Introduction
Kitty Genovese Story
At about 3:20 a.m. on March 13, 1964, Kitty Genovese, a 28-year-old manager of a bar in Queens, New York, returned to her quiet residential neighborhood, parked her car in a lot adjacent to her apartment building, and began to walk the 30 yards through the lot to her door. Noticing a man at the far end of the lot, she paused. When he started toward her, she turned the other way and tried to reach a police call box half a block away. The man caught and stabbed her. She started screaming that she’d been stabbed, and screaming for help,.
Lights went on in the apartment building across the street. Windows opened. One man called out, "Let that girl alone!"
The assailant shrugged and walked away. Windows closed and lights went out. The assailant returned and attacked Genovese again. This time she screamed "I’m dying! I’m dying." This time lots more windows opened and lots more lights went on. The assailant walked to his car and drove away, leaving Ms. Genovese to crawl along the street to her apartment building. Somehow, she managed to drag herself inside.
The assailant returned a third time, found Genovese on the floor at the foot of her stairs, and finally succeeded in killing her.
During those three separate attacks over the course of 35 minutes, not one of Kitty Genovese’s neighbors tried to intervene. No burly neighbor picked up a baseball bat and dashed outside to save her life. Worse than that, of the more than 30 people who saw at least one of the attacks and heard Genovese’s screams and pleas for help, not one of them even called the police. After much deliberation, and one phone call to a friend for advice, one man finally urged another neighbor to call authorities, which she did. Police arrived in two minutes, but by then, it was too late.
Interviewed afterward, the residents admitted, sometimes sheepishly, "I didn’t want to get involved," or "I didn’t want my husband to get involved." One said he was too tired to call police and had gone back to bed. Several couldn’t say why they hadn’t helped. Many of them said they’d been afraid to call. They couldn’t say why, within the safety of their own homes, they had been afraid to call the police – even anonymously.
Many of you have heard this story before. That incident may be the defining moment of urban apathy in the latter half of the twentieth century. When it happened, many thought the incident shocking, bizarre – but not typical of the way people respond. It was the kind of thing that would only happen in a big, bad place like New York City.
“What was wrong with those people, anyway?”
Link to The Good Samaritan
This morning’s familiar story of the Good Samaritan is told in response to a question asked of Jesus by a Jewish lawyer: “What do I have to do to have eternal life?” Basically, he is asking, “What must I do to be saved?”
I’d like to rephrase his question this way, “What things do real Christians do?” It’s the same, isn’t it? If we believe the New Testament, it isn’t just nice people who receive eternal life. The people who are saved are those who have trusted Christ for their salvation.
But the Bible also teaches that those who trust Christ are transformed people. So if they are transformed, surely there should be some evidence of that transformation, right? So where’s the evidence? What’s the proof? What do real Christians do that distinguish them from others? That is the essence of this lawyer’s question, and it is answered in the familiar parable we have come to know as “The Good Samaritan.”
So what do real Christians do? Let’s look and see.
The Lawyer came to test Jesus with a question. This time it may not have been a trap, we don’t really know. When he asked Jesus the question about eternal life, he was asking what Jesus saw as the essential requirements of the Law. I can just see Jesus smiling as he throws the question back in the lawyer’s lap: “How do you interpret it?”
The lawyer’s answer is one we know Jesus would approve: To love God with all your heart, mind, soul & strength; And to love your neighbor as yourself
Jesus Himself had taught that all the Law & the Prophets depend on these two commandments. Like many of us, the Lawyer knew the right answers. But he was totally unprepared for Jesus’ story about what compassion looks like in real life.
Real Christians display real compassion. But what is real compassion? Let’s look at what this parable has to say about it.
Our compassion is to be driven not the “worth” of the recipient (determined by our less than humble opinion) but by the need. The Samaritan knew nothing about this victim. In fact, we know nothing about him either. Jesus just says, “A certain man…” We would probably say, “Some guy…” That’s all he was: just some guy. Just another human being. Maybe a good one. Maybe a bad one.
We assume he’s Jewish, but I wonder if the Samaritan even knew that much. How do you tell a Jew from a Samaritan if he’s naked and beaten to a pulp? I don’t know. Did this Samaritan know he was investing his time and money on someone who thought he was the scum of the earth? Maybe he did and maybe he didn’t. But it didn’t really matter.
