I came across a story recently that I’d like to share with you. And I want you to feel what I felt as I read it. Imagine this for a moment. It’s a Thursday afternoon one spring day in NYC. And you’re excited, not because it’s almost the weekend but because you’ve got a date tonight. You and your significant other are going to that restaurant you’ve been talking about. So you spent a little extra time putting yourself together this morning. And you’ve been watching the clock all day. But finally the time to leave work comes. You hustle over to the restaurant. She shows up and you hold hands as you’re escorted to your seats. The waiter takes your drink orders and then the real conversation can begin. You begin by sharing about each other’s day.. and then.....

An illegally tapped gas line exploded. It blew out walls and sent glass and debris flying through the air. The heaviness of thick smoke filled the air along with screams and yells for help.

This did in fact happen on the afternoon of March 26, 2015 a gas explosion ripped apart several buildings in the East Village of Manhattan (NYC) It left 19 people injured, 4 critically injured, and two dead. One of whom was a busboy at the restaurant. The other was the person I just described on a date. Cleanup involving nearly 60 firefighters would last for days.

But the worst part of this tragedy was the physical toll it took on the neighborhood or emergency responders. It may not have even been the loss of two lives, as devastating as it was the worst part, perhaps, was this.

The tragedy had become a tourist attraction.

As you might expect, people were up in arms over scenes like this. Neighborhood locals posted signs to stay away such as “Take your selfies elsewhere,” and “Gawk from the street, not in front of my store.” And in typical NY Post fashion, they labeled this group as heartless visitors and self-absorbed jerks.

And my would guess is that many of us in this room are disgusted by that photo. You may think, “I’d NEVER do that.”

But this incident, while extreme, is evidence that in our culture something very important is eroding away.... OUR EMPATHY.

While you may not take selfies in front of destruction and tragedies, you may deny your desire to show empathy in other ways. Avoid difficult, face to face conversations. Settle for short social media responses instead of encouraging or challenging someone with our voice. Or perhaps you’ve grown numb to the pain, suffering, and injustice in your Facebook feed whether it is ISIS in the Middle East or Ferguson in the MidWest.

Today I’d like for us to consider our own problem with empathy. I want us to consider from the Scriptures what a Christ-like, gospel-saturated, empathy might look like for us.

I want us to understand empathy in three ways today: The Beauty of it. The Void without it. The Power that fuels it.

So let’s read from Colossians 3:12-16. BTWs, we practiced empathy this morning by imagining what it might be like to not have a Bible of our own. So we placed some in the back just for you. If you don’t own one you can take one, free of charge.

Please follow along as I read these verses for us.

Colossians 3:12-16

Put on then, as God’s chosen ones, holy and beloved, compassionate hearts, kindness, humility, meekness, and patience, bearing with one another and, if one has a complaint against another, forgiving each other; as the Lord has forgiven you, so you also must forgive. And above all these put on love, which binds everything together in perfect harmony. And let the peace of Christ rule in your hearts, to which indeed you were called in one body. And be thankful. Let the word of Christ dwell in you richly, teaching and admonishing one another in all wisdom, singing psalms and hymns and spiritual songs, with thankfulness in your hearts to God.

I might be wrong, but I’d be willing to guess that verses 12-14, at a minimum, we could all agree are great things to aspire to. These are things that we would hope we could embody to others. And certainly we’d want and appreciate FROM others. I think we would all agree that these qualities of compassion, kindness, and so on are attractive expressions of empathy... because...

i. Empathy is beautiful not just because of facts but because of stories we hear and emotions we feel.

Empathy is the ability to understand and share the feelings, experiences, and emotions of another. For example, I may not know what it feels like to be a grandparent in particular

but I can still share those feelings to some degree. Or I may not have lost a loved one to death but I can certainly share the pain and suffering of someone who has.

This is empathy. And doesn’t that seem good? It is comforting to know that someone can share both joy and pain with you.

It’s beautiful to witness compassion, kindness, and true humility. And wouldn’t we all want to bind these wonderful qualities of self-sacrificing, self-giving, with love?

So if it is good then we should probably recognize it and encourage it. And there is an abundance of research on how we can do just that.

Here is but one example. According to research, reading literary fiction can produce higher levels of empathy.
Reading a story about another person can put you in their place- to think their thoughts and feel their feelings.

I began reading a book recently about fathers raising daughters. It is not fiction by any means but it has plenty of stories. Let me read an excerpt from the introduction. To set it up, you should know that the author at the time was experiencing frustration and anxiety about her future. In particular she had applied to several medical schools and had been turned down. So, here goes. Jump into this story with me as I read it...

“One evening, on my way upstairs, I overheard my father talking to a friend on the phone. This was unusual, for my father was not a very social man and a phone conversation with a friend was noteworthy. I stopped outside the door of his study, which was slightly ajar, and listened.

