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| The Empathy Factor For most of my teenage years, as many of you know, my identity was pretty much tied up with a musical instrument – the oboe. For many years after I graduated from High School, whenever I would meet an old high school acquaintance he would invariably say, “Aren’t you the oboe player?” You see, for the ten years of junior high, high school and college, I carried my instrument with me almost wherever I went. For years even after I got out of the music business, I would have these nightmarish moments when I would suddenly realize that I didn’t have my oboe in my hand and I would cast around desperately wondering where I might have left it before realizing that I didn’t have to carry it any more! There was a period during my senior year in high school when I had either a rehearsal or a concert scheduled for every night of the week for three straight months! If my mother wanted to see me, she had to come to a concert! I played in orchestras and in bands and in chamber ensembles. I played solo work and church work and opera – and in between I practiced and I made reeds, these are the dual duties of any real oboe player. And I’ve had to ask myself exactly what it was that motivated me during that time to devote so much of my time and my energy to music. Some of it was the fact that it was something that I could be good at – I wasn’t very good at sports, but music was something that I could do. But I think that a lot of what inspired me to involve myself so deeply in the musical world was simply, the Power and the Pleasure of HARMONY. Those of you who are musicians know what I am talking about. There is something truly wonderful about gathering together with a bunch of other musicians and making great music together. I loved the symphony orchestra. As the oboe player you got to sit right in the center of a maelstrom of musical talent that swirled around you in waves of sound. Just a few feet in front of me sat the largest component of the orchestra, the strings – cellos and violas and violins. Behind me were the clarinets and bassoons. Just a few feet further back to my immediate left were the trumpets and the trombones and then on the right we had French Horns and percussion. And a great symphonic work is composed of the weaving together of all of these elements into one magnificent whole – in any given piece, the first oboist was likely to play solos and small ensemble sections with the rest of the woodwinds and then the great tutti sections at the end when the brass and the timpani and everyone else would come in to build to a climax at the end. This is the power and the pleasure of harmony! Even today when people ask me why I play my classical music so loud, I tell them that it’s because I got used to sitting in the middle of the orchestra! But really one of the most basic, even physical, pleasures of making music is the joy of playing a simple duet with another woodwind. When you do, there is this strange phenomenon that takes place. I’m not sure that it has even ever been properly explained. If two oboes or flutes or violins are playing harmony in perfect tune while sitting with one another while sitting close together, often a third note will sound somewhere inside your head. It’s like watching a 3D movie with glasses on where the images seem to leap off the screen or hover in the air in front of you… it’s just that with music, instead of a butterfly or monster hovering in front of your face, it is a perfectly tuned enharmonic note several octaves below the notes you are actually playing that hovers somewhere in the middle of your head! It is an almost physical pleasure! It is the Power and the Pleasure of Harmony… and it is a good picture of the power and pleasure that Christians can enjoy in the context of the Body of Christ even without musical instruments. When we begin to personify the virtues set forth in the Word of God and to live together in harmony as Christians as members of the Family of God, the result is an almost physical delight that is available nowhere else on earth. There is power and pleasure to be found in worship and in fellowship together and in service within the Family of God. The instruments for achieving this power are found in the score, God’s Word. It’s just that all too often we leave them moldering on the shelf when we ought to take them out of their cases and play them for all we are worth! The twelfth chapter of Romans is really a chapter about making beautiful music together in the family of God – and the apostle Paul uses all sorts of pictures in this chapter to try and get his point across. In the beginning of the chapter he encourages us to set aside our old and sinful ways with a picture from the Old Testament. He says that we ought to, “… offer our bodies as living sacrifices, holy and pleasing to God,” and that we “should not be conformed to the pattern of this world…” Then a few verses later on in verses 4 and 5 he presents the central illustration of the chapter, which is the illustration of the human body, He says, “… Just as each of us has one body with many members, and these members do not all have the same function, so in Christ we who are many form one body, and each member belongs to all the others.” NIV But I couldn’t resist the musical allusion found in Rom 12:16. It says, “live in harmony with one another,” and music is a wonderful picture of the great things that can happen when the people of God work together in love. God calls his people to MAKE BEAUTIFUL MUSIC TOGETHER. Let’s open our Bibles and read Rom 12:14-16:
