It has not been my best day.

I had a fall. It was basically a 21^st Century Cell Phone injury. Reading while walking, I stepped into dip in the pavement and took a dive on 71^st and Madison. I fell HARD.

I would like to blame Eric Adams. I would like to blame AT&T. But this was pure Mischa.

I hit my hands and knee, twisted my leg, maybe expressed a non-pastoral word or two, and traumatized the young lady behind me, who seemed torn between not wanting to engage with a large man she did not know, and wanting to make sure I was neither broken, nor about to get run over.

It’s amazing the interplay between trauma and ego. I am momentarily delirious with pain, but once a stranger, and a strange woman no less, is asking if I need help, I’m responding mostly out of wounded pride.

She said “are you ok?” I said “I think so.”

She asked me something else I don’t recall. I believe I thanked her.

Then I limped to the sidewalk, and she left.

At this point I find myself less in control than I want to be. I’m nauseous, hot, and light-headed. I start to feel like I’m blacking out. Twice I sit back down on the sidewalk.

I don’t know about you, but I fall much less as an adult than I did as a kid, and I am terribly uncoordinated, so that’s saying something. We were always playing games and sports, and I was always playing them badly. But my body was pretty resilient. I remember falling and hurting my knee.

This I felt in my soul.

So I make my way, slowly, to the next available seating space, a French café called Laduree. This was my first time there. They had no restroom, but when I explained my current situation, the lady had me sit down, got me some water, and apologetically offered me two small band-aids. It is at this point I realize I have a large cut on my knee that the band-aids will not remotely cover.

But a woman at the next table reaches into her bag, and says will this help? And she pulls out a giant band-aid. And now with a hybrid bandage, brought to you by an Ad hoc Urgent Care Bakery, I’m no longer bleeding in public.

And one oat milk Latte and a cookie later, I’m starting to feel vaguely human, courtesy of a team of Good Samaritans, or what I would call New York Angels.

The New York Angel is someone who stops their busy lives, and lowers their guard long enough to actually help

21^st Century life in inherently isolating. New York City is frequently hostile. Stranger danger is always in your mind. And women have plenty of good reasons not to engage men they don’t know. Every hero in this story, however, was a woman who took moment to check on a stranger who was quite clearly not at his best.

And that’s a Bible Lesson for Summer 2025

Jesus offers the Parable of the Good Samaritan in response to a legal expert who, having been told he must love his neighbor to inherit eternal life, asks for clarification as to who his neighbor is.

The story features a man travelling from Jerusalem to Jericho, who was jumped, robbed, and nearly killed, and finds himself in desperate need of help. Two religious officials, who might have been expected to step up, crossed the street and kept it moving.

A Samaritan, however, a religious and cultural enemy of the Jewish man in the story, bandages his wounds, brings him to an inn, pays the bill, and promises to pay any additional expenses.

And the divide bridged here is pretty deep.

The Samaritans were the product of the Assyrian conquest of the Northern Kingdom of Israel in 722 BC. When Assyria conquered a nation, they would deport many of its citizens to weaken it. So they exiled many of the Jews, and brought in foreigners from other lands, who themselves were exiled from their homes. The Samaritans were half-Jewish, and half everybody else. And Jews and Samaritans were mortal enemies. In the Jewish mind there was nothing good about them, and vice versa.

The plot thickens. The Jerusalem to Jericho road was steep and dangerous, a place people got robbed. It was a dumb place to be. And the main reason that the man was travelling it was to avoid going through Samaria. That’s how bad the relationships was between the two groups. The man would rather risk his life than go through enemy territory.

So the man who steps up to help is the wounded man’s bitter enemy, and he’s the only one who does.

This, Jesus teaches, was the man’s neighbor, the one who went out of his way to help. The neighbor was the one who showed mercy. Jesus said “Go and do likewise.”

Now I’d like to think that that no-one in this story was my mortal enemy. Still, they had plenty of good reasons not to help. They didn’t know me. They didn’t know if I was safe. And they could have concluded they had more important things to do.

They helped anyway, and for that I am grateful

Today, a team of neighbors I did not know and may never see again showed up, stepped up, picked me up, and blessed me.

I pray we would go and do likewise.

(Photo Credit: Michael Rocha)