#IAmFredRogers

Mark 6: 1-13
New Ark United Church of Christ, Newark, DE
July 8, 2018

         

         This past Monday I went to see the documentary “Won’t You Be My Neighbor?” and I forgot to bring tissues. I was about 30 seconds into it, the theme music to “Mister Rogers’ Neighborhood” began, and the tears were flowing like streams of mercy never ceasing.

It's a beautiful day in this neighborhood, 

A beautiful day for a neighbor, 

Would you be mine? 

Could you be mine? 

It's a neighborly day in this beautywood, 

A neighborly day for a beauty, 

Would you be mine? 

Could you be mine? 

I have always wanted to have a neighbor just like you, 

I've always wanted to live in a neighborhood with you. 

So let's make the most of this beautiful day, 

Since we're together, we might as well say, 

Would you be mine? 

Could you be mine? 

Won't you be my neighbor? 

Won't you please, 

Won't you please, 

Please won't you be my neighbor?

         If your soul is hurting, if you need some tenderness, if you’re feeling empty, if you haven’t had a good cry in a while (and trust me, you need it), do your heart some good and go see this movie with the biggest handkerchief you can find, with someone who loves you just the way you are.



       

         If people were astounded and offended by anything Jesus taught, it was probably “Love your neighbor as yourself”. Why is unconditional love not just hard but scary? Because we might have to really and truly love ourselves? Because we might have to love those who are difficult to love? Or for the very valid reason we’re scared it would put us in a dangerous place with those who have hurt us? It’s not an anything-goes kind of love but neither is it contingent on anything except our willingness, our faith in it.





         Unconditional love is messy and vulnerable and imperfect and it feels impossible. It has plenty of room for transparency and accountability and healthy boundaries but it’s also wide with forgiveness and letting go of resentment and keeping score. It’s justice for those who have been wronged, and sometimes that’s everybody involved. It’s about the long haul and wholeness and evolution as much as it is about the present moment and what’s passed before us.

       

         Unconditional love has always been hard and scary, long before Jesus, ever since Leviticus proclaimed “Love your neighbor as yourself”. It’s even harder and scarier given the current social and political climate where there are only winners and losers and a renewed attitude of “us and them”, as in “good us” and “evil them”. Jesus’ story of the good Samaritan was probably not popular at all with those who first heard it because it could’ve just as easily been called “The Good Enemy”. We—the “us” we—loved Mr. Rogers when he invited a black police officer portrayed by François Clemmons to share his cool pool on a hot day, but Fred could not accept for the longest time that François was gay. Even Mr. Rogers couldn’t practice everything he preached, not all at once. Even Jesus got schooled by a Syro-Phoenician woman, an immigrant.

         Unconditional love is how we learn to trust, and when trust is broken, it’s how we heal and begin again. Last night CNN had a headline that read “The immigration crisis is about the devaluation of love”.  Even more so, it’s about our nation’s history, our world’s history with the devaluation of love. Which means we have chosen something else, many things, above love as our highest value, and lately even more so. In Luke’s version of this story, the crowd drove him out of the synagogue with the intention of throwing him over a cliff. Mr. Rogers was parodied by Saturday Night Live, National Lampoon, Robin Williams, and Johnny Carson, sometimes even going so far as to cast aspersions on his motives toward children. And yet both Jesus and Mr. Rogers would probably agree that children grasp the gospel of unconditional love and practice it better than most adults.



         Now in these mean times we yearn for Mr. Rogers and his gentle ways but we still bristle against that love, that big Jesus love of his, that love being for anyone who makes fun of differently abled people; anyone who carried a torch in Charlottesville; anyone who would tear children away from their parents; anyone who views LGBTQ persons as less than deserving of equal rights and safe space; anyone who perpetuates a system of evil.



       

         But then that last one is all of us. We all live in it; we all have it in us—good and evil, care and harm, creation and destruction, love, hate, and fear. And I don’t how we do it, but it is love that will heal humankind and the earth, not fear. It is justice that will restore, not violence. It is compassion that will bring people together, not shared animosity. It is forgiveness that will reconcile, not power. It’s giving that makes for enough, not withholding. Together is how we will create the future, not in our bunkers and silos. I don’t know how we will do it, but I do know I don’t want one more drop of blood to spill to accomplish it. We despise the cross and misconstrue its bloodshed. It was a sacrifice made not to appease a monster god but to show love to, to mirror the monster, the bully within each of us—to give us the choice: who will we be?



        Each day we are sent out into the world, sometimes with company, sometimes on our own, usually taking more than we need, including a lot of baggage. Who will we be for this world? If each of us gave what Mr. Rogers offered, which was the essence of what Jesus offered, the world would indeed be a safer, kinder, more just, more loving place for all of us.






Amen.


Benediction


It's such a good feeling
To know you're alive.
It's such a happy feeling;
You're growing inside.
And when you wake up ready to say:
I think I'll make a snappy new day.
It's such a good feeling,
A very good feeling.
The feeling you know, that I'll be back
When the day is new.
And I'll have more ideas for you.
And you'll have things you'll want to talk about.
I will too.