Quaker Worship (Part 4): Empathy
Indianapolis First Friends Quaker Meeting
Pastor Bob Henry
October 10, 2021
Good morning and welcome to Light Reflections. We are so glad you joined us this morning as we continue our series on Quaker Worship. Today’s scripture is from 1 Peter 3:8-9 (from The Voice version)
8 Finally, all of you, be like-minded and show sympathy, love, compassion, and humility to and for each other— 9 not paying back evil with evil or insult with insult, but repaying the bad with a blessing. It was this you were called to do, so that you might inherit a blessing.
For several months now, I have been reading about a trend that is making significant headlines across our country. That trend is something called “leadership empathy.”
One of my former student leaders at Huntington University posted an article this week that emphasized this by claiming the future to be leading by empathy more than power, greed, or status.
What I found most interesting is that this leadership trend is being driven by millennials (those born between the early 1980’s through the early 2000’s). If you weren’t aware, during the pandemic, the Millennial Generation became the largest in the workforce, which also means they are now driving the workforce.
I find this interesting since Millennials are the first generation statistically not having a clear connection to the organized church.
Ironically, we at First Friends are currently finding a surge in millennials – which is clearly not the trend in the church universal, right now – and has not been a trend among Quaker Meetings whose average age is 65+ years old. We should be keenly aware that something is happening in our midst.
Having three millennial sons, who work in millennial managed work situations, the concept of leadership empathy is clear. Both Sue and I have said we could learn a lot from this model. Sue mentioned how teaching has lost its empathy in our country – especially during the pandemic – but also over time as education has become more political and business driven.
Sadly, I must agree. And when listening to my fellow pastors across the country each week – it is clear that empathy is often missing within many Meetings and churches, today.
This is when I began to realize and consider how significantly important empathy is to a Quaker Worshipping Community.
But before I get too wrapped up in developing this idea, let’s start with defining what is meant by empathy. In the article my student shared, it said:
Empathy is complicated, and many people don’t understand exactly what it entails. It’s more than being “nice,” and it’s much different from sympathy. An empath [someone who practices empathy] is someone who understands what another person is going through by looking at the situation from their perspective…Think about someone who really took time to help you grow. They were most likely an empath.
Much like in the business leadership environment, empathy within a religious community is becoming aware of the fellow spiritual seekers we gather with, acknowledging their unique and often complex worship and communication styles, as well as acknowledging that they have lives separate from what is seen when gathered together.
An empathetic worship environment is to create a place where the gathered community is able to communicate about stresses, challenges, and uncertainties about their faith, about the Divine, and even about their involvement in the Local Meeting.
Someone who studied in detail the Millennial Generation within the church before she unexpectedly passed away from Cerebral Edema in 2019 was Rachel Held Evans. She said,
Most young adults I know aren’t looking for a religion that answers all of their questions, but rather a community of faith in which they feel safe to ask them.
What I believe Rachel was seeking and trying hard to promote and create was more empathetic worship communities.
Asking questions is also an important part of the overall worship experience – as Quakers that is why queries are so essential to our community and faith.
Encouraging religious seekers such as you and me to ask questions and look at our faith as something we can fully explore rewards everyone (no matter their generation or age).
Yes, at times we will need to wrestle with and provide space to explore answers or outcomes but embracing an empathetic worship community also means offering people space to use their curiosity and creativity to inspire new ideas and understandings about the Divine they may have never thought of.
This will mean that an Empathetic Worship Community does not accept the phrase, “We have always done it that way.” That is the one single phrase that has killed Meetings and churches throughout the ages. It kills the curiosity and creativity, lacks empathy, and does not inspire future hope.
Every year in America we publish a list of the top 10 phrases becoming insincere, useless, or cliché. “We have always done it that way” should be #1 on a similar list for the universal church.
Some others we could put on this list would include:
“Everything happens for a reason.”
“God will never give you more than you can handle.”
“Let go and let God.”
“You just need to pray about it.”
Oh…and there are so many more.
And sadly, when those phrases fall short – as they always do - we quickly look for an answer or response instead of empathetically sitting with each other and the issues and seeking the “why” behind them.
The reason I consider empathy as essential to building a Quaker Worshipping Community is because worship puts our attention on others.
It is, as I have been saying for the past 4 weeks, to humble us before the Divine for teaching, transformation, love, and hope, SO THAT we may experience the empathy of the Divine and in turn share that empathy with our neighbors within whom we believe God resides.
In some Quaker circles they have another phrase they use to describe empathy within the worshipping community – they utilize,
“listening beyond words.”
It is clear when reading the lives and actions of the early Quakers that they were very interested in empathy. Just look at how the majority of them viewed women, slaves, First Nations people, and their fellow Friends.
In T. Vail Palmer’s book Face to Face: Early Quaker Encounters with the Bible, Palmer makes the case that a deep valuing of empathy played a major role in early Quakers’ interpretation of the Bible.
Instead of power, position, or status, they interpreted the Bible in light of an empathetic spirit that was commanded by Jesus when he focused on Loving one’s neighbors as their selves.
From our very beginning, Friends developed explicit practices for fostering empathy, because even though humans have a capacity for empathy, that does not mean we necessarily pay attention to it.
Quaker practices that get to the “why” like “listening beyond words” opens the way for people to develop deep insights into each other.
Empathetic interactions then build connections between people at levels much deeper than perceived judgments and basic information – or what we could say is “getting beyond the surface issues and doubts of faith and community.”
