The Sin of Empathy
Well good morning, my friends, sinners one and all! I hope you feel welcome here because you’re in good company. Our lectionary readings have us more than halfway through Luke’s gospel and a theme has emerged: disreputable characters and moral outcasts are safe with Jesus. They feel sheltered rather than judged. Jesus’ empathy for them is a signature characteristic of the kingdom he announces, so much so that his religious enemies dismiss him as a drunkard and a glutton. When asked why he befriends these sketchy types, Jesus is unapologetic: “Who needs a doctor: the healthy or the sick? I’m here to invite outsiders, not coddle insiders” (Message, Matthew 9: 12-13). Hence the Pharisees growl, “’This fellow welcomes sinners and eats with them.’”
I’d wager that most people, churched and unchurched, know the parable of the Prodigal Son. I think it’s more appropriate to call it the parable of “The Two Sons” or even better, “The Prodigal Father.” I’d also wager that most of us assume prodigal in this context has something to do with being lost and then found, losing one’s sinful ways, repenting, and then returning home. And indeed, the whole chapter of Luke 15 is a series of parables Jesus tells about lost things being found: lost sheep, lost coins, and lost sons.
But that’s not what prodigal means. It comes from the Latin word prodigere, “to drive away or waste.” Prodigal means recklessly wasteful or giving and sharing on a lavish scale. Though these definitions sound similar, there is a world of difference between them. You see, God is never a squanderer, imprudent, or reckless. God is in every way perfectly generous, perfectly lavish, perfectly bounteous. When it comes to God’s love, there is no such thing as “too much.” And this is why The Prodigal Father is a better title for this parable. Why? Because it describes what God is like.
We’re familiar with the younger son who shames his family by asking for his inheritance before his father’s death, who then leaves for another country, squanders it all on hedonistic excess, and then finds himself working as a swineherd for starvation wages. Moses was clear that swine are not kosher. No good Palestinian Jew would be caught dead near a pigsty. This is how far this guy had fallen.
But as we know, people who hit rock bottom often know quite a bit about repentance; the text says he “came to his senses.” One can easily picture the cinematic reunion of this wayward son and his father. Imagine: the father happens to walk by a window in which he spies an emaciated figure in the distance. He watches as this haggard man drags himself over the hill. “It can’t be…” he thinks. He opens the door and stands on the threshold in shock, his mind and heart racing. Then, without even thinking of the wounds his son has caused, he runs to embrace his boy. You should know this is utterly undignified for the patriarch of a Jewish Palestinian family to do. Traditionally, he would have waited inside for the penitent to prostrate at his feet. Instead, we get the sense that the spurned father has been keeping vigil, praying for the day his boy will return. Remaining hopeful that the seeds he once sowed in love might yet be harvested in the return of his child. Isn’t that every parent’s dream? Instead of treating him as a hired hand, as the son requests, the father celebrates him as an honored guest — with a robe, a ring and a party.
Luke describes the father as “filled with compassion,” not only for the “lost son” but especially toward his older son who is deeply hurt and resentful that his reprobate brother waltzes in like a victorious contestant on the reality show, Survivor. But this is exactly why I think this parable should be known as the Prodigal Father. It’s for the same reason Jesus welcomes and eats with sinners. Because that is what God is like. God is merciful and forgiving. God loves extravagantly without conditions, borders or limits. God patiently waits for us and rejoices upon our return. God is full of empathy for us despite of our self-inflicted brokenness.
The moral theologian, Father James Keenan, describes compassion as the “willingness to enter into the chaos of another person’s life.” [1] Isn’t this what Jesus does? Think of the Roman Centurion, the Samaritan woman, the adulterous woman, the hemorrhaging woman, the blind, the lepers, anyone sick, poor or on the margins.
I would argue that if Jesus is anything, he is empathic. If compassion is being willing to suffer alongside another, empathy is understanding how they feel. Jesus, as God, embodied empathy by coming to earth as a man and enduring the human experience. This is what we mean when we refer to the doctrine of the incarnation.
When our Bishop, Mariann Budde, preached at the Interfaith Service of Prayer for the Nation in January, she beseeched President Trump to have mercy on the most vulnerable among us. Her words triggered an avalanche of Christian Nationalist condemnation. Much of it highlighted what her critics literally called “the sin of empathy.” Their argument was that “empathy” amounts to a false gospel of “kindness” that enables a culture of “coddling” and “weakness.”