In just three verses, Paul gives us four valuable pieces of advice; in fact, he sets forth four ways that we can make beautiful music together in the Family of God. You could call it, the Empathy Factor. First, says Paul, REFUSE TO BE AN ENEMY! Verse 14: “Bless those who persecute you; bless and do not curse…” I don’t know what it is about human beings, but we seem to be really good at Math. We are certainly good at multiplication. It has often been said that the command of Gen 9:7 “… be fruitful and increase in number; multiply on the earth and increase upon it." is the ONLY command of God that humans have faithfully obeyed down through the ages. On the other hand, we also seem to be very good at DIVISION. We are constantly drawing lines between “us and them.” -- racial lines and sexual lines and class lines and age lines and theological lines. Look around the average elementary school and there are already cliques – the popular group and the nerds; the tough crowd and the blondes. There was a seminal psychological experiment done many years ago by an elementary school teacher that showed just how easy it was to create division in the classroom. She took her class of thirty-some Fifth Graders and divided them on the basis of whether they had blue eyes or brown eyes. She then told them that brown-eyed children were better than blue-eyed ones. She gave them special privileges and higher grades. She called upon them more in class and gave them more positive feedback. Within a very short time, the class divided along eye-color lines. Brown-eyed kids started teasing the blue-eyed ones, accusing them of inferiority. Kids who had been friends across ‘eye-color lines’ began to terminate friendships in response to the negative environment. After a couple of weeks, the teacher reversed. She told the kids that blue-eyed kids were better than brown-eyed one and gave them privileges and positive feedback and higher grades – and the prejudices and superiority complex reversed. What a picture of the character of mankind. Most of us don’t look at the color of a person’s eyes before determining whether or not we are willing to be their friend; but still the instinct is for us to divide. It is easier to make enemies than friends. It is easier to isolate than it is to get along. It is easier to hold grudges than it is to let them go. But nevertheless as Christians we are called to take the difficult road – to forgive and to forget; to love one another; to bind together in the body of Christ – even to reach out to the world around us with compassion and concern! How different this is from our natural inclination and from the ways of this world. Just last week, Time Magazine published an article on what has recently been called “The Intelligent Design Movement.” This is a movement within the educational system and among Christian scientists who want to point out good scientific evidence that the world was created by an intelligent being rather than simply by chance through random mutations and survival of the fittest –a fancy way of saying “evolution!” But the Intelligent Design Movement has drawn some interesting lines in the sand. It has sparked all kinds of extremely angry rhetoric from confirmed atheists. Christians (and I suppose other theists as well) like the idea of presenting the scientific evidence for an intelligent designer in the classroom as an alternative to Darwinism as religion. Not one of the Christians cited in the article suggested that Darwinism should be banned from the educational system. The atheists, on the other hand, were not so kind. With angry words they accused the Intelligent Design group of a kind of nefarious plot to destroy science in America. One man went to far as to imply that somehow Japan and China were going to overtake America in the sciences simply because American scientists were allowed or encouraged to believe in God. What nonsense! If that were the case, then the Soviet Union should have run circles around us years ago – but the didn’t. I was disappointed too at the bias of the article. Every time the viewpoint of a proponent of Intelligent Design was cited, the author made a point of describing the home life of this person. He would says, “this person is a practicing Catholic” or that one is a “church going home schooler.” The implication was of course that being a practicing Catholic or a home schooler made you biased and incapable of good science. On the other hand, when the same author quoted the opponents of Intelligent Design, he never described their home life at all. He never told us that this person was a member of the Atheist Club or that he would only send his children to secular universities or that he had written violently anti-Christian essays… The implication was that atheists are somehow unbiased when it comes to matters of science – but this is nonsense! In fact, one of the nastiest anti-intelligent design essays in the issue was written by a man named Steven Pinker, a psychology professor at Harvard… But