August 15, 1999
Sermon preached by Rev. Donald Ng at the First Chinese Baptist Church of San Francisco.
It can never be said that Adele Gaboury’s neighbors were less than responsible. When her lawn grew hip-high, they had a local boy mow it down. When her pipes froze and burst, they had the water turned off. When the mail spilled out the front door, they called the police.
The only thing they didn’t do was check to see if she was alive. She wasn’t.
On Monday, police climbed her crumbling brick stoop, broke in the side door of her little blue house and found what they believe to be the 73-year-old woman’s skeletal remains sunk in a five-foot-high pile of trash where they had apparently lain for as long as four years.
It’s not a very friendly neighborhood,” said Eileen Dugan who is 70 years old herself, once a close friend of Gaboury’s, whose house sits less than 20 feet from the dead woman’s home. “I’m as much to blame as anyone. She was alone and needed someone to talk to, but I was working two jobs and was sick of her coming over at all hours of the day. Eventually I stopped answering the door.”
This true story reported in the Boston Globe, my hometown paper, may grow increasingly frequent as our society slides steadily away from verbal interaction and rapidly toward isolation.
Tracing the steady regression of our society from one of community interdependence to complete independence, John Locke from Harvard University said,
“Increasingly we go it alone, underexercising evolved faculties for social
communication. Sending few messages about ourselves, we get back few
reactions from others. We thus night-sail blindly into uncharted social
waters, dissociated from the usual ways of knowing where we are going and
what we might be becoming. Many of us are beginning to develop the
symptoms of an undiagnosed social condition, a kind of functional
“de-voicing” brought on by an insufficient diet of intimate talking.”
Basically, what Locke is saying is that we don’t know how to talk with one another anymore.
Water Cooler
In offices, the water cooler used to hold a special place for business folks. It was the interoffice gathering point where people could freely assemble. It was the shrine to office gab where people told their best weekend golf story or complained about the
weather. It was the place within the business where people escaped from the official business to do people business.
You don’t hear much about water coolers anymore. It’s not that we’re drinking less; we’re just drinking differently.
Now we drink from individually packaged bottles that bang their way down the vending machine. Now we’ll spend a dollar for premium selzer water that comes in orange or raspberry flavor.
What we don’t realize is that if we lose the water cooler, we pull the plug on a critical component of human relationships—small talk.
Human Moment
Not many years ago, many of our great grandparents and grandparents lived in small village towns in China’s countryside. They lived with the same hundred people or so for their entire lives. They engaged in commerce, amusement and worship with people they knew and trusted. And those they did not trust entirely but they still knew whose family they came from. They talked to each other until modern communication and transportation came. Today people in some of the most remote areas in the world now have cell phones.
And look at us, second, third or even later generations of Asian Americans. With the introduction of the telephone, we no longer depend on the community for engaging conversation, buying goods, and attaining services. First, we got telephones.
Then Ford’s horseless buggy.
Then Orville and Wilbur’s areoplane.
Then movies.
Then talkies.
Then radio.
Then television.
Then computers.
Then fax machines.
Then call waiting, call forwarding, caller I.D.
Then the web.
Then e-mail and voice mail.
With all the modern communication changes that we have, we have made a lot of face-to-face interaction unnecessary. When we use e-mail and faxes, we usually get to the point. We dispense with the customary courtesies—small talk. We are in danger of losing the “human moment”—the “encounter that can happen only when two people share the same physical space” and talk with each other.
Our culture now seems fully atomized, individualized, decentralized, privatized and—sterilized, so that there’s no longer a need for the “human moment.”
Do you need the human moment in order to shop until you drop? No.
Need the human moment to conference with colleagues? No.
Need the human moment to send documents? No.
Need the human moment to chat in a “chat room” full of others? No.
Need the human moment to play games? No.
Need the human moment to get cash, get paid, pay bills, or make deposits? No.
Need the human moment to send mail? No.
Need the human moment to become and stay emotionally and spiritually whole? Yes.
A lot of information is being shared. But speaking and talking, though similar, are not synonymous. Speaking is the transfer of information through vocal means. Talking is a much richer and deeper experience. You can speak on the phone, but you can’t really talk. Because talking is not at all about transferring information. It’s about relationship. Communion. Interfacing with another human being. Look what happens when I cover my face from you. Talking utilizes not just the vocabulary of language, but also the visual cues of subtle glances, raised eyebrows, the concerned wince and the strategic wink. Talking is about relaxing, relating, and releasing.
God Dwells with Us
God knew this when he decided to visit the planet. In the past, he spoke to our ancestors through the prophets at many times and in various ways, “but in these last days he has spoken to us by a Son.” (Hebrews 1:1-2) The Word was made flesh, and dwelt among us. God was not content to give us just raw information. His plan, through the ages, was and is to dwell with his people. God wants to hang out with his creation.
And for his people to dwell richly with each other. God wants us to hang out with one another.
Psalm 133 echoes this kind of rich community. Verse 1 says, “How very good and pleasant it is when kindred or brothers dwell together in unity!” You see the sharing of land was not without quarrels and squabbles, often resulting in severe family disagreements and sometimes violence. Abram and Lot were unable to coexist on the same land with their flocks, families, and hired help, and neither were Jacob and Esau.
Live together. Dwell. Not just cohabit. Not just to speak. Not just passing each other. Dwell. Verse 3 tells us that it’s there, in that kind of unity that the Lord bestows his blessing. “For there the Lord ordained his blessing, life forevermore.”