And you may have heard Elon Musk on Joe Rogan’s podcast earlier this month, where he declared that “the fundamental weakness of Western civilization is empathy.” Musk is aligning himself with a burgeoning hard-right movement that insists people must steel their hearts against stories of pain, loss and suffering to avoid being manipulated. You see, love for the “other” or a stranger is a distraction. NPR aired a piece last Sunday quoting a few high-profile Christian conservatives who have been sounding similar warnings. I quote:
“Empathy almost needs to be struck from the Christian vocabulary.” “Empathy is dangerous. Empathy is toxic. Empathy will align you with hell.” “Most people have a hard time imagining how empathy could ever be harmful. And therefore, if I’m the devil, where am I going to hide some of my most destructive tactics?” [2]
Let me define empathy: it is not a feeling. It is the ability to recognize and respond to the reality, emotion, and pain of others. It is putting yourself in one another’s place, understanding their context, seeing things as they see them, even when it doesn’t match with your own experience. Empathy is not toxic. Nor is it a sin. It moves us from understanding to action. And this is why the ability to empathize is a threat to those with a need to control. The arguments about toxic empathy are finding open ears because far right-wing, white evangelicals are looking for a moral framework around which they can justify President Trump’s executive orders and policies, and decrying empathy helps them do that.
Father James Martin, in response to this backlash of empathy posted on social media, “The lack of empathy is at the heart of our mistreatment, mockery, and demonization of the poor, of migrants and refugees, of LGBTQ people, and all those on the margins.” I would add, banishing empathy helps to harden the heart when migrant children are separated from their parents, when Palestinian protesters and so-called “illegals” with suspect tattoos are snatched off our streets in broad daylight, and when funding is slashed for food banks, healthcare, scientific research, and when attacks and erasure of diversity, equity, and inclusion continue under the guise of meritocracy when it’s really disguised white supremacy.
There is no getting around it: Empathy and compassion are at the heart of Jesus’ life on this earth. Friends, this is what God is like and what God demands of us. As Christians, we must never compromise these gospel values; never surrender our human decency and dignity for power, greed and spiritual poverty. As Nicholas Kristof writes, “…the measure of a man is less his net worth than his net humanity.” [3]
Here’s the thing—the parable of the Prodigal Father teaches us that we are called to feel empathy and compassion for both sons. We can think of the lost and found son as a scoundrel—impetuous, careless, demanding, selfish—and ask if he ever got his act together once the party was over and the fatted calf was eaten. Did he get up early the next morning and pull his weight in the fields? Did he make amends with his brother?
And we can feel for the responsible son who stayed home to look after his father and the fields the old man had dedicated his life to. Was he often sore and sweat-stained after a day in the fields, longing to go inside for a bath, a meal, a bed, but he couldn’t because he had to put on a happy face for his father and the neighbors (especially during the party)? You know, I suspect I’d be standing right there with him outside his father’s house seething with resentment, too—my arms crossed, my face fixed in a scowl. “The responsible son has rightness on his side. He was right to call for justice. Right to ask why his brother’s sins incurred no consequences. Right to ask why his loyalty seemed to count for so little. But there we stand, oh lovers of justice: one hundred percent right—and one hundred percent alone.” [4] Can’t you see how we sinners are both sides of this same coin?
Now back to this God of ours: He welcomes sinners and eats with them.” Am I envious because God is generous? Am I hurt because the father’s love is a wild, unfettered thing, unpredictable and unfair? Am I resentful when someone skips to the front of the line? Remember, this is the same God who paid a day’s wages for one hour of work. Every time God’s stretching, searching, healing love finds someone and calls them home, it doesn’t mean there is less for the rest of us. For God’s love is not divisible; instead, it is more. Always more. More wine. More feasting. More music. It is extravagant, this love. It is a scandal of grace! And there are those who say it is wasted on you and me. To which God says, without fail: I love you. Come home. Amen.
[1] This quote can be found by searching on-line for it. I learned about it from James Martin’s Tik-Tok video.
[3] The New York Times, “Meet the Opposite of Elon Musk, Columns and Commentary, Nicholas Kristof, March 23, 2025, p. 3.
[4] https://journeywithjesus.net/essays/3352-love-and-lostness, this section from Debie Thomas, my favorite spiritual writer.