his essay illustrates for me perfectly to what length people will go to create enemies where there are none. (Time Magazine – Aug 15, 2005) After decrying people who believe in God as “naïve” and gullible, Pinker closes his essay with an interesting paragraph. He says, “Many people who accept evolution still feel that a belief in God is necessary to give life meaning and to justify morality. But that is exactly backward. In practice, religion has given us stonings, inquisitions and 9/11. Morality comes from a commitment to treat others as we wish to be treated, which follows from the realization that none of us is the sole occupant of the universe…” Do you know what really struck me about that paragraph? Well, it’s not just that he paints Christianity and Islam and all other religions with one big bad broad brush. It is this: in one breath he condemns all religion as unnecessary and even the cause of everything evil in the world. And then in the very next breath… he quotes Jesus Christ. I wonder if he even realized when he wrote his essay that the idea of ‘treating others as we wish to be treated’ comes directly from the New Testament. It is part of one of the religions that he has just so roundly condemned! It’s the Golden Rule! Luke 10:27! Pinker is so busy lining up his enemies that he can’t even realize who are his friends! In a way, he is becoming a modern day Pharisee seeing enemies where there are none and enforcing a kind of pseudo-scientific dogma that will brook no argument. It is amazing isn’t it, that the religious leaders of Jesus’ day somehow chose HIM as public enemy number one? It is true that Jesus made a couple of forays into the temple to overturn moneychangers’ tables; and he had a few harsh words for the Pharisees in Matt 24 and 25; but for the most part Jesus’ ministry was completely harmless. Jesus was busy healing the sick and casting out demons and reconstructing withered hands and preaching that you should love your enemies and turn the other cheek and forgive your brother seventy times seven times when he sins against you. One of his main offenses near the end of his life, the one that inspired the authorities to arrest him was that he raised Lazarus from the dead! This is hardly the stuff of capital punishment! But still the Pharisees insisted on making Jesus their enemy! His challenge to their authority was so threatening to the existing power structure that they controlled, that they made sure to condemn him to death. Because of his popularity, they felt it necessary to arrest him in the middle of the night. They dragged him before every authority in the land – before the high priest; before Herod the ‘king,’ before Pontius Pilate the Governor. They hired false witnesses to implicate him in a non-existent crime; they trumped up false charges themselves; they even stuffed the ballot box in a sense by planting people in the crowd that stood by when Pontius Pilate tried to release him crying “Crucify him!” They watched him beaten and scourged and ridiculed and nailed to a cross to die and then they stood by and sneered at him as he died, “If you really are the Christ, then why don’t you come down from the cross!” There was Jesus in agony, dying for the sins of the world, dying for THEIR sins and they stood there mocking him! No one on earth would have blamed Jesus in that moment if he had said, “I hope you burn in hell!” It would have been the normal human thing to do! But instead, Jesus said, “Father forgive them for they know not what they do!” Until the very end, Jesus refused to be an Enemy! He blessed those who persecuted him! He forgave even those who were the instruments of his death. And he is the conductor of our orchestra. One of the best ways that we can learn to make beautiful music together is to FOLLOW HIM… closely! There is no room for argument and schisms and hot tempers in the family of God. It is so critical that we refuse to make enemies in the body of Christ. Making beautiful music together isn’t having your own way; it’s having things Gods way. It is possible to have enemies (Jesus did), but never to BE one (Jesus never was). And that is the place that God calls us to inhabit! But there is more. Making beautiful music together means refusing to be enemies. It also means EMPATHY! Paul says, “Rejoice with those who rejoice; mourn with those who mourn.” NIV The dictionary (Random House Unabridged) defines Empathy as, “the
intellectual identification with or vicarious experiencing of the feelings,
thoughts or attitudes of another.” It’s a completely Biblical
