What has the church meant to me? It’s really a good question, that one. In college, my answer would have been, “Oh, well, I don’t know. I made some friends and had some fun, right?” These days, though, at the ripe old age of 22, it dawns on me: What hasn’t the church meant to me?
For the past two months (oh no, has it only been two months?), I have been teaching high school in the Bronx in an area that runs a 98% poverty rate. I live in an area in Harlem that has subjected me to a week of dripping walls, a week with no electricity, a week with no running water and, yes, more than just an occasional visit from your friendly neighborhood cockroaches. But every time I fix a closet door and every time I put up a shelf, I look for Grover over my shoulder to remind me how it needs to be done.
And that’s it. That’s it right there. That’s what the church means to me. It’s never just me anymore. Every time I get that human impulse to give, to share, to please, just for once, drop what you’re doing and help this person!, I’m not alone.
When I walk through the neighborhoods that my students call home, Gordy is out front with me sizing up the place for what we can do to help.
And when I walk through the windblown trash of central Harlem, I know Rusty and Margie are around the corner organizing the middle-schoolers to help me rake it up like they do the leaves every year.
And when I pass the homeless on every corner, I pass their name on to the Nelsons to add them to the list for Food Deliveries that this church family makes to the needy in our community.
And when, despite all my education - which, if it hasn’t left me with wisdom, has at least left me with enough debt to understand the value of a dollar – I struggle to communicate with the parents of my students because now I am the foreigner who does not (yet) speak the language, I want to reach out to the now legendary Flannery Denny, who taught an entire Youth Group the value of speaking another language when they were having their eyes opened to the world on their trip through Europe.
And when I carry bags heavy with the supplies that I purchase for my students with donated money onto and off of buses and trains, I get the small nod from Grover who taught us with a single lap around his farm the short, brutal reality of it: Sometimes things just have to be carried. And if you yourself can’t carry it, then it’s just not going to make the trip, because there will be no one else to help you carry it through seven major European airports.
And when the state-sponsored science tests ask my students to discuss the pros and cons of tanning… Are you with me on this? Tanning. My students are from Jamaica, Ghana, Mexico, Puerto Rico and the Dominican Republic. I’ll wager that not one of them has spent a minute tanning and that no one in their families has ever entertained the thought of intentionally making their skin darker - at least, not since they came to America. It’s moments like these when I think of walking the grounds of the concentration camps of Dachau on that same Europe trip and feel that same sadness and frustration that something very wrong is happening and no one is doing anything about it.
And finally, when my friends, as idealistic and optimistic as I am, start to succumb to the depression that claims so many first year teachers in New York City, Jay sits opposite me first on the subway and then the cross-town bus (although sometimes he has to stand) as I make the 40 minute trip there and the 40 minute trip back just for the time it takes to drink a cup of tea, shake off some tears and get ready for the next day. Thankfully, he stays for a few minutes to help me keep my own sanity, as ironic as that may be.
What does this church mean to me? Hope is a good thought, but that’s not it. Hope is a question; this congregation provides answers. When questions of religion and faith are passed my way, as they always are when I inevitably mention one of my many experiences with the Youth Group, my answer usually comes out like this: I believe that there are problems in this world - many of them - but that there are also people willing to give what it takes to solve them. I believe this because I have seen these people, and I stand before them today, trying to do justice to the skills and inspiration they have given me over the years.
And don’t tell Mom, but I’m kind of proud of her for stepping up to the plate and getting her hands dirty with the problems of the world. If nothing else, this church is where “get your hands dirty” meets “many hands make light work.” Many dirty hands – that’s what this church means to me.
David Reynolds
