She could walk, but she could not yet talk. Yet her eyes spoke of her growing awareness of the world around her. Though we’d never met before, she invited me without words to play a game. Shyly, she hid behind her mother’s skirt, then poked her head out to see if I was still looking at her.
Around the globe, little children discover they can disappear behind an object and then pop out and be seen once more. They learn how wonderful it is to be seen by another human being. For in being seen, value is bestowed.
A friend of mine has an uncanny ability to look at you in a way that says he really is looking at you – a penetrating gaze that speaks volumes. It’s a look that says, “I see you, I hear you. I’m not just thinking of the next thing I’m going to say.” It’s a practice at once freaky and heartwarming. Steve’s penetrating look speaks volumes of how he values the one he is looking at. I am sure that look is why Cassandra married him.
In many parts of the world, such a direct look is unseemly. It sends the wrong message. Looking someone in the eyes can be invasive, rude even. But even in those societies, there are culturally appropriate ways to let a person know they are valued.
So, with a nod to cultures that see things differently, three of the most valuable words in human language are “I see you.”
Or some variation on that theme.
We express that valuing in different ways – I see you, I hear you, I understand you, I get you, and so on. It’s not the vocabulary, for words can be cheap. It is the nonverbal communication attached that lets someone know they have value.
A friend and I sat with a young woman at a conference recently. The student was going through a severe trial and had no one to turn to. Oh, she had friends, good Christian friends, even. But they didn’t get the difficult season she was facing. Glibly they’d told her, “Just hang in there and it will turn out alright.”
As Paul and I sat listening, we had little to say, mostly just letting her talk as she poured her heart out. We were in a public area, so the background noise of animated conversations muffled her voice enough that only Paul and I could hear her. And at one point, we told her God heard her as well.
But in that moment, she needed to know that flesh and blood were listening to her. Finally, she told us, “You understand.”
It was a statement, not a question. She got that we really were listening to her.
What we understood was that she was hurting – and not just physically. Everything in her was crying out in anguish. It was not just the pain, it was the “Why, God?” Why are you allowing this to happen to me?
Her cry was the anguish of a soul in agony.
My wife and I have enjoyed watching The Chosen series lately, finding each episode thought-provoking and moving. One of my favorite segments is when Jesus raises Lazarus from the dead.
Sorry for the spoiler if you’ve never heard the story before, but when Lazarus dies, Jesus calls him back to life. You can read it for yourself in the gospel of John, chapter 11.
Lazarus and his sisters, Mary and Martha, were dear friends of Jesus’. They lived in Bethany, just outside Jerusalem. When Lazarus became seriously ill, his sisters sent word to Jesus. But he delayed going to visit them and by the time he got there, Lazarus was dead. In a time and place where burials were immediate, Lazarus had been in the tomb 4 days already.
Martha and Mary confronted Jesus, asking him why he had not come sooner. Why didn’t he get there in time to heal their brother? What neither they nor anyone else understood was that Jesus had delayed his trip on purpose. The raising of Lazarus was a sign to reveal God’s glory, as Jesus himself put it.
But there was no way for Mary, Martha, or the others to make sense of that, even if Jesus explained it to them. Which he did. That this was for God’s glory to be revealed. That resurrection was real. That he had come to wake Lazarus up, as he put it. He may as well have been talking gibberish for all they could comprehend.
As the sisters and those standing around pointed out, Jesus had healed others, so he could have healed Lazarus and not let him die. Even then, there had already been reports of Jesus bringing people back to life. But those were people who had just died, not someone dead, buried, and decaying for 4 days. It didn’t make sense that Jesus had not healed Lazarus when he’d had ample opportunity to do so.
As the gospel describes the scene, when Jesus sees Mary and those around her weeping, he’s deeply moved and troubled. Then comes what is famously the shortest verse in the English Bible, the go-to verse for kids in scripture-quoting contests. Ever so simply, it reads, “Jesus wept.”
This was not the wailing lament common to funerals of the time. Nor was it just a trickle down his cheek, as if being stoic. The imagery is more a release of tears, the sudden physical recognition of pain, as it were. I like the way his weeping is portrayed in the scene from The Chosen. It is a cry, not of mourning, but of anguish, of emotional suffering.