Let’s be honest – attending church is considered one of the most superficial times in the week for people – they come pulling themselves together, yelling at each other all the way to the Meetinghouse door, and then almost like Disney magic they enter through the doors on Sunday morning - only to pull off the perfect ruse for an hour or so. I know some of you did it this morning. And probably some others are watching at home because they couldn’t pull it together.
It’s time we entered the Meetinghouse – warts and all. Seeking to delve beyond the surface of our lives.
So, how do we “go beyond the surface,” “listen beyond words” and become a truly empathetic worship community?
I want us to begin by focusing on what I will label the Three “A’s” of Worship.
Attitude
Attention and
Adjustment
I first came across these when studying active listening in a psychology class. I have adapted them to help us consider what I will call this morning “Active Empathetic Worship.”
Let’s begin with “attitude.”
Worship must always begin with having the right attitude. Whether you are coming to Meeting for Worship, a small group study, or a committee meeting (remember, all are considered worship among Friends), take a moment to decide if you’re emotionally open to the conversations that may ensue whether with the Divine or with your neighbor.
Also, ask yourself if you are able to devote your attention to what God or your sister or brother may say or ask of you?
It’s also important to leave your bias at the door and come in with an open mind and heart for where the Spirit may lead.
This leads us to “Attention.”
Worship among Friends demands our undivided attention so that we can hear from God and our neighbor. This is not easy, folks.
When we bring our distractions to worship, we may not be able to have the empathy necessary for others or even ourselves. Our distractions then become distractions for our neighbor’s worship as well.
Ask yourself how you might eliminate the distractions so you can be fully present in worship, to God and to your neighbor’s needs?
And the final “A” stands for “Adjustment.”
One major aspect of Quaker Worship is becoming silent, entering a humble posture of deep listening, and then seeking a way to respond to what speaks to one’s condition.
This means always being open to the fact that things may not go as we may anticipate or desire. Thus, to fully worship and respond, we may need to make some personal adjustments.
I find that having empathy for my neighbor often begins with an adjustment in my own heart – I must get myself out of the way before I am able to speak to the condition of my neighbor or hear from the Divine.
Early this week, I posted a thought to start our week from Leslie Jamison on my Facebook page – it happened to be on empathy. It received a lot of interaction, and I had many conversations about it. I believe Leslie is speaking to just what I am talking about here:
Empathy isn’t just something that happens to us—a meteor shower of synapses firing across the brain—it’s also a choice we make: to pay attention, to extend ourselves. It’s made of exertion, that dowdier cousin of impulse.
Sometimes we care for another because we know we should or because it’s asked for, but this doesn’t make our caring hollow. The act of choosing simply means we’ve committed ourselves to a set of behaviors greater than the sum of our individual inclinations.
This confession of effort chafes against the notion that empathy should always rise unbidden, that genuine means the same thing as unwilled, that intentionality is the enemy of love. But I believe in intention, and I believe in work. I believe in waking up in the middle of the night and packing our bags and leaving our worse selves for our better ones.
In this worshipping community – whether during a Meeting for Worship, a fellowship activity, within a committee, or when just having a cup of coffee with a fellow Friend,
· Are we paying attention?
· Are we extending ourselves?
· Are we choosing to commit ourselves to a higher way?
· Are we aware of our attitudes, attention, and need for personal adjustments?
To close this teaching on building a Quaker Empathetic Worship Community, I turn to the words of Quaker Poet and Abolitionist, John Greenleaf Whittier, who said,
I’ll lift you and you lift me, and we’ll ascend together.
Together may we at First Friends ascend in empathy and love for God and one another.
Let us now enter waiting worship and ask ourselves those queries I just read:
· Am I paying attention?
· Am I extending myself?
· Am I choosing to commit myself to a higher way?
· Am I aware of my attitudes, attention, and need for personal adjustments?
Our God
We pray for Empathy –
seeking to understand: ideas, people, situations, ourselves, our faith, our hopes,
seeking, exploring the why of life, the why of who we are.
seeking - because we know that only by seeking, do we go beyond ourselves, to where answers reside, answers that we had never considered. And we are enriched, by becoming more whole.
We pray that we would be Vulnerable –
open to being influenced to new ideas, new possibilities. Lives enriched with new experiences, horizons, things we thought not possible.
Surprise us, our God
We know change causes us to be vulnerable; as we become less capable of adapting, changes seem greater as our limits become more apparent, our abilities seem in decline simple things, small changes take on greater magnitude.
Keep ideas, possibilities, dreams, hopes, growing in and around us. So that change is not an inhibitor, but stimulation into new life. Cause our attitude to change to be invitational, not to create whirlwinds in our lives, but measured growth
Keep us Curious about life, exploring and discovering, growing into understanding, more of the mystery of life as we walk with you author of life, and our guide.
As we seek these things for ourselves, we pray that they become realities for those around us. Use us as channels of understanding, influence, curiosity, to help others grow. We take our part in your creation more fully when we offer ourselves to others and to you.
Use us, we pray.
Place people in our path that will cause us to grow and whom we can help grow. The things we desire, we pray for those whom we find difficult to love, as well as those close to us.
Lord, lead us into wholeness, whatever that may be, Amen.
Benediction:
Lord, as we leave this Meeting for Worship, grant us the wisdom to see the good in each person we meet. Grant us the empathy to understand their life situation and respect them enough to extend loving support, while sharing Your love with dignity. Allow us, Lord, to recognize opportunities to stand with others, friend to friend this day. Amen