jesus, lord of empathy
where the gospel of luke meets my life
I have been reading through the gospel of Luke since November, and it has been such a challenging and filling experience. I have been drawn into a meditation of the scriptures more than ever. Some days only being able to read one verse before I felt Jesus encouraging me to stop and meditate on those words. Which often led to some of the longest amounts of prayer that I have ever spent. It has been so rich. I am tempted to go through it all again and listen to Jesus after learning so much about myself over these last few months.
Since January, I have been attending a therapy-type group for women who have a history of sexual abuse. This is without a doubt the hardest season of my life, as I have been invited to reconsider and acknowledge memories of my past abuse. My life has felt like it is in shambles. It has been months full of pain, doubt, fear, depression, confusion, and questioning. I am not sure that I even know who I am anymore—all I know is that I don’t want to be the woman that I have been until this point.
I have learned so much about myself. Whether I wanted to know these things about myself or not is still in question. I have had the opportunity to understand myself deeper than most people ever will, and even though it feels like a curse, I am certain that it is a blessing. I have made a lot of emotional appeals to Jesus regarding my past; it’s been challenging to feel justified questioning him this way. But I think that Jesus has loved hearing the honest questions that have plagued my heart. “Where were you when I was abused? How could you turn your face from me? Why didn't you rescue me, if you hate that evil? How is this good for me? Where are you now? What does the cross mean to me as a victim of something so heinous and wicked?”
I think that if we are honest, we all want the answers to these questions. It doesn't matter that I have been sexually abused. I had some of these questions before I even had a single memory of my past abuse, and I think that some of you reading this probably do too. The memories have just been the avenue for me to accept the pain and lead me to ask Jesus the deepest questions in my tired, little heart. It has been challenging for me to approach Jesus while seeing Him through the lens of my own abuse. Seeing Him as someone who abandoned me and allowed me to be damaged beyond fixing. As someone who did not love me enough to protect me. And when I am only seeing myself, it is easy to believe that those things are true.
Maybe you are wondering why I have said all of this about my past now? It could seem disconnected to what you thought you would be reading when you started this. But they are completely intertwined. December 24, Jesus asked me in Luke 9:20, “But what about you? Who do you say I am?” That question haunted me for weeks, and brought me to tears more times than I can count. I did not know who to say that Jesus was. I had no reply, and I was ashamed. January 5, I got my first memory of my sexual abuse. And I then began to see what my honest answer to Jesus would be, and I am not proud of the answers that were so rooted in my confusion and anger.
While reading Luke’s account of Jesus’ life and occasionally turning to read a parallel text in another of the four gospels, I was most struck by Jesus’ ability to empathize with me in all things. Jesus, like me, has felt powerless, ambivalent, and betrayed. He has been abused and shamed. He has been poor and abandoned. He has been met with temptations. He has been chosen last and rejected. He has been stripped of his dignity, and left to suffer an injustice that He did not deserve. His innocence has been handed over. Jesus has been a victim of the depravity of the world. Jesus has been human. The most significant thing for me to learn about Jesus has been that He understands me. It is this revelation that has allowed me to answer Jesus when He asks me, “What about you, beloved? Who do you say I am?”
The answer seems like it should be simple now, right? I should be able to answer him in the same way that Peter did, “The Christ of God.” But answering still lacks that simplicity. The best answer that I can give Jesus right now is that I know He is an empathizer, and that He sees me in my broken state and longs to heal those desolate places in my heart. Jesus is my lord, and he understands me. I can trust Him and walk in repentance toward Him knowing that I am in the hands of Jesus, Lord of empathy.