Principle. Paul expands on the idea in 1 Cor 12 – his “other” passage about the Body of Christ. He says (in verses 25 and 26), “… there should be no division in the body, but … its parts should have equal concern for each other. If one part suffers, every part suffers with it; if one part is honored, every part rejoices with it.” NIV What Paul is saying is simply this: if a friend, a member of the body of Christ is playing a dirge, because of some sorrow in his or her life, don’t join in with the Allegro! It won’t work. We are called to empathy, not dissonance; to care and concern, not clashing. A wise man once said, “Do not speak of your own happiness to one who is unhappy.” It’s a good rule – and a difficult one to follow; because our inclination is always toward ourselves… I was kicking myself for doing that very thing this week! Now, obviously if you can’t enjoy your happiness because I am sad and I can’t properly mourn because you are happy; then no one gets any satisfaction at all. The key really IS to honor one another above yourselves – Romans 12:10. I was reading this week about Epaphroditus – one of Paul’s colleagues in the ministry, a comfort to him while he was in jail. In Phil 2:25-27, Paul wrote, “... I think it is necessary to send back to you Epaphroditus, my brother, fellow worker and fellow soldier, who is also your messenger, whom you sent to take care of my needs. For he longs for all of you and is distressed because you heard he was ill. Indeed he was ill, and almost died. But God had mercy on him, and not on him only but also on me, to spare me sorrow upon sorrow. Did you get that? Epaphroditus was distressed. Why? Because his friends in Philippi had heard that he was sick. When I read that, I had to laugh! I mean, Epaphroditus is the one who is sick, not the people back in Philippi! But instead of holding a pity party for his illness; instead of spending hours explaining his operation or going into great detail about how bad he felt or how high his temperature had soared or the fact that he had nearly died; Epaphroditus just worried about his friends worrying about him! This is the kind of guy we all like to know! Epaphroditus was willing to step outside of himself and into the feelings of his friends in a deep and meaningful way! Now, I want you to notice on the one hand, that he didn’t hide his illness – he needed the prayers of God’s people. But on the other hand, he was also concerned about their care for him! What a wonderful place to be! True empathy you see is a combination of vulnerability and trust. When the engine of God’s grace is hitting on all cylinders in the body of Christ, then we will be vulnerable to one another. We will know without a shadow of a doubt that we can trust the body of Christ with our joys and our sorrows and we will make beautiful music together. Paul says, “Refuse to be enemies; Empathize; and next HARMONIZE. Rom 12:16 says it directly, “Live in harmony with one another.” The King James is a more direct translation. It says, “Be of one mind…” And if Empathy is global, then harmony is individual; if empathy is a matter of general attitude; then harmony is a matter of the details; if empathy is making sure your playing the right movement of the symphony, then harmony is making sure you are playing the right notes! Let me point out that harmony is impossible in a vacuum. In order for harmony to take place, we all have to play. You can’t play harmony by yourself (unless you play the piano and that doesn’t count). As George Macdonald put it, “There can be no unity, no delight of love, no harmony, no good in being, where there is but one. Two at least are needed for oneness.” We are often tempted to isolate, rather than participate. It is easier to withdraw. It is safer to be alone. But it is not better! We must NOT sit back and leave the music to others! We must not expect the body of Christ to ‘meet our needs,’ if we are not an effective and active part of the whole ourselves! I have often found that the people who are the MOST demanding of the body of Christ and the most critical of its ability to meet their needs; are also the LEAST likely to extend themselves in service to the body of Christ. They are the least likely to reach out to the weak; the least likely to give themselves over to sanctification; and the least likely to be committed to being like Christ. Put in the place of Epaphroditus, these people are calling home to the church at Philippi and asking them why they didn’t send flowers. And they are condemning those people back home because not enough of them came to visit at exactly the right time. But let me tell you something: a ‘whine’ is dissonant wherever it is played. A complaining spirit is never glorifying to God or edifying to the body of Christ; it is never a part of living in Harmony with one another. It’s like firing up a chainsaw in the midst of Claire du Lune! It’s like the scourge of microphone feedback in the middle of a beautiful solo – every one winces; some people cover their ears; many glance around at the sound booth and glare. All of us wish it would go away. Making beautiful music together means carefully choosing the notes that you play… and making sure they are not obnoxious. It means thinking of the needs of others. It means refusing to indulge in the luxury of dragging other people down; It means (as Paul put it just a few verses ago) encouraging one another in brotherly love. Paul says, “Refuse to be an enemy.” He says, “Empathize!” He says, “Harmonize!” And finally he says “HUMBLE YOURSELF.” Verse 16 says, “Do not be proud, but be willing to associate with people of low position. Do not be conceited.” NIV You know, there is a bit of the paparazzi in all of us. Once a week, I go to physical therapy for my back. It’s a kind of stretching and strengthening routine that seems to have held the demons of back pain at bay now for about nine years. Well, a couple of weeks ago I walked into the studio at the same time as a big strapping guy with a handlebar mustache… and right away I noticed that there