, and with self.

So, friends, let’s help our churches become Love Centers!

Be well! Stay safe! Wear a mask!

A CITIZEN OF THE STATE AND A FOLLOWER OF JESUS

 I have been reflecting on this week’s Gospel lesson, Matthew 22:15-22. It is when the Pharisees, along with the Herodians, try to trap Jesus by first flattering him and then asking a question which was, for them, a lose/lose question for Jesus: “Is it lawful to pay taxes to the emperor, or not?” Jesus recognizes the trap and asks:

“Show me the coin used for the tax.” And they brought him a denarius. ²⁰Then he said to them, “Whose head is this, and whose title?” ²¹They answered, “The emperor’s.” Then he said to them, “Give therefore to the emperor the things that are the emperor’s, and to God the things that are God’s.” (Matthew 22:19-21)

I confess, I have mainly preached this text for Stewardship Sundays. But studying this scripture in light of a contentious election season has me asking more questions and, as a result, seeing new meaning in the scripture.

As I look at my ballot, I know it is a right and a duty as a citizen of the United States to vote. There is a responsibility to know the issues facing the nation and my community and the various ballot measures that seek to address them.

As a follower of Jesus, my vote is informed by his teaching. I am called to engage the State through my vote in a way that not only betters my life, but to consider how my vote can better the lives of others as well. I don’t vote only for my self-interests but for the larger body of which I am a part.

My first obedience is to God who made this world, all living things, and the human family. While I support a government with my taxes and with my engagement, there is a greater loyalty that guides me. It is what causes me to vote for those things that will protect the earth, care for the most vulnerable, provide health care for all, and insure that our young people have a quality education, no matter where they live. I pay my taxes faithfully so that these things can be a reality.

How about you? What does it mean to give to the government what is the government’s and give to God what is God’s? How will your loyalty as a follow of Jesus inform your vote and the world God desires for all of us?

Be well. Stay safe. Wear a mask.

Rejoice?

It feels like every day offers us a new assault: another person we know diagnosed with COVID-19, word that someone we know has died, an experience of yet another instance of racism, seeing incivility take over the public square and public discourse, another quick change of plans because of the rise in COVID cases, another business closed, feeling the pang of separation from those we love not only because of distance but because of the political division of this historical moment…

We are all tired, depressed, angry and carrying individual and communal trauma of these past 7 months.

This morning I read the week’s lectionary (Philippians 4:1-13 ) and there was Paul admonishing me,

“Rejoice in the Lord always; again I will say, Rejoice.”

Oh, come on now.

Joy and rejoicing certainly feel in short supply these days. And it is hard to muster it at all sometimes. Then I remember a little bit more about what Paul was doing when he said these words. He was not in the middle of a hymn sing or a church potluck. He had not just returned from a reunion with followers of Jesus or a revival at which more people chose to follow the carpenter from Nazareth.

He wrote these words from prison. He wrote about rejoicing from a prison cell. He wrote these words from a prison cell wondering if his execution was near. In the midst of persecution and pain, what does he advise? “Rejoice.”

At a time when some of us are forgetting what joy looks like, I invite you to reflect on Paul’s words. What does it mean for you to rejoice? What might be a cause for rejoicing? How does rejoicing in God’s love and presence help us draw even closer to God?

One of the ways I am trying to do this is to find joy in the little things:

· The tinkling of a wind chime outside my window

· The feel of new bath towels (the first in almost two decades!) as they envelop me

· The warm sun on my face, and the way the wind, with a hint of coolness, caresses my arms

· The smell of something baking in the oven

· How seeing a friend in person—even masked and socially distanced—fills me up with energy I hadn’t realize I was missing

· The way the leaves are changing color each day, and watching some already release themselves and fall to the ground

· Taking a walk and hearing the giggles of children nearby

There is a passage from Alice Walker’s “The Color Purple” that reminds me of how God is always placing in front of us small joys:

“I think it pisses God off if you walk by the color purple in a field somewhere and don't notice it.' 'What it do when it pissed off?' I ast. 'Oh, it make something else. People think pleasing God is all God care about. But any fool living in the world can see it always trying to please us back.' 'Yeah?' I say. 'Yeah,' she say. 'It always making little surprises and springing them on us when us least expect.' 'You mean it want to be loved, just like the bible say.' 'Yes, Celie,' she say. 'Everything want to be loved.”

May you look, and find, those small joys God has put in your life today. May it be a source of rejoicing. May it cause you to fall more deeply in love with God and those around you.

Be well. Stay safe. Wear a mask.

Sitting Beside the Still Waters

We have been living with tremendous anxiety, tension, and burdens over the past six months. This past week compounded all of that: the difficulties of moving from an in-person to an on-line life, the burden of being both a work-from-home parent and a virtual classroom assistant, the trauma of a lifetime of racist indignities and experiencing it again on the national stage, and hearing the President’s and First Lady’s COVID-19 diagnoses and wondering what it means for the country and for oneself.

I don’t know about you, but I am bone weary. Sleep eludes me. And there is an underlying anxiety that I can’t seem to shake.

How are YOU doing?

These are difficult days. I have seen so much public displays of anger this week as I grocery shopped, got gas, or drove through a parking lot. The faces of people I look at via Zoom look drawn and tired. The uncertainty of a nation in crisis is weighing heavily.

I worry about how we will get through the coming weeks and months when so many are already feeling so stressed and stretched.

Recently, I have turned to meditating on the Psalms as a way to ground myself for each day’s challenges. I invite you, right now, to take a deep breath. Really breathe. Slowly, deeply (Jeff Rainwater has shared with conference staff that there really is something called zoom apnea. Apparently, we unconsciously hold our breath or breathe shallowly when we are engaging a screen).

Remember the beginning of Psalm 23: “The Lord is my shepherd, I shall not want. God makes me lie down in green pastures; God leads me beside still waters; God restores my soul.” Close your eyes and allow God’s Holy Spirit to guide you to that place that has always been a restorative balm for your weary soul. Imagine going to that place, and God helping you lie down. Now breathe in deeply again. Feel the stillness. Allow God to restore and renew you.

As the weather cools and the days shorten, we will need these spiritual resting places that we can visit, reconnect with God, and let God’s Spirit fill and empower us.

Always remember: you are not alone. These are unusual days, and while each of us experiences it differently, we are still traveling together through it.

Be well. Stay safe. Wear a mask.