“Yes,” he was saying. “They really do grow up fast, don’t they? I’m excited to tell you that my daughter, Meg, will be starting medical school next fall. She’s not quite sure where, though.”
My head went hot. I thought I was going to pass out. What was he saying? Medical school? I’d just received a handful of rejections. I’ll be going to medical school next fall? How can he say that? What does he know that I don’t? His words alone didn’t change the course of my life. His tone, his inflection, and his confidence had an amazing impact as well.”

So writes Dr. Meg Meeker.

Did you feel that? A little of her anxiety about the future? The patient confidence of the father? The respect that she has toward her dad?

What you felt was empathic. You felt her feelings. Through the father’s response may have felt compassion, kindness, humility, and even forgiveness.

Why did you feel that? Because the beauty of empathy is experienced in feelings and stories can’t be reduced to an algorithm.

We aren’t just the sum of a bunch of equations, data, or experiences. We aren’t just a bunch of facts. We’re humans that feel. We have emotions and desires that aren’t communicated exclusively through vital signs and metrics.

What we see in Colossians 3 is a snapshot of this beauty that cannot be reduced to just a bunch of information or bullet points.

I’d like for you to do a short mental exercise with me. Think of one thing in your mind (or on paper) of how you’d categorize a compassionate person. I’ll give you about 5 seconds to process it. Faithful. Sacrificing. Relatable. Forgiving.

These descriptors are pretty accurate right? Now look at them purely from an algorithmic point of view. Can you imagine C3PO acting like this with you? Do you still have the same emotional response that you imagined just a moment ago?

I hope not. When we reduce these attributes- compassionate hearts, kindness, humility, meekness, and patience, bearing with one another, forgiveness, and love...these are beautiful simply because they are.

When we respond to joy with joy and to pain with grief we are experiencing a glimpse of the delight and grief that our Trinitarian God experiences as well.

And this is why a little bit of us should mourn when we trade our feelings of empathy for data sets and infographics. There’s a void without empathy and our phones are part of the problem. You see...

2. Our phones can keep us from empathy just like pop tarts can keep us from a nutritious breakfast.

I watched an old commercial for Pop Tarts this week advertising Wild Watermelon Pop Tarts. Right in the middle of the commercial they say, almost apologetically, “part of a nutritious breakfast, yeah that too.” While saying this they have the pop tarts at the center of the place setting, with a glass of milk on the right and a slice of actual watermelon on the left.

Do you notice anything wrong with that picture? You could take that sugar-laced, Flintstone vitamin-infused pastry right out of the meal and you’d still have a nutritious breakfast, probably even more so. And trust me I’m not just hating on junk food. I’m a Pop Tart connoisseur with moderate hypoglycemia. So Pop Tarts are basically medicine for me.

Even I, with my junk food tendencies, notice a problem with this picture. Furthermore we end up making Pop tarts THE breakfast, not just part of it.

I realize that my treatment of pop tarts is the same thing many of us have done with our devices. We’ve made them central, even absolutely necessary. We’ve accepted cheap, sugary substitutes of relationships we can scroll with our phones instead of the real thing.

And the problem is that our technology has overtaken the table setting that feed ours empathy.

Let me give you some statistics that clarify our empathy-declining reality: College students who hit campus after 2000 have empathy levels that are 40% lower than those who came before them. Researchers reported than there has been a 48% decrease in empathetic concern ... between 1979 and 2009. Today’s college students were less likely to have empathetic feelings for people less fortunate than them.

And while there are many variables in play here there is a disturbing correlation between the rise of technology and empathy’s decline.

For example, in her book Reclaiming Conversation, Sherry Turkle, interviews teachers at a

private middle school about concerns for their students. The teachers have noticed that students don’t interact with one another as students once did before. Students don’t make eye contact. They don’t respond to body language. They have trouble listening. They act like they are not interested in one another.

Ultimately the teachers believe that without face-to-face conversations students aren’t developing empathic capacity or listening skills. Specifically, they are concerned with the amount of time they spend looking at their devices instead of looking toward one another.

Listen, friends, there is a void created when we stop showing empathy... and it is filled with silence and eyes turned toward screens.

Listening and spending time with one another is foundational for empathy to occur. This same author even states that “Empathy requires time and emotional discipline.”

Now don’t think I’m just busting your chops for playing on your phone. It’s not just affecting other people. It’s affecting me. And if you’ve been in our community group or know my wife and I you’ve probably heard this story before.

Several years ago, just a few months after my wife and I had our 3rd child Lori was still recovering from her second c-section and caring for our newborn baby girl. Well one night she came to bed saying her stomach was hurting.

To which, mind you not listening very well, I basically said it’s probably just gas. You’ll be fine. Go to bed. I mean, what’s a little diarrhea?