was a different atmosphere in the gym. It was like someone had turned up the energy dial in the place and we were all getting just a little greater degree of personal attention. And the trainer kept saying to the guy next to me, “Okay Boch, suck in that stomach now… Boch relax those shoulders… not so fast Boch.” And I’m laying on the reformer (that’s the nasty name they thought up for the work out device they use in that studio) and I’m thinking to myself, “there is only one person I know in San Diego who goes by the name “Boch” and that’s Bruce Bochy, the manager of the San Diego Padres. Now, do you know how many Padre Games I’ve been to this year? Exactly… none. I was scheduled to go to one just a couple of weeks ago, but I decided to go hiking instead! That’s what an avid fan I am. I wasn’t exactly sure I even knew what Bruce Bochy looked like; but here I am on my reformer trying to crane my neck around to get a good look at the guy on the bed next to me… why? I guess because he was famous. I confess, that I even stayed after for a minute or two so that I could ask the trainer, “Was that Bruce Bochy?” and have her answer with a smile that said, “Yes! You paparazzi you! You see there IS a bit of the paparazzi in all of us! We are fascinated with fame and with fortune. Our hearts flutter in the presence of celebrity. The most hardened individualist among us is likely to melt into obsequiousness when confronted with a person we have seen on the news. It’s natural for all of us to want to climb the social ladder; we like the idea of being the smallest house on the biggest block and not the other way around. We are fascinated with big fish and prefer to swim with them – because we think it will make us big too. But here in Rom 12:16, Paul calls us away from that sort of paparazzi-ism. In the NIV, it says “Don’t be proud,” but more literally the verse would be translated, “Do not mind high things,” “Don’t be stuck on status.” “Don’t lose your head over fame or fortune, but instead be willing to associate with people of low estate.” It is easy to forget that it is the very thin line that separates us from them. We like to think of ourselves as superior beings, people who are not capable of addiction or susceptible to gross sins – like embezzlement or adultery or murder. And yet time and again when I have met people who have gone to prison or to rehab for a crime or an addiction or both; I have realized that the root of their problem was really just one bad decision; one step down the road to perdition; one snort of cocaine; one too many drinks at a bar one night; one visit to a strip club; one wild party! Don’t fool yourself, the line between us and them is a very thin one! A friend of mine was saying to me the other day, “It’s easy to be humble when you are wrong! The hard thing is to be humble when you are right!” And he was right! It’s easy to be humble when you’ve made a mistake and you’ve been caught. It’s much harder to be humble when you haven’t actually crossed the line; it’s much harder to be humble when you think you can look back at your life with a smug smile on your face and say, “I may not be perfect, but boy I am as close as anyone I know! It’s harder to be humble when you look at an addict in recovery who is still confused from the effects of his drugs and you can say to yourself, “I’m not like him at all.” It’s harder to be humble when around someone who is obviously challenged in the area of IQ; or of personal hygiene. We want to avoid those people. We want to consign them to shelters and keep them out of sight. Some people even have trouble going to church because nearly every church has some of the least of these (that’s what Jesus called them) in them! And we ought – we are called to be willing to associate with people of low estate, and sometimes the church is the only place where people like that can find fellowship! And I want to point out to you that the ultimate example of humility was Jesus Christ. There is just a tiny thin line between you and me, and the least of these – just one mistake in judgment. But there is a mighty gulf between our righteousness and the righteousness of Jesus Christ. And yet Jesus stepped across that gulf in order to fellowship with you and me. As it says in that most famous of passages in Phil 2:6-8, “Who, being in very nature God, did not consider equality with God something to be grasped, but made himself nothing, taking the very nature of a servant, being made in human likeness. And being found in appearance as a man, he humbled himself and became obedient to death — even death on a cross! NIV Jesus not only associated himself with the poor and the needy of this world… he died for them. And it was the music of that act that began the greatest symphony the world has ever heard – a kind of music that we can still participate in today. You could call it the Empathy Factor! Jesus chose to feel our feelings as one of us; he refused to be our enemy; he took upon himself the nature of a servant – though he was king of kings and Lord of Lords. He chose to die for our sakes and then He rose from the dead in victory. And we are called to exactly this sort of Empathy even today. For us, even now, Empathy is the act of Making God Visible to this world.
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