Advent 2020: Fasting as
Empathy

Activity: Listen

Empathy is not sympathy. Sympathy feels sorry for a person, animal, or situation. Sympathy is the emotion stirred up when exploitation is exposed on commercials so that donations can be mustered for the cause of the oppressed. Sympathy is that outside feeling of sadness or sorrow when your parents’ friend’s brother’s wife dies. You feel bad, but it’s more of an external or intellectual feeling -- it does not rock you to your core.

Empathy, on the other hand, hurts. Empathy feels with a person in emotional or physical pain, without projecting self’s emotions or hardships onto the situation. Empathy uses self’s past hurts to compassionately feel in the moment. Empathy connects, listens, shuts up, abides, and cries with. A potent Biblical example of this is to “sit in the ashes with” another person who is grieving, mourning, in pain, or otherwise going through a hard time. Being an “Ash Sitter” is NOT being a fixer, preacher, lecturer, or other non-empathetic solution. Ash Sitting just sits -- in the ashes of the situation -- mourning with, listening, and comforting with presence.

Have you had an Ash Sitter before? Who were they and what did they do (or not do!)? How did this person make you feel in your time of need?

The next time you or someone around you experiences sorrow, heartbreak, or tragedy, pay attention: who is an Ash Sitter? Who sits well and listens well? Perhaps you have a recent experience with pain and you can remember someone who sat well in the ashes. Notice how this person listened. Notice what they didn’t do.

Job’s friends, in the Old Testament book of Job, are notorious for being terrible ash sitters. Instead of listening and grieving with their friend Job in his time of great loss, they did not listen well. Skim through Job’s story and make some notes on what you notice and observe.

Look up Brene Brown on Empathy (found here: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=1Evwgu369Jw). Watch it again, this time taking a notice of what stands out to you most.

Now ponder this: what makes someone a good, empathetic listener? What is one thing you can implement or remove from your listening skills to be more empathetic?

Empathy makes room for hospitality. If the people in your shared space know you can listen well, you can build deeper and deeper trust and connection. And when you do, you get to demonstrate the love of Jesus to those around you.