Manhattan - Poor Little Kid 穷孩子

Here’s a sermon celebrating the diversity in New York.

Sermon transcript: Manhattan, August 2024

“My mother and father were married in 1948. They lived up in Brooklyn and they had a wonderful apartment. My dad had a job as being a truck driver. It was a bread truck. Bread, you know, bread and donuts like that, but mostly bread. His first route, you know, he had to go all the way from Greenport all the way up into the Bronx where they picked up all the bread and the trucks were there and his route was all around the Bronx. He met a lot of Latino folks, people from Jamaica and they call the bread pain de vie, bread of life. My father said, “Oh, that’s interesting.” And you are talking with the Jamaican people... “Yeah, this is the real bread man, this is the real bread! This is very important!” So my father, even though he’s a decorated World War II vet, yet very familiar, this wasn’t just a job but a vocation. He’s meeting with different people from different backgrounds, but they still have this desire for the bread. They made it delivery and he made sure the bread was never stale. And if it was stale, he would give it up to the homeless people, whoever. And then, you know, years later, when he became a shop steward, he was allowed to do delivery over in Brooklyn. It was in Borough Park, which is mostly an orthodox Jewish neighborhood. And you know, he got very friendly with the rabbis and the Jewish owners of the stores around there. They call, “Hey, GJ, he’s bringing manna from heaven, bread from heaven!” They all were joking around there. They had this great relationship with all the different ethnicities of New York, makes it such a great rich city...”

What do you think?¶

Questions

Audience¶

In addition to the on-site and in-person audience, the service was livestreamed and it remains on YouTube^[1]. So the audience is limited to neither time nor space. Among others:

Folks who volunteer or work with the homeless: are they being reminded that the homeless are at least as venerable, if not more?
Folks who were, who are or who will be homeless^[2]: are they being affirmed that we all eat the same bread?
Folks who live in excess: are they being invited to alternatives, that that’s not the only way to live?
Hearts and minds young and old: does this serve as a lesson that New York is rich in diversity, which naturally includes everyone, whether homeless or not?

Stale bread¶

Is that the best way to share and distribute resources?

Is excess the only way we can live in?

Diversity¶

Do all the different ethnicities of New York include the homeless?

... if it was stale, he would give it up to the homeless people...

“Everybody” says that all the time, a refrain too common.

Not just homeless people, but

homeless people, whoever.

Who are the “whoever”?

Haven’t we been cheering (and booing):

All men are created equal.

Footnotes¶

If you’d like to skip ahead, you can skip the first 20 minutes and 15 seconds of the YouTube video.
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There is indeed a steady presence of guardian angels keeping watch inside and outside the church.
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