How many of you have heard the story of the Good Samaritan before?

It is one of the most recognized parables that Jesus taught.

But for how many of you does this parable have an impact on your life or your choices?

Thirty years ago an experiment was done on seminary students. The students were divided into two groups and each was asked to prepare a talk for fellow students. One group “was to prepare a talk about seminary jobs, and the other about the story of the Good Samaritan.”  After a set amount of time the students were then sent to another building to present the talk. The researchers told some students they were late for the next task, they told other students they had a few minutes but should head over, and the rest were told to go whenever they were ready, there was no time constraint.

As the students went from one building to the next they “they passed a man sitting slumped in doorway of an alleyway, who moaned and coughed twice as they walked by.” The researchers kept track of which students helped the man and which students did not.

What do you think the results were? Did preparing a talk on the Good Samaritan elicit Good Samaritan-like behavior?

No, it didn’t. There was no difference between the groups who prepared the jobs talk versus the talk on the parable. The difference was how much time the students perceived they had.

Overall 40% offered some help to the victim. In low hurry situations, 63% helped, in medium hurry 45% helped, and in high hurry 10%.

The study concludes, “Ironically, a person in a hurry is less likely to help people, even if he is going to speak on the parable of the Good Samaritan. (Some literally stepped over the victim on their way to the next building!). The results seem to show that thinking about norms does not imply that one will act on them. Maybe that "ethics become a luxury as the speed of our daily lives increases". Or maybe people’s cognition was narrowed by the hurriedness and they failed to make the immediate connection of an emergency.”

(Darley, J. M., and Batson, C.D., "From Jerusalem to Jericho": A study of Situational and Dispositional Variables in Helping Behavior". JPSP, 1973, 27, 100-108.)

You see the key factor in people’s choices or we could say in their ethics was time.

How much time did they have. Time, or their perception of time, dictated how they made their ultimate choices.

Time dictates our morals. Or it can anyway. I wonder how much time the Priest or the Levite had as the came down the road. Or how much time the Samaritan had. Do we let time dictate what kind of people we are? Do we have time for compassion?

I found a Good Samaritan test on the web. I took it and emerged with a medium score. One of the questions was:

“You're on your way to the most important meeting of your career. Your future depends upon getting there on time. You witness another car hit a pedestrian and then drive off. Do you miss your meeting to help?”

I pondered this question. It was a hard one for me. I thought, well, someone else will help. (but would there be anyone else there?) Well, I can call on the phone for help (that would be calling on my non-existent cell phone). I would stop next time when it wasn’t so important. (but wasn’t this time pretty important for the woman lying on the road).

And in pondering all this I felt like a terrible person.

And I kept thinking on this question. Would I stop or not? Would I stop? And I began to consider: ok, it is the most important meeting of my career. My future depends on it.

And I thought, ok, the most important meeting in my career. I’m a pastor, what could I be going to that is so important?

And then I thought, I’m a pastor for goodness sake! If I don’t stop, what kind of pastor am I?  And if the folks I am going to meet in this most important meeting don’t understand, what kind of job or environment or career is that, that someone perhaps dying right in front of me is less important than this meeting...

And I kept thinking about it because it is not an easy question. What if I was on the way to the church to conduct the wedding of your son or daughter and I didn’t show up for two or three hours because I stopped to help a seriously injured person on the road? Or didn’t show up to give the eulogy at a funeral for a member of this church…I can imagine there would be consequences.

But thinking a little further, what if I wasn’t a pastor where you get a little slack for attending to things like death and dying. What if I was an executive for the telephone company or making a huge presentation at my computer firm. Or what if I was a doctor on the way to do an organ transplant.  And I stopped to help.

There might well be consequences. Serious consequences. You see it is not as if the priest and the Levite didn’t have good reasons not to stop. We don’t know where they were heading. The priest might have been hurrying on his way to conduct services at the Temple. If he stopped and touched this man, he would become ritually unclean and could not conduct services until he was purified again. He might have been headed to a royal wedding or who knows. To stop meant incurring consequences, potentially serious consequences.

And that is exactly the point Jesus is making.

Being a Christian is serious business. To love God and to love your neighbor as yourself is serious business with consequences. It means operating out of compassion, open hearted compassion, which makes us vulnerable. And calls us to take on things we might not otherwise. And to take on the cost.

