HOW FAR MUST I GO?
Texts: Exodus 2: 1-10; Luke 10: 25-37
She braced herself as she extended her arm into the netted area swarming with infected mosquitoes. It would only take one bite to see if the dreaded pall would cast its shadow over her. Although Clara Maass, the young nurse from New Jersey had been bitten several times before and survived, this bout with yellow fever brought about her death. A devout Lutheran, she strongly believed that God called her to help others, even if it cost her her life.
Sometimes called the original human dilemma, the question of whether and when to help someone in need nags at us as we go about our daily lives. What are we supposed to do when confronted by a panhandler in the street? Do we “help” by giving a dollar? Is that help? Are there limits to what we can or should do?
The idea of “help” is central to the biblical myth of human origins. Adam is given Eve as a help meet when God realizes it is not good for Adam to live alone; Adam needs someone to help him as well as someone to help. When we do not live alone we live in human company. We help and are helped. When Cain asks, yes, demands of, God an answer to the question, Am I my brother’s keeper, is he not asking, am I responsible for his well-being? And how are we responsible for the well-being of another? By helping, of course. But what does that mean? What are the legitimate demands on our time, our resources, our lives?
In 1964, in what seems like another century we were all horrified at the story of Kitty Genovese, a 29-year old woman who cried for help for over a half hour as she was stabbed to death while none of her forty neighbors called the police for help. What causes our lack of response to such situations? Apathy? Fear? The feeling that it’s just none of our business what people do to each other? When is it that we cross the road and for what? And, for whom?
What is it that has happened to our sense of community and how we think about ourselves that has enabled such a total breakdown in values? The Kitty Genovese story is more than a symbol of apathy in an urban culture where people have lost touch with each other and live as automatons.
Pharaoh’s nameless daughter could have simply let the baby boy float down the river to be picked up by one of her father’s soldiers who surely would have killed him. Instead she reached out and had one of her servants pick up the baby, much like the church group Humane Borders reaches out to border crossers by leaving water stations in the desert for migrants walking across the desert.
We are deluged with requests for help on a daily basis. We are asked to give to this cause or that, to support this drive or that, usually through photos of emaciated children, abused animals, homeless families. If we are truthful, we have learned to shut out most of the horrors of the world and it is only when confronted with that one special photograph that we are forced to ask: What can I do?
The enormity of problems around us sometimes absolves us of responsibility. After all, when the problem is so big, we are not only helpless but our attempts seem futile. That’s why the photo is of one small child with the vulture hovering over her is so powerful; we can relate to one small child. A photo of a mass of people in a camp just seems totally overwhelming. So, we reach in our pocket and pull out the dollar -- or two -- and feel better. We have helped.
Now, the story of the Good Samaritan presents us with another dilemma: not only whether to help but the extent of our help. Although Jesus had told this parable to get us to think outside the box, there is another hidden message inside the story that makes it appealing for us. The help is not forever. Beset by thieves, the man is dying on the side of the road and the Samaritan, hated and feared by Jews, picks up the poor Jew and puts him on his own donkey, takes him to an inn and pays for his care -- but not forever. The care is only until he is healed -- a sort of ancient day emergency Medicaid.
But there is a part of the story that is disturbing to us. The Samaritan must take the man, who is helpless, and put him on the animal. In other words, he had to get his own hands dirty, so to speak, by touching the other. The story compels us to think about touching those dirty panhandlers and the panhandlers know we don’t really want to touch them; that’s why they have cups -- so we can drop the quarter into the cup and feel good without touching, without dirtying ourselves. So Jesus in this story tells us to touch the helpless person, not just to give money. And we think, it’s only for a moment.
But help, real help is not just for a moment. Like diamonds, real help is forever. Real help forces us into a relationship not just of helper to helpee, of the powerful to the powerless but the eradication of such boundaries, such lines. Real help is always political, not in a partisan sense, but in the sense of power and powerlessness. When we really help, we lose a little of our own power and make people less dependent on us for, well, help. And when we empower people, those in power often get upset.
“When I feed the poor, they called me a saint,” said Dom Helder Camara, “but when I asked why are the poor hungry, they called me a communist.” Roman Catholic Bishop of Recife in northeast Brazil, Camara was a thorn in the side of the military dictatorship that our government supported.
How many of us, including me, would live among the poor? Not many, I’ll wager. I mean, I read stories about Dorothy Day and Peter Maurin and how they set up the worker houses in the very midst of the slum to live among the poor, and, quite frankly, I am grateful that someone does this, someone else.
But does Jesus’ command to help force us to look beyond the kind of help that the Samaritan gave, beyond the limits we impose on ourselves? I think it does. The question for us is how far we need to go. The auxiliary question is what we are required to do after the man is healed.
What do these stories say to us today? Lawyers may split hairs over what is called the duty to care, but as Christians, we have to look at what God calls us to do. We know that God calls us to care for others regardless of race, ethnicity, immigration status, gender, sexual orientation, or a whole host of other factors. What we know deep in the core of our being and how we actually act are often two different stories.
What do we do when approached by the panhandler? What do we do when we see someone obviously inebriated stagger towards us? We respond defensively, partly out of fear, partly out of disgust at the condition of the person we see in front of us. We use what we call our common sense in these situations. Although I usually will buy a cup of coffee for the panhandler rather than giving him or her the money for a bad habit -- usually alcohol, I have the common sense not to try the same thing with someone who is drunk. You don’t know what will happen. But I do feel guilty about avoiding the drunk. What to do?
I wish there were easy answers to these questions. I struggle every day with the limits I place on myself, the boundaries I create for myself. I recognize that I cannot help everyone. None of us can, so we need to pick and choose our battles; we need to decide what is critical to us as Christians. Each of us will define our boundaries in a different way; the important question is whether we remain true to the Gospel’s call to care for those around us as Jesus calls us to do.
So, what happened to Kitty Genovese’s killer? Winston Moseley, a married man and father of two children, confessed not only to her murder but two others; denied parole twelve times, he died in prison
Let us pray: God of the Samaritan and of the baby in the basket, give us grace to find your face in all your children and to care for them. In the name of the One who cared for all, even Christ Jesus our Lord, Amen. Amen.