Joshua Bell is considered one of the most accomplished violinists living today. Indeed, some place him in the company of such greats as Itzhak Perlman and the late Jascha Heifetz. But on January 12, 2007, he chose an unlikely forum for a virtuoso performance. Wearing jeans, a long-sleeved T-shirt, and a baseball cap, Joshua Bell stood in a Washington, D.C. metro station and played his violin.

He played for nearly an hour, performing six classical pieces. During that time, over a thousand people passed by, occasionally tossing loose change into his open violin case. Typically, someone of Bell’s talent can command up to $1,500 a minute. But on that day in the subway station, he managed to collect only $32.17—barely enough to purchase a cheap pair of shoes!

You can’t fault the instrument. He was playing a Stradivarius violin built in the golden period of Stradivari’s career, and worth $3.5 million. Nor can you fault the music, as Bell flawlessly performed pieces by Johann Sebastian Bach, one of the most gifted composers the world has ever known. However, of the thousand people who rushed by, only seven stopped to listen—and they only stopped for a minute or two before pressing on.

It is kind of startling when you think about it. Here you had one of the world’s premiere musicians, playing on one of the world’s most prized instruments, performing some of the world’s most beautiful melodies … and scarcely anyone noticed!

Of course, the context probably didn’t help. After all, who would expect to find such majesty in a subway station, with a shoe-shine stand to one side and a magazine kiosk to the other? Plus, this was a workday, with people scurrying back and forth to meetings and appointments. Who has time to stop and notice beauty when you are busy trying to catch the next train?

In Matthew’s Gospel, the very last parable that Jesus tells concerns the final Day of Judgment. On that day, according to Jesus, all of humankind will be separated into two distinct groups—sheep and goats. The sheep represent those who noticed Jesus and stopped to offer him assistance; the goats represent those who didn’t. But the curious thing is that neither group can recall when such a thing ever occurred. “When did we see you and come to your aid?” ask the sheep. “When did we see you and fail to lend you a hand?” ask the goats.

In other words, those who wind up being labeled goats are not necessarily mean people. They are not rude or unfeeling. They don’t have hearts of stone or mountain-sized egos. If anything, their fault is that they simply weren’t paying close enough attention. They had things to do, places to go, and people to see—not unlike, I suppose, the countless multitudes in that subway station, who walked right pass one of the world’s greatest violinists and never even noticed!