It didn’t matter because the Samaritan was moved by something bigger than racial distinctions, something bigger than class differences – he was moved by compassion.
The Greek word used here for compassion is a very vivid one. It comes from a word that refers to the intestines, or bowels. It sounds pretty gross! But it’s the equivalent of what we mean when we talk about a “gut feeling.” A gut feeling is one that comes from the deepest part of who we are. Almost every time it is used in the NT, it refers to the love of Jesus or of God the Father. It is a deep and inescapable compassion. It is a compassion that insists on taking action.
When that Samaritan looked at that suffering man lying half-dead by the side of the road, something happened in his gut. Something that made it impossible for him to walk away. He didn’t decide to help this guy on the basis of how worthy he was. He helped him because of how needy he was.
Did you hear that? He did not help him because he deserved it, but simply because he needed it. When real-live, gut-level compassion sees desperate need, it does whatever it can to help. That’s the kind of compassion that real Christians demonstrate, because that’s the kind of compassion that Christ demonstrated toward us.
And aren’t you glad that when you were at your most desperately needy point, Jesus didn’t look you up and down and rank you on whether or not you deserved His compassion?
I know what would’ve happened if He had set out to determine whether or not I deserved His compassion before He gave it. He wouldn’t have given it. I didn’t deserve His compassion. I didn’t deserve it when I was 16 and I asked Christ into my life. I don’t deserve it anymore today.
But thanks be to God! He doesn’t dole out His compassion in measured scoops depending on how worthy we are! He offers it to us freely, based on how much we need him. Not on how much we deserve Him.
Not only was the Samaritan’s compassion based on the need, rather than the worth, of the victim, but it expressed itself in costly action. He didn’t just say, “Boy, that’s tough! I’ll pray for you.” And then forget to even pray! He didn’t just say he cared, he showed he cared. Even though it cost him time, energy, & money.
The book of James asks this question: “Suppose a brother or sister is without clothes and daily food. If one of you says to him, ‘Go, I wish you well; keep warm and well fed,’ but does nothing about his physical needs, what good is it?”(Jas 1:15)
There’s a simple answer to that question, “Not much good at all.”
First John 3:17 says it this way,
“If anyone has material possessions and sees his brother in need but has no pity on him, how can the love of God be in him?” [NIV]
John uses that same word for compassion – and the old King James translates it literally, “But whoso hath this world’s good, and seeth his brother have need, and shutteth up his bowels of compassion from him, how dwelleth the love of God in him?” [KJV]
Real Christians display real compassion. They don’t shut down the feelings in their gut when they see others in pain or in need. They do whatever they can about it.
We have gotten SO GOOD at insulating ourselves from the hurts of others. Sometimes I blame that on the Information Age – the fact that we get so much information about so many people who are hurting in so many ways in so many places that it is SO overwhelming we just shut it down, turn it off and learn to be callous. It sure is a lot easier!
It sure saves us a lot of grief.
It sure isn’t anything like what Jesus would do.
It sure isn’t what God has commanded real Christians to do.
We’ve probably all heard the expression, “This separates the men from the boys!” What kinds of things separate the men from the boys? Things that involve danger and risk. Things that take courage and a willingness to sacrifice. Things that are grueling and gut-wrenching. Things that require maturity and perseverance, not just boyish enthusiasm and energy.
In a sense, that’s what this parable teaches about the Christian life. Jesus isn’t separating the men from the boys, He’s separating the real Christian from the merely religious. We saw what the religious folks did when they saw this man bruised and battered by the side of the road. They kept walking. In fact, they crossed the street and kept walking. They insulated themselves from the pain that man was experiencing. We’re not told why.
Like Kitty Genovese’s neighbors, they probably just didn’t want to get involved. They didn’t want any trouble. They weren’t monsters. They were regular folks: nice, ordinary people who loved their kids and tried their best to get by in the world. Lots of ‘em were probably good church folk. Just like the priest. Just like the Levite. They saw the need, they heard the screams and they just turned off their lights and went back to bed.
We may miss what would’ve been the most shocking aspect of this parable when Jesus told it. The priest was considered the holiest person there was among the Jews. He was taught the Scriptures. He was entrusted with offering sacrifices for the sin of the people. He was allowed to go further into the Temple than “regular” people were. If anyone was going to reflect the character of God, it would be the priest.
