(Note: This blog entry is based on the text for “Empathy Dies”, originally shared on March 14th, 2025. It was the 350th video for our YouTube Channel, Streams of Living Water (https://www.youtube.com/channel/UCB7KnYS1bpHKaL2OseQWCnw), co-produced with my wife, Rev. Sally Welch.)
Jesus had things to do. Mainly, he came to
die. Today, we’re going to see how that became a blessing, and a model of
living for us.
It’s been said that you can have a thousand
problems until you have a health problem. Then you only have one problem.
My focus for the past month or so has been
on passing kidney stones and on having surgery to remove half of them. I’ll
have the other half removed in six months or so.
At my age, it’s just patch, patch, patch,
and I accept that. But I can still be productive. I don’t focus on what I can’t
do; I focus on what I can do.
Jesus had things to do. He had a mission, and
he focused on that, as Jesus said in Mark 10:45,
45 For the Son of Man
came not to be served but to serve, and to give his life a ransom for many.”
Jesus was not going to let anything stop
him. Not the devil, in last week’s Gospel reading, and not a petty government
tyrant in the reading that will be shared in the vast majority of churches
throughout the world this coming Sunday, Luke 13:31-35.
Herod Antipas, the same Herod that killed
John the Baptist, and the son of Herod the Great, who tried to kill Jesus when
Jesus was a baby, was a regional dictator for the Roman Empire. He wanted to
kill Jesus, but Jesus didn’t let that stop him.
Jesus looked at the bigger picture. Jesus
knew where he was going. He was going to the cross to die for us so that we
could live in a perfect relationship with God forever.
And Jesus was killed, but who killed Jesus?
Was it Herod? Was it powerful government leaders? Religious leaders? Sinful
people? Everybody? Nobody? Today, we’ll get an answer from Jesus, using a hen
as a metaphor for God, given in the context of conflict.
Our reading starts with verses 31-33,
31 At
that very hour some Pharisees came and said to him, “Get away from here, for
Herod wants to kill you.” 32 He said to them, “Go
and tell that fox for me, ‘Listen, I am casting out demons and performing
cures today and tomorrow, and on the third day I finish my work. 33 Yet
today, tomorrow, and the next day I must be on my way, because it is impossible
for a prophet to be killed outside of Jerusalem.’
Perhaps Herod was afraid of Jesus’
popularity, and he wanted to kill him as a warning to others. That would
certainly be consistent with his, and his family’s, character.
Herod was a crafty
predator, like his father, one who took the lives of his own family, as well as
those of the people he ruled, to maintain his power. One commentator suggested
the term “fox” might be thought of as the same as “rat” in our language and
culture. Tyrants are tyrants from generation to generation. They don’t care
about the people. They only care about themselves.
Margaret Meade, the
anthropologist, was once asked what she thought was the first sign of human
civilization in a given society. She answered, “The first evidence of
civilization is a healed femur.” (thighbone)
A healed femur means
that someone had to set the bone and provide security, hunt or gather food and carry
water for the injured person while they healed, all at a personal cost to
themselves. Prior to that, if you broke a femur, you died.
Civilization begins
when we put the needs of others ahead of our own, when we show empathy, the
ability to understand and share the feelings of another, and then care for them.
It is a very Christian concept, rooted in the death of Jesus, the central event
of the Christian faith.
Once, when Jesus was
asked how to get to heaven, he said, in Luke 10:27,
27 He
answered, “You shall love the Lord your God with all your heart, and with all
your soul, and with all your strength, and with all your mind; and your
neighbor as yourself.” And when the
questioner, wanting to justify himself, asked Jesus, “And who is my neighbor?”,
Jesus told the parable of the Good Samaritan to answer that question, ending in
Luke 10:36-37,
36 Which
of these three, do you think, was a neighbor to the man who fell into the hands
of the robbers?” 37 He said, “The one who showed him mercy.”
Jesus said to him, “Go and do likewise.”
Why do we show
mercy? Because God first showed mercy to us on the cross. That is at the center
of the Christian life, and it was to the cross that Jesus was going. Empathy
enables us to put the needs of others ahead of our own. It comes from God.
It was suggested
recently by Elon Musk, an unelected official of our government, that “The
fundamental weakness of Western civilization is empathy.” He did say, in the
same interview, “I think you should care about other people.” But his concern
was for the ease in which people who don’t share our concern for others can use
our empathy as a weapon against us.
For example, what do
we do when people who reject our love of freedom use the freedom that we give
them to take away our freedom? What do we do when people with other values
achieve a majority of voters and vote to replace our laws and values with their
own. What do we do when people take advantage of our kindness and show none in
return? How can we be non-violent when our non-violence enables the violent
wipe us out?
What did Jesus do?
Jesus went forward
with his mission. He went forward to Jerusalem He went forward to die for those
who would kill him.
He didn’t do this to
give us an impossibly difficult standard for Christian living. He did this to
show us that we need a Savior. He died on the cross to show us that we have
one. Jesus.
That is our reality .
Even in the hardness that this life can bring, nothing can separate us from the
eternal love of God.
