[00:00:00] Welcome Central Christian Church. If we have not met before, my name is Dean Kuest and I am our Glendale Campus Pastor. So glad to be here today. And I am the father of five boys. I have a brand new grand baby, my first grandchild. We're so excited about that. And we have another one. On the way in November, this is a fun season of life for my wife and I, and we are loving every minute of it. [00:00:34] But having had five boys, I have so many people who ask us, did you spend a lot of time in the emergency room? And really the honest answer to that is no. We had a minor broken arm at a flag football game. Two stitches incidents that were very minor that I remember, but that's really about it. Until Monday. Monday was one of those [00:01:00] days where I got the call that I know as parents, we imagine getting sometimes. Those, those calls that kind of drop the pit of our stomach. [00:01:10] I was in a staff meeting. And I had gotten several calls from my son and I just let those go through, would deal with them afterwards. But after the third call from him, I got an immediate call from my wife and I knew instantly, this is not good. And so I picked up the phone and she just said, get to the farm, [00:01:33] Brett has broken his leg it's very bad. So I, ended that meeting instantly got my car, the farm that I've got two boys that worked there. That through the summer is very close to our campus. So I hustled over there. I got there before any of the emergency personnel got there. And there's something about standing, sitting, being with your child when they're in [00:02:00] excruciating pain [00:02:00] and there's nothing you can do about it. And so the ambulance finally gets there. He's got a compound fracture of his leg. He had been run over by a forklift. And thankful that it was only his leg, but it was, his jeans were just filled with blood. He was in pain and the ambulance finally gets him up and into the, uh, the car ready to go. [00:02:32] And, uh, the, the firefighter comes over to tell us, uh, we're sorry, you're not going to be able to follow him to the hospital. Because of COVID-19 uh, you cannot go inside the hospital. And it just hit me. Yeah. You want to be with your child. You want to be able to hold their hand while they're, while they're worried. [00:02:56] You want to be able to ask the questions of the nurses and doctors that you know, [00:03:00] they're not going to remember to ask the nurses and doctors or just to be by their bedside or even in a waiting room just outside, but you can't even cross the threshold.

Now I'm, I'm telling you this story, because this is what we're going to talk about today. [00:03:22] Not about a hospital visits, but if you felt anything in that story and you identified with it, if you have

imagined that call, or maybe you've received a call maybe even more seriously. And you know, the pit of the stomach feeling that comes with that. Or maybe you have a loved one who is in the hospital right now, and you cannot be with them. [00:03:49] You cannot go and comfort them. See that feeling of identifying with one another that's empathy. And that's what I [00:04:00] want to talk about today. This, uh, this leads me to a story in a book that I hope that you will take the time to read.

Because,

the title of the book is Apeirogon. It's a geometric word for a count, an infinitely countable number of sides. [00:04:27] Don't let that hurt your brain. It's an infinitely countable number of sides. The best way for me to illustrate that is a golf ball. If I have a golf ball, golf balls have anywhere between 300 to 500, what they call dimples on that golf ball, the perspective sides of that ball. Now you could through mathematics, shave that golf ball into an infinite number of sides. [00:04:56] And Apeirogon, that word just simply [00:05:00] asks us to acknowledge the many different perspectives of people. And understanding the hearts of those who see things differently than we do. Even those who might be labeled as an enemy. And so I want to ask you this question before I dive in any further, and it's simply this, what length [00:05:24] are you willing to go to understand the perspectives of those who don't see and experience the world in the same way you do? I'm going to, I want to say that again, cause I don't want us to miss this idea. What length are you willing to go to understand the perspectives of those who don't see or experience the world in the same way that you do? [00:05:51] Now, this book introduces us to two men from Israel, Palestine. Now we've taken hundreds of people on trips [00:06:00] over here, and if you've gone on those trips, it's very possible that you've met one of these two men or maybe both of them. Because what we do on our trips to Israel, Palestine is much like the title of this book, Apeirogon, is we want to give you different perspectives of what is happening in Israel. [00:06:18] So you'll talk to all sorts of people from all sorts of different perspectives. And our idea is that we want to be pro Israel, pro Palestine and pro peace. [00:06:37] Well, I have sat in the home of Bassam here's Rami and Bassam. I've sat in the home of Bassam and eaten food that his family has cooked for us. And I've heard him tell this story. And Rami, I sat around a small table with a small group of people, as [00:07:00] he shared his story. They are two men, two fathers,

Rami Elhanan is a nonreligious Israeli who lives in West Jerusalem. Bassam Aramin is a Palestinian Muslim who lives in East Jerusalem. They live in the same country, but they're separated by walls and checkpoints that divide them. Culturally

they're told that they're enemies, but yet when you meet these two men, they are best friends. I mean, they truly love each other. [00:07:45] That's what you walk away just understanding so clearly. They laugh and joke together like brothers.

