One More Time With Feeling

Dear Sympathetic Seekers:

One of the highlights of my high school days was singing in the Omaha Central High School A Capella Choir. We were really good, not because we had better talent than other choirs but because of our director, Mr. McMeen, who demanded from us not only technical execution but emotive performance. “I want to hear that section again, but this time with feeling; I want to hear that you care about what you’re singing.”

With feeling is literally the translation of the Greek word συμπάθεια, sympathy. Which brings me to my fourth musing on Christianly Responses, reactions to the people and pain around us. So far, I have discussed (and you can click on the link for each topic) empathy, pity and indifference. Each response depends upon our proximity to those affected and our capacity to help. Because distance and agency vary, so too should the level of engagement of our hearts or hands.

The expression of sympathy is not in its passion but its presence, which may account for the fact that, after birthday cards, sympathy cards are the most purchased greeting cards. When Christian historian Martin Marty lost his first wife Elsa to cancer in 1981, he remarked how those who offered the greatest support were the ones who only stood with him in silence and beheld the mystery. That’s the with of sympathy. I cannot unravel any meaning, but I am close by anyway, is the sentiment of the best sympathy card.

Unlike empathy, which presumes specific emotions regarding another’s condition, sympathy commits to feeling with or alongside another in their struggle, pain or loss. Sympathy does not presume what those feelings might be. On more than one occasion, I’ve witnessed laughter at funerals. Those dedicated to empathy can be scandalized when good humor infects their expectations of grief, but feeling alongside another is open to however those feelings are vented.

True sympathy is hard work because it is so helpless. Sympathy refrains from fixing, resists quick answers, lingers over ambiguity. It’s exhausting to stand at the edge of an abyss; we are tempted to quit by filling the hole with cliched platitudes or backing away to helpful busyness. Sympathy requires us to disregard the passage of time. It confesses that the need for healing, acceptance or closure are expressions of our anxiety, not a genuine desire for the other to feel whole.

Sympathy is hard work, holy work. In sympathy we become proxies for God’s presence. Deuteronomy 31.6 and Hebrews 13.5 remind us of God’s promise to neither leave nor forsake. Perpetual proximity to pain requires divine strength; it is an infusion of God’s strength that makes possible the practice of true and enduring sympathy. We like to think of ourselves as sympathetic, but when the pressures of our own agenda weigh heavy, we drop our passionate presence and move on, revealing in the end that we may only be pathetic. In those faltering moments, we, too, need grace—God’s grace, God’s presence, God’s sympathy.

Seeking God’s help to be truly sympathetic, one more time with feeling, I remain,

With love,
Jonathan Krogh
Your Pastor