“Mt. Everest and the Good Samaritan”

June 25, 2006

Scripture Reading:    Luke 10:25-37

Rev. Dr. Carol L. Kerr

Blue Point Congregational Church

 

On May 26 less than 1,000 feet from the summit of Mount Everest and American guide Daniel Mazur abandoned his own trek toward the highest point on the planet to save another climber who had been left for dead.  Mazur, who had reached the top of Everest once before, had with him two paying clients and a Sherpa guide.  His decision to aid the fallen mountaineer meant that none of his team would make it to the top of the world on that trip. 

In the gospel of Luke Jesus says that to inherit eternal life you must “…love the Lord your God with all your heart, and with all your soul, and with all your strength, and with all your mind; and you neighbor as yourself.”  Then a lawyer who are always looking for loopholes queries, “And who is my neighbor?’  Then Jesus replies with the famous parable known a “the good Samaritan.” 

A man was going down from Jerusalem to Jericho, and fell into the hands of robbers, who stripped him, beat him, and went away, leaving him half dead.  Now by chance a priest was going down that road; and when he him, he passed by on the other side.  So likewise a Levite, when he came to the place and saw him, passed by on the other side.  But a Samaritan while traveling came near him; and when he saw him, he was moved with pity.  He went to him and bandaged his wounds, having poured oil and wine on them.  Then he put him on his own animal, brought him to an inn, and took care of him….” 

The distressed climber’s name was Lincoln Hall.  Surely Mazur proved to be Hall’s neighbor in the Christian sense of the word.  Mazur, forsaking his own ambitions even though he was very very close to the summit, stopped and helped him. 

Now you might think that anyone would have done the same.  Not so.  Just two weeks earlier on May 14^th of this year there was another climber in distress, David Sharp.  David had climbed alone on his Everest attempt.  He ran out of oxygen and was found sitting helpless at 8400 meters later that night.  Even though he was just 1-2 hours from the base camp 3 at least 30 people passed the dying climber.  Likewise with Lincoln Hall there were some Italians that passed them by after the American team had found Lincoln.  They didn’t stop to assist.  They simply said, “No speak English.”  They went on their way.  This was so even though one of the Americans had had a chat with one of the Italians in English for an hour the day before. 

My question is, what made one group stop and be good Samaritans and what made others pass the dying by? 

It would be easy to say that they are just bad people, rotten apples, scum.  It would be easy to say that we would never have passed them by.  It would be easy to categorize them as bad people and us as good people.

But, Everest is a very harsh environment.  Everyone is in danger of dying.   Tina Sjogren who climbed Everest in 1996 says, “I have seen people fall horrible falls, screaming in thin air.  I have met people telling me that they are o.k., while they were ill and dying without even being aware.”  What was going on in the minds of the Italians?  Was it that a man without oxygen for that long was effectively dead?  Or, rescuing someone at that altitude with a 10,000 foot drop two feet from where he was sitting was putting your own life in danger?  Then there is the overarching questions, do people who deliberately put themselves at a great risk have the right to expect heroic efforts to save them when they have been overtaken by those dangers?   This is all not to mention, the $100,000s of dollars that they had spent to get themselves that far.  Not to mention that their dream of a lifetime with years of work, fundraising, conditioning and planning was only a thousand feet away.  Were the Americans crazy?

My question stands.  Given that everything the Italians were thinking is absolutely true, what made the Americans still act as good Samaritans?   Maybe if we look more closely at what was going on with the Americans we will get some clues.

The American group started out from Camp 3 at 8300meters at 11 pm at night to begin their assent.  They were climbing in the small, concentrated light of a headlamp.  They were constantly checking that their oxygen mask and regulator didn’t freeze.  Not only that, they were watchful of the crampons still on the feet of the dead bodies that littered the route.  You see, once someone dies on Everest they do not bother to bring the body down, because it is too hard and would jeopardize the lives of others.  So, they just leave the dead bodies to lie in the deep freeze of Everest for perpetuity. 

The human has the uncanny ability to turn the abnormal into the normal.  For us at sea level, dead bodies might be freaky.  See dead bodies scattered along our path might make us think hard about turning around.  Obviously it is terribly dangerous.  However, people can get use to just about anything.  After suffering working so hard themselves, and risking their own lives, having seen one dead body you have seen them all, so to speak.  Just step over them… like one climber just stepped over David Sharp, even though he was only almost dead.   Have you ever wondered what you could get use to?

To digress, take the soldiers in Iraq.  We have heard about the Haditha question.  This is where allegedly U.S. soldiers on the front lines in Iraq, November 19 took revenge after an IED killed one of the most beloved Marines.  By the end of the day 24 Iraqis were dead.  They were shot to death.  What makes marines do something like that?  Is it that they are “bad seeds” as someone in the administration has claimed?  Or, is that they these were normal guys from home towns just like Scarborough who simply got use to horrible things.  Road side bombings on a daily basis, beheadings, etc.  It all got normal for them.  So they got mad, and shot some innocent people themselves.  Why not?  Everyone else has been doing it? 

My question still stands how come the Americans acted as good Samaritans even when there were all kinds of dead bodies up there? 

Here we come across our first clue.  A member of the climbing group, Phil, had rescued someone two weeks before.  He had come across another climber with cerebral oedema.  He dragged him down from the Second step at 8600 meters.  He got frost bite in the process.  So even though, once again, he was attempting the summit his frost bite was getting quite painful so he turned around again in the night before they had encountered Lincoln. 

For the American group rescuing people had already happened.  They knew what it felt like.  They had practice in stopping their forward momentum, nursing a man, saying soothing things, asking important questions.  They knew what the weight of a body feels like when they are dragging it.