Well hours later, she wakes me up still complaining....blah, blah blah my stomach. I keep saying she’ll be fine but Lori insists on going to the emergency room. So in the wee hours of the morning, she drives HERSELF to the emergency room while I stay at home with our girls. She calls later and said, “Yeah, you know that really sharp pain I was having before? Yeah, it wasn’t gas. I need my appendix removed...today.”

Would you say that I had shown empathy to my wife? What about love?

You see, as I’ve heard Tim Keller say before, the opposite of love is not hate. It’s indifference. And the realization of our own personal indifference is the realization that we’ve lost, or at least are losing, our empathy. This is the void that needs to be filled with Colossians 3 qualities.

And the downward spiral of not showing empathy toward one another has even greater consequences. As one theologian has said,

“he who can no longer listen to his brother will soon be no longer listening to God either;”

Now some of you may object and say that your social media in particular helps you know more of what is going on. And in many cases it might be helpful. You find out that close friends are having their first baby or that someone you know has gotten a bad diagnosis. These bits of info can be the START toward empathy. What happens next determines everything. Will we receive that information and become indifferent or will we respond in empathy with action.

Ultimately, when you love someone you listen to them. You give them your time and attention. Eventually we put down the phone.

How do we do this? How do we live this out? So for you to-do list kind of folks let’s get more specific with some action steps to help replace this void with something good:

• Make face to face conversation a high priority

• Call instead of text.

• Ignore your phone

• Put your phone away (in your pocket, bag, or car)

• Send hand-written, personal notes

• Make eye contact in conversation

• practice listening

  The thing to remember with all this is just as empathy can’t be reduced to an algorithm, it also can’t be reduced to a To-Do list, even a really good one. What we need is to find a source of GREAT power that will enable to us to carry it out. You and I can never accomplish this on our own. That’s why....

  3. Genuine Empathy is a person named Jesus.... and his tragedy is our attraction to him and toward others.

  If we’re being honest, we recognize that we don’t have a good track record when it comes to showing empathy. Even worse, we may be too indifferent to even try.

  Our deepest problem, though, isn’t our cell phone. It’s our sin. Our sin turns us away from what is true and and beautiful, even from what is true and painful.

  And we become like that group of people in the selfie photo we showed earlier. Our sin has so numbed us that we only see our own desires and ignore others around us.

  Our experience tells a story, one where we are the ones taking center stage, concerned about ourselves only, and indignant to why no one is compassionate or loving toward us. Perhaps we even used these verses to hold other people to a standard toward us.

  We justify ourselves saying things like, “No one gets me.” But we just shrug our shoulders and move on.... only to momentarily stop from time to time, to take a selfie as we fake smile our feelings away. But the truth is that we are the heartless ones, the self-absorbed jerks.

  And you and I both know: Taking away your selfie stick alone won’t produce any more empathy in your heart.

  What you and I need is a person. Someone who gets us. Someone who knows us deeply but who also has the power to deal with our sin.

His name is Jesus.

He came that you might have peace that takes up residence in your ever-wandering, self- absorbed heart. The word about Christ is that he came to take your place on a cross. He knows the many sinful faults of your heart....and yet is the Lord who forgives you. And he rose from the grave to give you life. Jesus sees your lack of compassion, yet has compassion toward you.

Jesus is EMPATHIC enough to care about sin but he’s also BOLD enough to do something about it.

Jesus cares.....1 Peter 5:7 says that you can be confident in “casting all your anxieties on him, because he cares for you.”

But Jesus is also bold....

...God shows us his love for us in that while we were still sinners, Christ died for us. ROMANS 5:8

Jesus is a self-absorbed, indifferent deity. He’s the God who became a person who left heaven to get into our mess. He cares for YOU. He has empathy toward you!

It is because of Christ’s empathy toward us that we can show empathy toward others. Through Christ’s affection you remember that you are FIRST a sinner, and SECOND sinned against. And our attraction to his tragic death FOR US helps us put our lives in perspective. We don’t then turn our back away from others but we turn our faces TOWARD one another. For if Christ has not turned his back on us how could we turn our backs on someone else?

This is why you don’t just need an experience with Jesus, but you need a people with whom live that experience out. That’s why you need a specific group of people with whom you can show empathy in a local church.

And it is this compassion and empathy toward us, to rescue us, to die in our place, and raise from the grave....all this to GIVE US LIFE that we can view Christ’s death not as a tragedy, but as our attraction to him. For it is by faith in this tragedy we are reconciled with God.

Christ has responded to our indifference toward him, not with hate, but with love.

So the real matter for us this morning is not, “Will you choose to show more empathy?” The real question is whether you will believe the person of Jesus Christ who makes it beautiful AND possible? Will you trust in the one who pours out his empathy on you?

Will you let his peace rule in your hearts so that it is stirred with affection and love?

And will you dwell richly upon the words about Christ so that you are reminded that we are to forgive others just as Christ has forgiven us?