At The beginning of 2006 in New York, a man named Wesley Autrey was standing on a platform for the underground with his two young daughters, waiting for a train. Suddenly another man on the platform, apparently suffering from some kind of a seizure, stumbled and fell off the platform down onto the track. Just at that moment the headlights of a rapidly approaching train appeared in the tunnel.
With no thought for himself, Wesley Autrey jumped down onto the track to rescue the man by dragging him out of the way of the train. But he immediately realised that the train was coming too fast and there wasn't time to pull the man off the tracks. So Wesley pressed the man into the hollow space between the rails and spread his own body over him to protect him as the train passed over the two of them. The train cleared Wesley by mere inches, coming close enough to leave grease marks on his clothes. When the train came to a halt, Wesley called up to the frightened onlookers on the platform. "There are two little girls up there. Let them know their Daddy is OK."
Immediately Wesley Autrey became a national hero. People were moved by his selflessness, and by his bravery. What Wesley had done was a remarkable deed of concern for another person. He had no obvious reason to help this stranger. He didn't know the man. He had his young daughters to think about. What he did was a severe risk to his own life… But a human being was in desperate need, and Wesley saw it and, moved with compassion, he did what he could to save him…
One of the newspapers reporting the incident described the account with the headlines, “Good Samaritan Saves Man on Subway Tracks.”
I’m sure when we hear stories like that we all wonder how we would react in such circumstances. The fear for me is that already I am beginning to think of excuses for not acting like that – it’s not practical – what about the children ? – Why should two people get killed rather than one ? – Maybe the man who fell is already dead ?...
What would we have done ?
The Parable of the Good Samaritan is an incredibly familiar one to us all, and there can be no great new takes on it… the challenge is laid down to us to be Good Samaritans to all of those in need around us. But what does that really involve ?
Some years ago an experiment was conducted with students training for ministry in the Church. Researchers gathered a group of ministry students in a classroom and told them that each of them had an assignment which was to record a talk about the Parable of the Good Samaritan. The recordings were going to be done in a building on the other side of the campus, and because of a tight schedule, they needed to hurry to that building. Unknown to the students, on the path to the other building the researchers had planted an actor to play the part of a man in distress, slumped in an alley, coughing and suffering.
The students were going to make a presentation about the Good Samaritan, but what would happen when they actually encountered a man in need? Would they be Good Samaritans? Well, sadly the results of the research were perhaps what many had expected – almost all of the students rushed past the injured man. One student even stepped over the man's body as he hurried to teach about the Parable of the Good Samaritan.
It’s easy to know the right thing to do, but doing it is another issue altogether. Putting the parable of the Good Samaritan into practice is not easy !
But there are 3 things which I think can help us with this. Firstly we must see the need. In the story of the Good Samaritan the people who you would have expected to help didn’t, and the one who you wouldn’t have expected to help, the enemy of the injured man, was the one who did stop and help.
It’s very easy to look around and pretend that there are no problems in the world, or even more likely, to look around and think that there are no problems that we can do anything about at least… But all around us there are people in need. People who are lonely, who are sick, who are lacking any sort of hope in life – there are all kinds of needs if we choose to look for them.
And so we must see the need, and secondly we must be prepared to do something about that need regardless of the cost or the inconvenience. For the Samaritan in the Parable the cost of his good work was huge – he had to put aside the hate that existed between the Samaritans and the Jews traditionally, he had to put aside the consequences of him being seen to offer help to this man, and of course he had to be prepared to give up both his money and his time to care for the man.
Those ministerial students in the experiment prioritised – they somehow believed that their assignment was what was important, and in doing that, they forgot about the need to simply care. It’s very easy for us to prioritise our lives into what we think is useful or simply to do things that we think we can do, whilst ignoring the bigger problems.
In the letter of James we are told that we have to be doers of the word and not just hearers, and this is emphasised once again today, as we realise that identifying need and leaving it for others to sort out is not acting as the Good Samaritan.
And thirdly to be a Good Samaritan today involves a huge transformation of our minds. To be a Good Samaritan is not sensible, it is not planned and it cannot be done to gain any sort of reward. It goes against what most people expect today… Going back to the man in the underground that I mentioned earlier, he received a lot of credit and good publicity, but for most people who act as Good Samaritans just on a day to day basis, there will probably be little in the way of thanks or reward.
But we are called to look at who has been a good neighbour to us – hopefully there will be many people, but one who has been and will always be the best neighbour of all, is Jesus. He saw the need of the world for a Saviour, for hope and for peace; he was prepared to do something about it and take upon himself all of the pain and suffering and punishment of the world just for us, and today he is the one who still acts as the Good Samaritan in our lives – the one who is prepared to pick us up from the roadside, the one who’ll patch up our wounds and the one who will be our constant and compassionate companion and guide.
May we be made strong with all the strength that comes from God’s glorious power to live our lives doing his work, privileged enough to be called to that work in the name of Jesus himself. AMEN
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