This is our first clue as to why they did it and others didn’t.  We have to practice in order to get good at performing good Samaritan deeds.  Practice usually means starting with small things and building up to big things.  Even for us, therefore, we should consider this seriously.   We should practice helping out in small ways.  Such as, mowing the neighbors lawn when they are gone.  Bringing soup to the sick.  Stopping to give directions to someone who looks lost.  We might even look at the small things that the church does, the small donations to charity that we make, the few cans we give to the food pantry, the presents we give for families without money at Christmas, all of that is not just good in itself, but practice. When we practice doing good deeds on the small things we will be ready to step up to the plate on the bigger things.   Sometime in our life, most of us will run across a big thing, even helping someone who would otherwise die.   Let us start practicing now.

There is another clue.  There also sounds like there was s group ethic going on.  Obviously more than one person in the group felt that it was more important to rescue someone that to reach the summit.   Even us sticking together in the church, and telling each other how important being a good Samaritan is.  Even us reading the scripture of Jesus over and over, even listening to this sermon.  We thereby create a group ethic of helping others in need.  So when the time comes and someone needs your help, somewhere in your mind you might see our faces, hear our voices reading the scripture, and imagine us supporting you and saying, “Yes!  Do it!  Help.”    I am sure, Daniel Mazur thought of Phil when he ran across Lincoln. 

Let’s continue the story.  After Phil had turned around they moved past the First Step.  The remaining four of the group saw the sun hit the ridge at about 7:30 am on May 26.  It was a welcome sight after climbing for over 7 hours in the dark.  But then they saw something totally unexpected.  Sitting to their left, about two feet form a 10,000 foot drop was a man.  Not dead, not sleeping, but sitting cross legged, in the process of changing his shirt.  .  He had his down suit unzipped to the waist, his arms out of the sleeves, was wearing no hat, no gloves, no sunglasses, had no oxygen mask, regulator, ice axe, oxygen, no sleeping bag, no food nor water bottle.  He said, “I imagine you’re surprised to see me here.”  This man, apparently lucid has spent the night without oxygen at 8600 m left for dead was ALIVE.

As they talked to him they found out that Lincoln Hall was an Australian who was extremely close to death, his hade wagged and jerked, he was in deep distressed and shivered uncontrollably, and kept trying to pull himself closer to the edge.  He later told them he thought he was in a baot, not a mountain, and wanted to be overboard.  After they fed him and clothed him they radioed to ABC.  It took a while to convince them that Lincoln was still alive.  They believed Lincoln to be dead, having been informed of this by a sherpa the night before.  They sent up a rescue team and eventually was saved.

However, they could not summit the mountain.  After years of fund raising and months of training and climbing, they made the tough call to turn around.  They had feelings of nothing but disappointment.  The summit of Everest is prized.  To be literally on top of the world.  Nothing, nothing is any higher than you are at that moment. 

Daniel Mazur could see the summit from where he was.  In fact, he took a beautiful picture of it.  But, he decided not to attempt the summit.  They had spent a lot of precious time rescuing Lincoln.  Even though they were strong and eager to go on, the early afternoon storms were not far away.  They could trap them high on the mountain at two or three pm.  Probably they would kill them.  So after years of fundraising and months of training and climbing they made the tough call to turn around.  In fact, it was the right call for the storms did come in that afternoon. 

Mazur admits that coming back down the ridge their feelings were not good.  They felt nothing but disappointment at not making the summit.  He says that Everest is a peculiar mountain in that the summit is so highly prized that nothing else seems important.  So, being a good Samaritan, at times does not always bring with it great feelings of euphoria.  However, they did it anyway.  They felt bitter disappointment and yet went ahead and zipped up Lincoln’s coat, pulled on his gloves, put the oxygen mask on again and again, even when he in his adled state of mind kept pulling it off. 

However, the next day, after Lincoln had been treated by an extensive medical team, the Americans reintroduced themselves.  They spent time talking about Lincoln’s wife and his kids  It was during that conversation that Daniel could not help but wonder, “How is ANY way is a summit more important than saving a life?” 

The city of Jerusalem sits up high.  People in the Bible use to have to climb up to it in order to get to the Temple and accomplish their pilgrimage.  Psalm 121 is a song that people would sing as they were making their way through the hills up to Jerusalem. 

I lift up my eyes to the hills –

  from where will my help come?

My help comes from the Lord,

  who made heaven and earth.

Perhaps the last clue is this.  That when Daniel looked at the summit of Everest he did not trust in the summit, rather he trusted in God.  I do not know for sure.  I haven’t read anything he wrote or said on what made him be a good Samaritan.  Yet, something like this must have happened.  As the pilgrims climbed towards Jerusalem they did not trust in the hills, rather the hills reminded them of their trust in God.  The Heidelberg Catechism teaches that we are to trust in God that whatever evil he send supon us in this trobled life he will turn to good..  it says we are to be patient in adversity, grateful in the midst of blessing, and to trust our faithful God for the future. 

It is not easy being a good Samaritan.  Rarely do we perform such deeds without sacrificing some of ourselves.  After all, in Jesus’ story, the Samaritan sacrificed his time, his food, his money.  Jesus himself knew we might have to sacrifice much much more than that.  Jesus himself ended up sacrificing his life.  What makes a good Samaritan.  Remember at the beginning of the sermon it started out with a question, how does one inherit eternal life?  The answer is to love the Lord your God with all your heart, and with all your soul, and with all your strength, and with all your mind; and you neighbor as yourself.”  Daniel Mazur I think did make it to the top after all.  He might not have gotten to the top of Mount Everest, but he climbed to a higher peak.  By helping his neighbor, Lincoln Hall, Mazur summated and made it to eternal life.