They know each other's family and they care for them equally. How does this happen? [00:08:00] It happens because of empathy. Now, I don't have time to tell you the complete story of their friendship, but it's important that you understand what brought them together. [00:08:13] Now this in no way, spoils the book and what I'm about to tell you, you can read on the sleeve of the cover of this book, but both of them received phone calls that pale in comparison to the one that I, uh, my phone call pales in comparison to the ones these two men received. Rami Elhanan

on September 4th, 1997 had his world changed when his 14 year old daughter and two friends went school shopping in downtown Jerusalem and three Palestinian suicide bombers [00:08:56] stepped into a crowded square and detonated their [00:09:00] devices. Rami's daughter was murdered by enemies of his country. [00:09:10] Bassam Aramin, his world was shattered. On January 16th, 2007 Bassam

10 year old daughter exited a store where she bought candy on her way to school. As she turned up the street and Israeli soldier shot her in the back of the head with a rubber bullet causing bleeding in her brain. And she never woke up. [00:09:40] Bassam's daughter was murdered by an enemy of his country. Now for those of you who are not familiar with the current situation in Israel, Palestine, the country is divided. 78% of it is Israel. 22% of it is Palestine, but the 22% that is Palestine is [00:10:00] controlled by the military of the 78%. So Arab Muslims and Arab Christians are living under occupation. [00:10:08] Uh, they can't travel within their own country without permission, a business can't buy or sell goods across borderlines without permission. Their water is controlled, their electricity is controlled and there's been violence, a lot of violence from both sides. And there's hatred, deep hatred within both cultures. [00:10:35] Now very few Israelis, know Palestinian. And if they do, it's just a gardener or a laborer and very Palestinians, no few, few Palestinians know, an Israeli. It is a land that has so little empathy. And when you find it, when you find empathy in this land, it shines so [00:11:00] brightly. And Rami and Bassam shine in this land, but it wasn't easy. Before they could see each other as a brother, [00:11:12] they had to turn away from seeing one another as an enemy. And how do you do that? You know, the teaching of Jesus, is the very core of it, is this concept of feeling for somebody else. Of wanting to experience what another person experiences so that you can love them. So I could go to the teachings of Jesus and we could scratch the surface and I could use the phrase, love your neighbor as yourself. [00:11:49] It's one that probably most of us are familiar with. And it's this idea that we have to consider our neighbors similar to ourselves, but it's easy to [00:12:00] define neighbor as someone who is like me. And so Jesus ramps it up even more. And he says, love your enemy and pray for those who persecute you. This requires us to see the humanity in our enemy, in those who aren't like us, those who see the world in a completely opposite perspective, we're to love them. [00:12:27] But Jesus ramps it up even more in Matthew 25. He makes this statement, truly I tell you whatever you do for one of the least of these brothers and sisters of mine you do it for me. Jesus is saying that no matter who you meet, no matter what status they hold, no matter who they are, no matter if they are against you or for you, I want you to see me in them. [00:13:00] [00:13:00] And so this idea of empathy, if you are a note taker, I want to encourage you just to write this down or type it out or something. This idea of empathy is seeing Jesus in everyone. [00:13:15] But that didn't start with Jesus. God has had that from the very beginning, the heart of who he wants his people to be. If we go back to the book of Exodus and the story of Moses. Bringing the people of Israel out of Egypt, where they had been foreigners in a foreign land for 400 years, and God brings them into their own land. [00:13:45] And he gives them rules to live by give them the 10 Commandments. And then he gives them what's called The Law. And The Law is simply 613 rules for them to live by both as citizens and as a country, as a nation [00:14:00] and written into these laws are the very concept of identifying with other people who are not like them. [00:14:10] You could read in Exodus 23:9, do not oppress a foreigner; you yourselves know how it feels to be foreigners, because you were foreigners in Egypt. Or you could go to Leviticus chapter 19 verses 33 and 34, which says when an alien lives with you in your land, do not mistreat him. The alien living with you must be treated as one of your native-born. [00:14:42] Love him as yourself,

for you or aliens in Egypt.