But when he sees this poor man, he gets as far away as he can. Some people try to explain this away by saying, “Well, the guy looked like he was dead, and as a priest, he couldn’t risk making himself ritually unclean, or he wouldn’t have been able to serve in the Temple that day.”
That sounds great, but Jesus states clearly that he was coming down from Jerusalem, which meant he had already performed his Temple service and was going home. There was no good reason the priest couldn’t have helped this man.
Then Jesus moves down the religious hierarchy a little bit, to a Levite. Levites assisted in Temple worship and in caring for the Temple. They were highly regarded in Jewish society, though not considered as holy as the priests. When he sees the victim, he walks in to get a better look. I guess it’s like the “rubber-necking” that goes on at an accident site. He wanted to satisfy some grim curiosity by looking at the injured man.
But once his curiosity was satisfied, he, too, crossed the road and went on his way.
At this point, most people would have assumed that Jesus would now say that a simple Jewish person – a “layman” – walked by and helped. Jesus had shown some of his contempt for hypocritical clergy, and this was the perfect time to do it again. But when he says, “Then a Samaritan came by…” the place would’ve gotten real quiet. They couldn’t have imagined what Jesus would say next.
Given the mutual hatred between Jews and Samaritans, they may have expected the Samaritan was going to finish the guy off. We glibly call this the parable of “The Good Samaritan.” In fact the very phrase has worked its way into our common language. It was not a phrase in use by Jews of Jesus’ day. In fact, they probably couldn’t have said the words “good” and “Samaritan” in the same sentence unless it was “good riddance.”
But he was the one who obeyed the Law, not the holy priest or the almost as holy Levite. The Law said, “Love your neighbor as you love yourself.” Or, as Jesus said, “Do unto others as you would have them do unto you.”
And what would you have others do unto you if you had been robbed, beaten and left for dead? It doesn’t take a rocket scientist to figure out what you would want someone to do for you would be just what the Samaritan did: to clean your wounds and take you some place safe where you would be cared for. That is what the Jewish law required of those who claimed to obey it.
But the religious people would rather debate exactly what it means than to obey it. It didn’t take a degree in theology to figure out what it meant to love that man lying by the side of the road. It took something a whole lot bigger than that. It took compassion. It took guts. It took a real Christian, not just a nice, religious person.
Real Christians display real compassion, not based on the worth of the recipients, but on their need.
Real Christians display real compassion, even when it is costly, even when it is dangerous
Conclusion
This sermon was incredibly difficult for me to write. I was still on page one at 9 o’clock last night. By 11:00, I was rethinking the whole thing and scrapped what little I had. I wrote most of it somewhere between 5 and 10 this morning.
I knew exactly why I was having such a hard time. Because I’m more like the lawyer than the Samaritan. I’d like to believe that loving my neighbor means loving people who love me; loving my neighbor means doing nice things for people who will probably do nice things back. That’s what the lawyer thought, too. And he felt pretty good about how he’d fulfilled that command. But Jesus’ story did to me the same thing Jesus intended it to do to him: it shattered my complacency.
It reached up and slapped me in the face and made me recognize how small my compassion really is – I saw how rarely it’s demonstrated through sacrificial love for those who are most in need.
It showed me how good I am in insulating myself from others’ needs. I can eat dinner while I watch the news. I shake my head over earthquake victims and terrible accidents. Then put a little more pepper on my potatoes. And except for a brief prayer, I usually pretty much forget it.
“But this is so overwhelming, God! How can we possibly love all the hurting people in the world?” I suspect God is not asking us to help all of them, but to help the ones we can.
You may have heard some variation of the story of a man who was walking the beach very early one morning, when he noticed a young boy ahead of him picking up starfish and throwing them into the sea.
When he caught up with the boy, he asked what he was doing. The boy told him that the stranded starfish would die if left until the morning sun.
The man smiled and said, "But the beach goes on for miles, and there are millions of starfish. How can you make any difference?"
The boy picked up another starfish then threw it to safety in the waves and said, "I made a difference to that one."
Mother Teresa, when asked how she had accomplished such great things in her life said this, "None of us can do anything great on our own, but we can all do a small thing with great love."
Real Christians display real love to those who need it most.
By God’s grace and strength, may we be counted among them.
