I preached this sermon the week of March 16 at St. Lydia's. The text is Mark 9:14-19 -- the man who says to Jesus, "Lord, I believe. Help my unbelief." You can read the story here.
Yesterday a few of us Lydians got together
for this year’s round of the Season of Listening.
The Season of Listening is something that our church does together each Spring.
The idea is to find ways to listen to the people around us
who we might pass on the street but never speak to,
to learn more about what happens here in our city.
Last year, our congregation did one-on-ones with all sorts of folks in the city --
the supers in our buildings and people who run soup kitchens.
Crossing guards outside our houses
and the person who works behind the counter at the corner store.
Afterwards we came together to share what we had heard,
and one of the comments stuck with me.
It was something that was said by a man who ran a corner store.
He said,
“We live on top of each other in this city,
but we don’t really know each other.”
I thought to myself,
"Huh. I'm not the only person who feels that way."
I have this yearning -- this yearning to know people in this city.
To connect across all these boundaries that keep us separated from one another.
There’s all kinds of people in this city,
but it’s like we run on parallel paths.
So much diversity, but not a whole lot of encounter.
And I yearn to know others, and be known myself.
This year our Season of Listening is focused on getting to know people
who live in the neighborhood all around our new storefront --
the place of our very own that we’re getting ready to move into over on Bond Street and Union.
When we arrived at the new space yesterday
some of the contractors were finishing up some work inside,
so we ended up starting our session sitting right out on the sidewalk.
Zachary, our intern, led us in a song and a prayer,
and then we looked at a big map of the neighborhood he had made.
As we were sitting there, we noticed that there was actually a whole lot more foot traffic
along Bond Street than we were expecting -- it was a nice day
and people were using Bond as a thoroughfare to get to Union.
We started off by visiting the neighbors on our block.
We met the roommates who live in the apartment right above our storefront,
and I met a woman who had lived in the neighborhood all her life
but has recently been priced out of her apartment
and was coming back to get her mail.
We met the couple who just opened up a furniture shop across the street
and Zach met the guys who run the production company close by.
Zachary and Stephanie and Elaine decided to stay in front of the storefront
and keep talking to people who walked by
while I tried ringing some doorbells on the surrounding blocks.
Mostly, no one was home.
Plus, it felt a little invasive to walk right up someone’s stoop and ring the bell.
But I wanted to see what I could to do
to connect with people in the surrounding blocks.
As I walked up the street, I saw that a bunch of people
were coming in and out of the C-Town,
the grocery store across the street from the Gowanus Houses,
which are the public housing units just two blocks north of our new place.
The C-Town was perfect.
I stood outside as people went in and out,
and just asked folks if they lived in the neighborhood.
Most said yes, and then I’d ask them about it,
what they liked and didn’t like,
what the strengths were and what the neighborhood needed.
Here’s something that surprised me:
everybody going into the C-Town in this mostly African American neighborhood
was more than happy to take a few minutes
to talk to the white girl hanging around awkwardly outside.
I told everyone I spoke to that our church was new in the neighborhood
and moving in just a few blocks down.
That gave me a nice "in."
But still -- I was amazed at how easy it was.
I've lived just across the street from the Gowanus Houses for two years.
I walk by them all the time.
But the only conversation I’ve ever had with one of my neighbors there
was when I stopped to pet somebody’s dog.
This is New York.
We keep our game faces on.
We don’t talk to our neighbors.
But breaking through the game face, it turns out, was easy.
All I had to do was ask.
*
Later I walked through the Gowanus Houses themselves
and talked to a few folks walking by or hanging out on the benches.
It was a nice Saturday afternoon, and everybody was outside hanging out.
When I asked folks what they thought of the neighborhood,
they said people were friendly with each other and there was a good sense of community.
I could see that from the people going in and out of the C-Town --
a lot of people knew each other by name.
They also said that it better than it was a few years back.
There was less crime and violence than there used to be.
When I asked what could be strengthened in the neighborhood,
the response was the same, across the board.
Almost every single person said:
something for the kids.
The kids need something to do.
The kids need a place to be.
Some people said that there were plenty of schools in the area for kids who were excelling,
but the kids who weren’t doing so well
or didn’t have a special talent
or maybe had a learning disability --
there wasn’t so much for them.
Everybody said that if St. Lydia’s was to do something
to contributed to the neighborhood,
we’d make a place for the kids.
*
I finished the day feeling energetic,
and really, kind of astounded.
If you had told me a few days ago
that to learn something about the lives of my neighbors in the Gowanus houses,
all I had to do was stand outside the grocery store and ask?
I would never have believed you.
*
I believe; help my unbelief.
