February 2025
A PARABLE FOR OUR TIME
“20 Seconds in Trafalgar Square”
“Whoever is joined with all the living has hope.”
-Ecclesiastes 9:4
Samuel Wells is vicar of St. Martin-in-the-Fields in London. In a recent article he wrote for the Christian Century, he shares about an experience he had recently when he was returning to his parish after spending the afternoon with a friend. He had just dropped his rented bike off at a docking station and was about to walk across Trafalgar Square when he took his phone out of his pocket to thank his friend for the lovely afternoon they had spent together at Lord’s Cricket Ground.
Suddenly from behind him a hand appeared and swooped his phone out of his grasp. The hand belonged to a teenager on an electric bike. In seconds, Sam’s assailant sped far away from where he was standing. Sam realized his predicament: the thief had his whole digital identity, plus his credit cards and driver’s license. So he pathetically roared his horror and outrage.
Then two extraordinary things happened. As he awkwardly made chase by foot, a woman 50 yards away, who’d somehow witnessed the incident, faced the thief’s bike, made herself wide like a star, stood in his way and shouted. “Stop it and drop it!” Sam was so dazed and distraught that he scarcely realized what was happening. But when he turned around, a small boy was running toward him with his phone. Sam received it dumbfounded, like an audience taking back the ace of spades during a card trick – Sam thanked the boy, shaking his hand with his still trembling hand. Only then did Sam realize that the cyclist had dropped the phone just as the woman had told him to. Sam looked around to thank her, but she was gone. The whole event took 20 seconds.
Sam has thought a lot about the four characters who were involved in this near robbery. First, the teenage thief. He was riding an expensive bike, though he might have stolen that, too. And, he was skilled enough to ride without using his hands. Sam guesses that this was not his first attempt to steal a stranger’s phone, but that he had practiced on other unsuspecting people. Why was he not putting his talents to better use? And what life experience had led him to pull the kind of stunt that makes others miserable and jeopardizes his own freedom?
Next, the woman who confronted the thief. She could have ignored what happened, or told herself it was difficult to identify what was going on amid the kerfuffle. Instead, she acted by a selfless reflex, put herself in physical danger, found both action and words, and surprised the young man so much that he did exactly what she told him to do. She involved herself in Sam’s life and the thief’s, affected both for the better, and, as if to prove she sought no credit or reward, disappeared before Sam could even identify her.
Then there was the little boy who handed Sam the phone. Sam thinks he was about eight. The boy did not seem in any way connected to the woman. He must have instinctively run into the road to save the phone from being crushed. He could have hidden behind his youth and protected himself from the dangers of the big city. Instead, he stepped up and did a simple, kind thing. The woman’s courage would have been less help to Sam if the little boy hadn’t seen where the phone landed and rescued it from the approaching traffic.
And then there was Sam–Vicar of St. Martin-in-the-Fields. Absorbed in his day, not focused on the people around him but preoccupied with the idea of sending a text to a friend, swooped upon as if he were a small animal being lifted off by a bird of prey. Rescued by a brave stranger and restored by a young bystander. Too shocked to be grateful, too shaken to linger and work out whose mercy had rescued him, too bewildered to appreciate that what he needed to do was find his savior and give her appropriate thanks.
Here is how Sam summarizes his traumatic experience in Trafalgar Square:
“All four characters have wider significance. In the face of a global crisis like COVID, we depend on those who, like the courageous woman, go to strenuous lengths in sometimes daunting and demanding circumstances to give people what they desperately need. Just as vital are those who are like the little boy, who bring the fruits of others’ labor to those in need of it.
“But in the face of a crisis like the climate emergency, we’ve come to appreciate human-kind as a whole, and whose instrumentalization of creation has disfigured the earth: in different ways, all of us resemble that plundering cyclist. And in my bereft and bewildered demeanor, we can see another side of ourselves, one that feels we’ve lost something that belonged to us−whether our youth, our innocence, our well-being, our security, or our hope−and can’t get it back without a lot of help and something of a miracle.
“More subtly, this 20-second episode gives us a picture of God. A God who, like the woman, at great risk raises us to life; who, like the young boy, gently offers us the incredible gift of restoration; and who, like me, has been willfully robbed of something−human companionship and belonging on the earth−something it feels impossible to live without. “My 20-second microdrama showed me life’s fragility and apparent randomness, but also life’s choice: choice to despoil and destroy or to restore and repair. At such moments we stand before the gracious mercy of God and ponder the many ways we can respond.”
Thankful For God's Tender Mercies,
Pastor Greg Kintzi