When an alien resides with you in your land, you shall not oppress the alien. I am the Lord, your God. So God is saying [00:15:00] to his people, I want you to remember what it was like. Where you are mistreated, where you were oppressed. And I do not want you to return that to other people. [00:15:14] .You are going to be different. Why? Because empathy remembers. Empathy is able to draw from its own past experiences and be able to say, I, I do not want that for anyone else. [00:15:34] And I'm going to treat people differently. So let's go back to our question for today. What length are you willing to go to understand the perspectives of those who don't see or experience the world in the same way that you do? Now how did two men in our story, with [00:16:00] deep painful losses, get beyond the concept of enemies beyond revenge? [00:16:07] I mean, I think of this as a father, how difficult this would be, because I know my flesh, what I would feel, but also knowing that revenge only creates more pain, which will excuse more revenge, which will create more pain. [00:16:31] Well, they met in a community group known as the Parents Circle. And whenever we go to Israel, Palestine, we visit the parent with people from the Parents Circle. It is comprised of Israeli families. And Rami describes being there the, the very first time and seeing people going in and there's Israeli families going in and, and then a [00:17:00] big bus pulls up and out gets, comes all of these Palestinian families. Women in hijabs and men dressed differently than he might dress and speaking a different language than he speaks. [00:17:21] These are the people that he's been told by his culture over and over that they want all Jewish people dead. And how can he go into this building and be in the same room with them. And he wrestled with that standing in the parking lot, wondering if he had the courage and the strength to go in the door, but his pain overrode his fear and he walked in. [00:17:48] And he was simply invited to listen, listened to the stories and he heard Israeli families tell their stories of pain. [00:18:02] [00:18:00] And then he heard the Palestinian stories and their stories of pain, [00:18:12] and it struck him that he felt. More connected to this group of strangers who speak a different language then he felt with his own neighbors. Because they identified with the pain of one another. It was the beginning of a shift, an Apeirogon shift for Rami. To be able to see for the very first time maybe the media doesn't have this completely, right. [00:18:45] Maybe what I've been told about the Palestinian people isn't as black and white as they make this try and sound. [00:18:57] And he was forced to re-examine [00:19:00] his own perspective, his own understanding. And what Rami was experiencing is exactly what the apostle Paul talks about in 2 Corinthians 1:3-4 the apostle Paul says praise be to the God and Father of our Lord Jesus Christ. The Father of compassion, the God of all comfort, [00:19:27] who comforts us in all of our troubles so that we can comfort those in any troubles with the comfort we ourselves have received from God. Rami did not come to this meeting expecting to be comforted by his enemy, but he left asking a lot of questions about his own perspective. Now Bassam's journey with empathy [00:19:55] began many years before the murder of his daughter. [00:20:00] As a child, Rami was a rebel and, uh, was taught that he needed to hate the Israeli military that was in his village. And so they, uh, they chose to break the rules. They weren't allowed to fly the Palestinian flag. And so whenever the soldiers weren't looking, they would [00:20:23] hang a Palestinian flag, somewhere in the neighborhood, they would throw rocks at the soldiers and then run through the neighborhood.

When he was 17 years old, Rami, I mean, Bassam some found an old box of grenades. He had no idea how to use them, but he knew that he wanted to use them on Israeli soldiers. [00:20:54] And so he took the grenades and he threw them and they did not detonate. [00:21:00] To this day he's so thankful for that. But at 17 years old, he was arrested and put in prison for seven years. In prison he just felt his hatred build towards his enemy. He was beaten for minuscule reasons. He was stripped naked and forced to stand exposed for hours. [00:21:24] But his transformation began one night when on television, he saw that there was a documentary on the Holocaust. Now he had been taught all of his life that the Holocaust did not exist. It didn't happen. [00:21:42] But he thought if, if millions of Jews are going to be killed. I want to watch this. That's how hard his heart was, but he wasn't prepared for what he saw, what he saw on that screen completely [00:22:00] wrecked his heart. How can humans do this to other humans? How can people treat other people this way? And he began to shift the, Apeirogon of his own views and understanding. [00:22:21] And he began to ask questions like this. If the Jews had been treated like this, it explained their fear of us. If the Jews had been treated like this, it explained their determination not to repeat this ever again. It explained why they fought back when previously they were unable to fight back. And for perhaps the first time in

Bassam's life, he experienced empathy and his viewpoints begin to be seen [00:23:00] from other person's eyes, walking in the shoes of another. [00:23:09] Feeling the pain of another and it changed him. See empathy listens, and it seeks understanding. Empathy, listens, and it seeks understanding and instead of telling somebody how they should feel and, and do feel you instead listen to their own experience because you've never been there before.Bassam began exploring nonviolence, began reading Gandhi and Martin Luther King, Jr. [00:23:47] And when he got out of prison, instead of the warrior that he was before he became a peace activist, he ended up getting his master's degree in Holocaust studies. [00:24:03] [00:24:00] Empathy changed Bassam. I am humbled by him and humbled by how far he went to understand the Jewish perspective. How far would you go to understand the perspective of someone who does not see the world in the same way that you see it? Let me bring this home to you and, and me, because I believe Jesus' life truly [00:24:34] defines the concept of empathy. I mean, in John one chapter 14, it says that the word became flesh and dwelt among us. He came, he entered into our world and in Philippians