I love this story because the cry of the father feels so familiar to me.
I believe; help my unbelief.
This father approaches Jesus in a very different way from,
for instance, the woman with the hemorrhage of blood.
She has so much faith --
she just knows that if she even touches Jesus’ clothing
that she’ll be made well.
And she is.
“Your faith has healed you,” Jesus says.
This man is different.
His son is sick,
he’s in desperate need,
the disciples have failed to cure his son.
He approaches Jesus hoping for the best
but perhaps expecting the worse.
“If you are able to do anything?”
he asks Jesus,
unsure that there’s anything to be done.
And yet we know he hopes for something, a miracle,
because he has come here,
seeking out healing for his son.
If he had no hope, he never would have come.
How often do we find ourselves in the same posture as this man?
Unsure just what to believe
but we approach Jesus none-the-less,
because some fragment of hope or wonder or desire has pulled us here.
Here to these tables
to see what God might do.
To see if God might give us something to believe in.
In this story we recognize that we are capable of holding in our hearts
two opposing things at the same time.
We can believe and not believe simultaneously.
We can hope for the best,
and yet expect the worst.
We can live in doubt,
but still feel a glimmer of faith.
Like the father in our story,
we stand on the threshold between faith and unknowing
and pray that God will make herself known to us --
make us believe.
I believe; help my unbelief.
Perhaps the father of this tormented child
utters the very prayer that the disciples couldn’t pray.
The most honest prayer.
God, you may not exist, but I’ve come here none-the-less.
*
If you told me that I could connect with my neighbors
across lines of class and race and wealth
by standing outside the C-Town on a Saturday afternoon,
I never would have believed you.
And yet, four of us went out there on Saturday
and stood on the street
and God showed me what she is capable of doing:
breaking down the walls that separate us from one another,
one person at a time.
I believe; help my unbelief.
I never could have imagined what happened,
and yet I showed up on Saturday.
Hoping for the best,
but perhaps expecting the worst.
That’s the kind of place we inhabit so often --
that threshold between not imagining that God is doing much of anything,
but showing up, none-the-less.
*
One of the women I met outside on a bench said to me:
“We need more people like you coming in here.
People who aren’t scared to come in here.”
*
Is it going to far to claim that public housing units
are the leper colonies of our day?
I don’t know what it was like in your school growing up,
but in my school,
everybody knew which kids lived in the projects.
In our city the units stand tall and separate from the neighborhoods around them.
Half a block away all the kids go to a different school
and people advice us “not to walk through there at night.”
Yet inside,
they’re just another neighborhood.
Just people with kids and lives and jobs.
Something for the kids, everyone told me.
At the heart of this story is a child.
A little boy with a demon or possession or epilepsy or whatever it might be.
A little boy who goes rigid and foams at the mouth,
whose body is tossed toward the hearth and the fire,
who has to be watched every minute for fear
he’ll have an episode and die.
A little boy who can’t hear or speak,
who is nothing but a financial burden for his family,
and yet his parents bring him here, to Jesus’ feet,
not quite daring to believe that God might do something,
but showing up, none-the-less.
We don’t know this boy’s name and we never hear his voice,
but he is the one who Jesus heals.
He is the one who gets his life back.
A child, without status or power,
but with a parent who care enough to bring him to Jesus to be healed.
There are plenty of kids in our new neighborhood
whose names we don’t know
and whose voices we can’t hear
whose ailments, be they neglect or poverty,
learning disability or disease,
throw them in harm’s way
toward the fire or the water.
These kids might live in public housing units or in brownstones.
Abuse and neglect don’t discriminate.
Neither do learning disabilty of disease.
Some of these kids have parents capable of bringing them to be healed.
Some have parents who aren’t capable of doing so.
There’s this small part of me,
this small voice
that tells me that
despite the divisions of our neighborhood
of class and race and wealth,
despite all those things,
God might be calling our congregation
to respond to that call I heard reiterated
again and again in the neighborhood:
something for the kids.
God might be calling us to connect into the strong sense of community
this neighborhood already has going for it,
and see if we can collaborate with leaders in the neighborhood
to bring a piece of what’s needed.
A piece of restoration.
A piece of healing.
If you had told me a week ago
that our congregation might be part of something like this,
I wouldn’ t have believed it.
But, like the father of the boy in our story,
God keeps calling us to the threshold:
that place between faith and unknowing,
between belief and unbelief.
Calls us right there to the edge,
and then just shows up.
Does something so crazy
we can’t help but step through and follow.
Lord, I believe; help my unbelief.
That’s our prayer.
That every day we get called a little farther along
and end up one day on the corner in front of the C-Town,
standing in the presence of God.
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