Several years back a veteran Japanese reporter Shinsuke Hashida befriended a 10-year-old Iraqi boy Mohamad Saleh who had been partially blinded during a battle between US troops and insurgents in Fallujah. In talking with the boy, the reporter was touched by his candor, optimism and spirit. And this reporter was moved to offer to fly the boy and his father to Japan so he could have eye surgery to fix the problem. In May, Mr. Hashida and his nephew reporter Kotaro Ogawa were driving to Fallujah on their way to pick up the boy and his father to fly abroad. Their car was ambushed and both reporters were killed. (BBCnews.co.uk)

Killed on their way to bring healing and wholeness to one small boy in the midst of one large war. It’s not that the deaths of these reporters are any more tragic than the deaths of thousands of others who have died in this war. The hard part, the part that squeezes fear into our hearts, the part that lets the wind blow right through us, is that it was Mr. Hashida’s compassion that left him vulnerable. It was his heart that led him into danger. We could say he was killed in listening to his compassion.

The Baghdad-Fallujah road is a dangerous road. Ambushes happen all the time. In our parable the Jerusalem-Jericho road was a dangerous road. Ambushes happened all the time. And sometimes people would lie in the ditch pretending to be hurt and when a compassionate stranger stopped, out would jump the thieves and beat the traveler to death.

Compassion is costly. Sometimes ultimately costly. To see all people as our neighbor puts us at risk. Grave risk at times. Jesus knew this. He was not preaching some comfortable, sugar coated, easy way of life. The Christian path is hard. Hard. Compassion is difficult. And painful at times.

The family of Mr. Hashida continued with his plans after his death. The boy Mohamad was flown to Japan, to have the surgery. A Japanese community group paid for the trip and Mr. Hashida’s widow greeted the boy as he came out of recovery. Mohamad can see perfectly now and is ready to go back home.

The whole nation of Japan has followed this story. Hearts across this nation, a nation very uneasy about having troops in Iraq, have melted on seeing this young boy and hearing his quickly learned first words of Japanese: thank you and peace. I think this boy’s story is powerful because it lifts up for people in the midst of the horrors of war and torture that compassion, care for another, seeing a small ten year old stranger as a neighbor, can conquer all things. Even death. For though compassion opened Mr. Hashida to risk and eventually death, death ultimately could not stop his compassion.

Compassion. Seeing all as our neighbor is hard work. It brings consequences to us that we did not anticipate, consequences that we fear. But what is the alternative? If we lose touch with our compassionate side, then what? If we decide that the meeting for our job is more important than the woman lying in the road. If we decide that whatever plans we have are more important than the need that is in front of us, slowly but surely our heart closes up. We no longer walk around with an open heart, but with a closed heart, a heart that is not touched by those in need. And we can lose our ability to even see the need, to see the neighbor, to see people as more than just inconveniences and interruptions. Will we even see people anymore?

So the choice is this:

We can be compassionate, open ourselves to the love of neighbor that Jesus taught and modeled. And we risk our lives; we risk ourselves in this endeavor. For compassion is vulnerable. It takes work. It hurts. It means deliberately making a choice each day, in each situation. Yes, I will help. Yet it also means our hearts remain open.

Or we can be closed. We can be so busy, so protective, so closed that compassion is pushed aside by so many other considerations: work, family, safety, convenience. And we shall go through life focused on what we feel matters in the busy here and now, hearts carefully shuttered.

But I ask you, in the end, the work interview that you rush to, this theoretical interview that is the most important one of your career, does that really matter in comparison with the woman who has been run over? Does it compare to stopping and picking her up off the road, holding her with compassion and helping her find the medical help she needs or abiding with her in her last moments as she dies so she is not alone.

A work interview versus saving a life.  What really, truly, absolutely, ultimately matters?

It is easier perhaps to talk about such choices this morning when they are theoretical and there are no real consequences.  And so much harder to decide in the midst of the rush of our lives and split second decisions: do I pull over or not?

But I can tell you that I have been haunted by the question all week. Would I stop for this theoretical woman in the road or not? And I hope this question haunts you as well. For the answer, the deep answer we pull up from inside us, may cause us to reevaluate what we are doing, how we are living, how closed our hearts may have become, and what is ultimately important.

Being a Good Samaritan is not as easy as we might hope. But not being a Good Samaritan is in its own way just as risky. For even as we might lose our life in risking compassion as one Japanese reporter did, we will surely, certainly lose our life, or all that is truly meaningful in our life, if we shut compassion out. The choice is ours to make.

In the name of Jesus the Christ who walks this road with us, Amen.