Paul, asked in his
letter to the church in Rome, in Romans 8:35-39,
35 Who
will separate us from the love of Christ? Will hardship, or distress, or
persecution, or famine, or nakedness, or peril, or sword? 36 As
it is written,
“For
your sake we are being killed all day long;
we
are accounted as sheep to be slaughtered.”
37 No,
in all these things we are more than conquerors through him who loved us. 38 For
I am convinced that neither death, nor life, nor angels, nor rulers, nor things
present, nor things to come, nor powers, 39 nor height, nor
depth, nor anything else in all creation, will be able to separate us from the
love of God in Christ Jesus our Lord.
Jesus knew the
reality of what awaited him. He would die in Jerusalem. And yet, his reaction
was to go toward the danger. His response was not to destroy the city, but to
protect it.
Jesus said, continuing
with Luke 13: 34,
34 Jerusalem,
Jerusalem, the city that kills the prophets and stones those who are sent to
it! How often have I desired to gather your children together as a hen gathers
her brood under her wings, and you were not willing!
Jesus was filled with sadness and
resolve. He uses a seldom seen feminine metaphor for God in the Bible, that of
a hen, to illustrate God’s desire for the city: to be its protector. And yet it
did not accept Him.
Hens are givers. Hens produce meat and eggs
that help humans live. Hens are not predators, they are prey. Sometimes, they
are the prey of foxes.
Yet Jesus models the work of God as like
that of a hen. Jesus concludes this passage with verse 35, where Jesus
promises to return as a blessing.
35 See,
your house is left to you. And I tell you, you will not see me until the time
comes when you say, ‘Blessed is the one who comes in the name of the Lord.’”
Some say that this
statement was fulfilled on “Palm Sunday”, when Jesus rode into Jerusalem, and
the people responded, in Luke 19:38,
38 saying,
“Blessed is the
king
who comes in
the name of the Lord!
Peace in heaven,
and glory in
the highest heaven!”
But other scholars remind us that a few days
after Jesus’ triumphal entry into Jerusalem, the city was filled with cries of,
“Crucify him!” and that his statement is better understood as referring to the
Second Coming of Jesus at the end of time.
Still other scholars say it applies to both.
In either case Jesus is in control.
Jesus
says, in Luke 13:32 (which we read a minute ago), that in three days he
will complete his work and he will be on his way to Jerusalem to die.
Who killed Jesus? No
one. Jesus says, in John 10:17-18,
17 For
this reason the Father loves me, because I lay down my life in order to take it
up again. 18 No one takes it from me, but I
lay it down of my own accord. I have power to lay it down, and I have power to
take it up again. I have received this command from my Father.”
Jesus gave his life
to give us eternal live and he took it back on the third day, in the
Resurrection, to validate that he was who he said he was: God. And that his
death could be the means by which we might be saved. Because he rose from the
dead, we too will rise to everlasting life.
How do we know this?
Because we who believe and are baptized have been transformed by the eternal,
selfless love and grace of God.
A man once came to the composer Mozart and
asked him how to write a symphony. Mozart replied, “You are too young to write
a symphony.” The man said, “You were writing symphonies when you were 10 years
of age, and I am 21.” Mozart said, “Yes, but I didn't run around asking people
how to do it.”
We don’t have to ask anybody how to be a
Christian. The Holy Spirit is alive within us. Being a Christian is who we are,
and we are who we are because we are Whose we are.
When Sally and I started our YouTube
Channel, “Streams of Living Water”, I wanted to use editing software called
Adobe Premiere Pro. It’s very difficult, so I started asking experts in a group
chat for the best way to learn.
One said that I should take a class and
learn the whole thing before I started and that it would take about 6 months.
Another said I should buy a book and do all the lessons and that it would take
about 6 months. Another disagreed and asked the two how they learned.
It turned out that all three of them had just
figured it out as they went along, and asked questions or watched videos online
to improve their skills as needed. And that’s what I did.
I found a video called “Learn Adobe Premiere
Pro in 15 Minutes” and I watched it around 20 times. 😊
That’s how I got my start. And that’s how we
get our start as Christians.
We don’t have to be perfect. We just have to
be faithful. We live the Christian life because we want to please God because
of all that he has done for us, not because God only does good things for those
who please him.
God is already pleased with us because of
the work of Jesus Christ on the cross.
We are at the same time saints and sinners. We’re
going to make mistakes, but we repent when we make mistakes, and God forgives
us when we make mistakes, and we are more tolerant of the mistakes of others
when we realize how much we have been forgiven by God.
That’s where our empathy comes from. That’s
how we live the Christian life.
The empathy that comes from God enables us to
understand and share the feelings of one another in the Church, the Body of Christ,
as Paul writes in 1 Corinthians 12:26,
26 If one member suffers,
all suffer together with it; if one member is honored, all rejoice together
with it.
You are a part of the people of God, a
member of the Body of Christ. God lives within you. You are the work of the
Holy Spirit.
Empathy is the work of God for you.
Everything that is of human origin,
including empathy, dies. But everything that is rooted in God, including
empathy, lives forever.
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