Hanging Out at Church
As each week passes, I am beginning to detect not just the groaning of climbing up steep Clay Street, but the sadness of losing our church as a dwelling place. We worship here
and study here, but we eventually migrate back to Waverly to eat lunch and to dwell. After most of the tables and chairs have been moved out of the church, we return anyway and sit on the floor, windowsills, stairs, any place we can gather, just to dwell some more.
I have noticed that after Sunday morning, the Women Society, but mostly Mrs. Chin hangs out in the sanctuary. The families of Edward & Gem, Milton and SoBe, Olivia and Derek, Amy and Brutus, Steven and Anna hang out in the balcony. College students hang out in Room 2. And our youth with their MacDonald lunches hang out in the Fellowship Hall. For them, the Fellowship Hall is their “Hang Out Hall.” Countless numbers of small groups hang out in the greasy spoons of Chinatown! And whenever there’s a meeting, we usually hang out in Room 3.
To “hang out” is a special thing. There is no specific way to define the experience, but everyone who has ever done it knows what it is all about. It means, first, that you have friends…But aside from friends, there must also be a place… a good place that each person carries in his/her heart, the place of safety, the place where harshness of the real world is fended off.
Very soon, we will not be physically allowed to return to Waverly to hang out. And this is a concern for me because we as a church like to dwell and hang out. We enjoy talking and sharing with each other and I am worried that without places to hang out, we might stop having small talk with each other.
Although we are not permitted to eat food at the Lau school, I am wondering how we might develop and learn new behaviors to dwell here until we can return to Waverly.
Is it possible for our youth to learn to eat outside on the playground and then to come in to the school cafeteria to hang out?
Is it possible for us to discover new restaurants closer to the school where we can have lunch and return for meetings and fellowships?
Is it possible for us to invite those who normally hang out at church to come out to have lunch with us?
Is it possible for us to value the shorten time we have together on Sundays and to extend whenever we can, time for fellowship and sharing on other days of the week in our homes? Edward Cheng came up with a great idea of organizing geographical-based Bible study/fellowship groups for at least the duration of our construction project. We can share our lives together and prepare ourselves to return to our church home when it is time. I think this would be a great idea!
And as a pastoral/office staff team, we plan to meet physically once a week to have a face-to face human moment to build relationships and dwell richly with each other. Our off-site offices need to also be on-site even if it might be in a restaurant.
Small Talk
When we do find places to hang out, what we do is small talk. As you know, small talk needs no specific topic. It exists not for the sake of saying something particular but for connecting us with others. In that sense, it may be small, but it is not trivial. In fact, it is vitally important, not because of what it says, but because of what it does. It’s a part of the cement that bonds people to each other.
At church, we participate in Chinese American small talk. “Have you eaten yet?” is our equivalent to “How are you?” We invite each other to come and eat with us. We ask about the family and how tall the children have gotten. Toishan people sometimes would even talk about how skinny or heavy you may appear right in front of you without the idea that it may be impolite from the western perspective. It’s all a part of small talk to acknowledge one’s presence.
Ironically, what may appear to be superficial and polite bantering is necessary leading to truly deep relationships. It is through daily convergence of lives that small morsels of trust are passed. When we try to rush toward intimacy before we are ready, it usually backfires. Those who tend to jump ahead and skip the necessity of small talk, fail to realize its true size.
Remember the story about Zacchaeus in Luke 19. Jesus was in Jericho only because he was heading to Jerusalem. Maybe in haste, Jesus was passing through. Now the crowds swelled along the streets because of the wonderful things that were being done by Jesus. Although Jesus was going to Jerusalem to fulfill his mission, he notices Zacchaeus up on the tree. Being short and small, he climbed a sycamore tree and had a “human moment” with Jesus. Jesus wouldn’t have seen him if Zacchaeus didn’t climb the tree.
And instead of just speaking to Zacchaeus under that sycamore tree for a moment, Jesus commands him to come down so that he can hang out at his house. “Zacchaeus, hurry and come down; for I must stay at your house today.” The Bible doesn’t tell what Jesus and Zacchaeus talk about, but I betcha it started out with small talk. Eventually, the small talk led to Zacchaeus’ conversion both in his business dealings and his faith in God. Jesus said to him, “Today, salvation has come to this house.”
Hang Out Hall
Along with 85 youth and about 30 staff and counselors, I experienced my first Youth Camp after 22 years. I was a “rookie.” It was a great experience for me because I had the chance to meet and spend time with many of the youth and adults there. I basically “hung out” and had small talk with everyone. I learned their names. I met the grads who attended seven years of camps. With some I listened to their life situations and cried with them. The small talk was significant because it will lead to the beginning of life-long relationships of trust, acceptance, and transformation.
So let us not grieve too much longer on the loss of our “hang out hall” at our Waverly building. If our youth can have small talk at Youth Camp at Redwood Glen, let us commit ourselves in discovering and creating new “hang out halls, hang out hallways, hang out classrooms, hang out water coolers, hang out homes, hang out restaurants, hang out playgrounds and park benches, all kinds of hang out places” that will sustain us until we return next year.
By the way, the retrofit/renovation project will have a new public water cooler on the second floor for all of us to hang out and engage in small talk.
Let us pray.
Dear Gracious God, grant us the time and commitment to hang out with our sisters and brothers in Christ. May the times we spend with each other in small talk lead to mutually supporting and caring for each other’s burdens as you have carried the burdens of our lives on the Cross. In Jesus’ name we pray. Amen.