Commentators and preachers have ascribed various motivations for Jesus’ weeping at that moment. I favor the straightforward approach. Even though Jesus knew what he was going to do, he was genuinely overcome with the pain he felt in the sisters and others who had suffered great loss. He, who entered fully into our human existence, felt fully the pain that comes from the finality of separation death brings to us who are mortal.
Martha was not without hope – she believed her brother would be resurrected at the end of the age. But that hope could not take away the pain she felt in the here and now. And it was a pain Jesus willingly and honestly entered.
Empathy is a word getting abusively kicked around these days. But, contrary to how some view the word, it describes what Jesus was feeling at Lazarus’ tomb. And if empathy is good enough for Jesus, it is good enough for me.
Webster describes empathy as “understanding and sharing the feelings, thoughts, and experiences of another.” Jesus entered into the world of his friends in Bethany and, even though he knew the inexpressible joy he was going to bring them in short order, he shared their pain in that hour.
I get that some people struggle with empathy. There are those who come by the struggle naturally, perhaps due to some neurological divergency. I truly empathize with them. It is if they have lost one of their senses – sight, hearing, smell, taste, touch – and find it difficult to understand what they have never experienced.
For others, the struggle comes from emotional damage earlier in life. I feel their pain and grieve for what they have experienced. But when a person has the capacity to grow emotionally and refuses to try, I know I must show them compassion. But I struggle and ask God to help me grow, too.
What empathy does not necessarily mean is feeling all gushy inside and out. Some people are naturally gushy and their empathy is going to come out in emotionally expressive ways. Others are less prone to “emotional sloppiness,” as a very emotionally sloppy friend described it. They express great empathy without showing a lot of emotion – and yet their ability to enter into the feelings, thoughts, and experiences of others shines through.
I shared in a post recently how I got involved in campus ministry while living in Texas and studying in grad school. In those years of promise, there were also dark moments.
One was when my friend and mentor, Darrell Logue, died in an automobile accident. Driving down a road with his family, someone veered into their lane and hit their car head on. Darrell and Barbara died on impact, making their two children riding in the back seat instant orphans. At the funeral, I found myself weeping, sobbing really, as I overheard a minister nearby say patronizingly about me, “He’s so emotional, it must be his first funeral.” That, my friends, is not an empathetic response.
Another time a few years later, the campus ministry I was leading went through a financially traumatic loss. The North Texas district, our umbrella organization of churches, experienced a financial reconning and suddenly had to shift the way the funds for our campus ministries were allotted. It was a severe blow to our budget.
The funding for these campus ministers disappeared overnight. But the way that shift was communicated was indirect and impersonal. In other words, no show of empathy. I was heartbroken, knowing what it would mean for those campus pastors I oversaw. But I also felt quite alone.
I appealed to the least emotionally sloppy person I knew, a ministry leader in that district by the name of Emerald Wray. I’d found Pastor Wray quite intimidating when I first met him. Okay, I was still intimidated by him. But over time I’d come to appreciate his commitment to our work.
When I learned the news of the financial chopping block, I went to him immediately. He sat on the leadership council that had made those drastic cuts. He got why it had to be done. But he also got how this impacted our ministry and the young leaders so financially vulnerable.
As I poured out my heart to him – my anguish over what those young leaders now faced and my anxieties over having to communicate with them their financial doom – Pastor Wray just listened. He listened and he let me vent, let me express my anger at both the chopping that was going on and how my leadership had conveyed – or failed to convey – it to me.
I don’t remember the exact words he spoke that day. What I remember is the feeling, the feeling that I was in that moment being seen, being heard, being understood by him. It didn’t make my work any easier. I still had to share the devastating news with my friends. But it made a world of difference to know that someone got me – got all of us in that ministry in that moment.
That the gospel mentions that Jesus wept in this scene at Lazarus’s tomb is noteworthy. It is one of only three times scriptures state that he wept.
Here at Lazarus’ tomb, those seeing him weep said, “See how he loved him!” Whatever else Jesus was feeling, he was conveying to these others that he identified deeply with Lazarus and his sisters.
Sometimes, the words, “I love you,” come across as cheap as play money. But in this expression of empathy, Jesus demonstrated how much he really loved that family. Though he was about to bring Lazarus back to life, he revealed to them that he saw them in their pain. He got what they were going through. And he identified with it.
Ours is a God who sees us. And a God who enables us to see others.
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Public domain photo: “Smiling Eyes” (2009) by Nikki Tysoe
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