Above: Christ Healing a Bleeding Woman
Image in the Public Domain
Empathy, Sympathy, and Community
JUNE 12, 2019
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The Collect:
Compassionate God, you have assured the human family of eternal life through Jesus Christ.
Deliver us from the death of sin, and raise us to new life,
in your Son, Jesus Christ, our Savior and Lord. Amen.
—Evangelical Lutheran Worship (2006), page 39
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The Assigned Readings:
Jeremiah 8:14-22
Psalm 68:1-10, 19-20
Luke 8:40-56
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God, you rained down a shower of blessings,
when your heritage was weary you gave it strength.
Your family found a home, which you
in your generosity provided for the humble.
–Psalm 68:9-10, The New Jerusalem Bible (1985)
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The lection from Jeremiah 8 is grim. It comes from a section of prophecies of judgment against Jerusalem. (Nevertheless, Hebrew puns are present.) In some portions of the reading the identity of the speaker is unclear, but the tone is never vague–doom will arrive, and mourning will be abundant.
In Luke 8 grief and anguish give way to joy. Jesus heals a ritually unclean woman with a gynecological condition. He restores her to her community and ends her mental and emotional anguish. Then he raises the daughter of Jairus, a leader of a synagogue, from the dead. Our Lord and Savior restores the family of Jairus to wholeness and the daughter to life and community.
We mere mortals share our lives with each other when we live in community. We might guard our privacy, but even those matters we choose not to disclose influence our lives in community. Whenever we grieve and mourn, that affects others. Likewise, whenever we rejoice and laugh, that affects others also. May we support each other in positive living for the glory of God and the benefit of others, remembering that, as John Donne wrote so well,
No man is an island.
I think of the woman from Luke 8:42b-48. The text informs us that she had endured her medical condition and the related stigma and stresses for twelve years. How many people had tried to help her in any way? And how many, guarding their ritual purity, had shunned her? No woman is an island, even if she is ritually impure.
Sometimes politicians and pundits sneer at empathy, but it is a great virtue in short supply much of the time. So is its cousin, sympathy. Can we empathize or sympathize with a desperate father, a shunned woman, and a member of a doomed community? How will we express that empathy or sympathy?
KENNETH RANDOLPH TAYLOR
MARCH 4, 2016 COMMON ERA
THE FEAST OF PAUL CUFFEE, U.S. PRESBYTERIAN MISSIONARY TO THE SHINNECOCK NATION
THE FEAST OF SAINT CASIMIR OF POLAND, PRINCE
THE FEAST OF EMANUEL CRONENWETT, U.S. LUTHERAN MINISTER, HYMN WRITER, AND HYMN TRANSLATOR
THE FEAST OF SAINTS MARINUS OF CAESAREA, ROMAN SOLDIER AND CHRISTIAN MARTYR, AND ASTERIUS, ROMAN SENATOR AND CHRISTIAN MARTYR
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https://blogatheologica.wordpress.com/2016/03/04/empathy-sympathy-and-community/
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