2, it tells us that he humbled himself and he became nothing because he didn't consider equality with God, something to be

grasped. [00:24:55] He entered into our suffering [00:25:00] Hebrews 4:15. It says that we have a high priest who is able to empathize with us in our weakness. He's able to understand our temptations because he was tempted in every way yet he never sinned. See Jesus bridged the divide and he stepped into our broken world to experience what life is for us. [00:25:33] So he understands weakness because he became weak. He understands temptation because he endured temptation. He feels with us what we feel. And then he went to the cross to take all of our sin upon his shoulders. And in Colossians 1:21, it says that we were alienated from God. We were his enemies. [00:26:00] [00:26:00] And yet Christ reconciled us to himself. [00:26:09] He wanted to know sorrow, your pain, betrayal, loss, and then he gave himself for our sin. If you are a follower of Jesus, we have to do the same. We must do the same because empathy helps people see the real Jesus. And unfortunately, what I feel like we do in our world today in our culture is that we create prerequisites to be able to meet Jesus. [00:26:46] We have a world of people that are, are, are crying out for hope. A world of people who need to believe that there is something beyond this [00:27:00] life for them. And Jesus offers that, but too often, they run head on into prerequisites. I'll explain what I mean in this. I have a friend named Andrew Hanauer who is,

leads,

One America

Movement. [00:27:20] It's , a movement that's fighting polarization in America, bringing people together. Now he grew up Jewish. And so I asked him like, well, tell me your Jesus story. Like where, where did Jesus connect with you? Having grown up Jewish? He said, well, my, my parents were not religious at all. So I had no really religious upbringing. [00:27:50] But instead he went to Dartmouth, he got very plugged into politics and plugged into government and all sorts of [00:28:00] these things. And at Dartmouth University, he was put in a room with a young man who was a strong Christian, amazing guy, a guy that he saw Jesus in and Jesus was so attractive because of the way that this [00:28:17] roommate lived. In fact, he began studying the Bible and reading about Jesus because of this roommate. And this roommate was helping him to understand who Jesus was. And one day he finally opened up to him and said, you know, I, I want to follow Jesus. I'm going to follow Jesus, but I can never be a Christian. [00:28:44] And his roommate said,

why is that? I mean, is it because you're, you're Jewish and you feel like you can't be a Christian, if you're you're Jewish. I mean, everybody in scripture and he's like, no, no, no, no, that's not it. So I can't be a Christian [00:29:00] because, because I'm a Democrat. And when he told me that story, I actually kind of like burst out laughing. [00:29:08] I have many godly, good Christian friends that I would, uh, that are. On each side of the political aisle. And for me, I got that. This was not even a thought, but to him, that's how it had been built. It had been presented to him that this idea that he had to pick a side in order to first get to Jesus, it was a prerequisite. [00:29:37] We do that in a lot of different ways. [00:29:47] Let's put Jesus first and let's let Jesus shape people's perspectives. I'm still being shaped. You should still be being shaped. Let's allow [00:30:00] Jesus to shape others. And this is what I'm learning in my journey of understanding empathy. Is that for me, empathy says to a person on the other side of the political spectrum, I may not see eye to eye with you on many issues, but I want to know you and I want to know what's important to you and why, because I care more about you than I care about how you vote. [00:30:31] It says to the atheist. I believe that our world is complex and it's full of conflict and, and full of violence. And I won't blame you for abandoning the idea of God, but I want to know how you make sense of the world without judgment. Seeking understanding says to a Muslim I appreciate your devotion to one [00:30:58] god. [00:31:00] Help me to see what you believe about Jesus. Empathy for me, it says to the person of color, I don't know what it's like to grow up Black or Latino in America, but I want to understand, I'm not going to tell you how to feel. I'm going to listen to how your experiences have shaped your reality. [00:31:24] Stepping into someone else's experience says to the young, single, pregnant woman, I can only imagine the fear, the worries, maybe even the lack of hope that you may feel for the future. I want to walk alongside you. Love says to your enemy I will try to understand you as a person. And I'm asking Jesus to help me to love you as someone created in his image. [00:31:57] Why? Because it all [00:32:00] flows out of Jesus. It all culminated on the cross. And as Jesus was on the cross, he looked down on the people who had pounded the nails into his hands. And he said with empathy, Father, forgive them for, they don't understand what they're doing. Well, let's be a church of followers of Jesus that work hard to understand the hearts of people who we see the world differently than. Let's see Jesus in everyone so that they can see Jesus in you. [00:32:44] Would you pray with me? Father God, we are so grateful that you cared about our difficulties. Our hurts our frustrations, [00:33:00] our differences. God, my heart is very different than yours. Thank you for caring enough to want to know me. And because of that God, I want to know you. And I thank you for Jesus who went to the cross. [00:33:24] And in spite of my brokenness, took my sin on his shoulders. Teach us to be people of empathy, and it's in your name we pray. Amen. [00:34:00]