“Please won’t you be my neighbor.”
Fred Rogers
My sister tells the story of how her then 3 year old daughter ran into the kitchen one day and announced: “Mommy, the man on the TV said I am special.” It’s one isolated example of what was the experience of probably millions of children over the years that Fred Rogers was airing his show “Mister Rogers Neighborhood.” Mr. Rogers figured out how to reach through the TV and touch children with the good news that they were worth talking to and listening to. He bridged the divide not with loud noises and outrageous slapstick designed to “grab their attention,” but with a still small voice that simply said, “I’d like to get to know you and be your neighbor.” And the kids he spoke to believed him.
Fred Rogers was ordained by the Pittsburgh Presbytery in 1963 as a Minister of Word and Sacrament with a special calling to be an evangelist through the medium of public television. With that action the presbytery brought fresh meaning to the words evangelist and minister. Yet this new meaning was actually the resurrection of a very old meaning. For the good news evangelists are called to give witness is the love of Jesus Christ. Their job, the calling that the Lord issues to all of his followers, is to give witness to him by loving God and loving neighbors. Our call is not to grab attention and make converts. Our job is to show-up and calmly point to the One whom we follow by loving others in the same way he loved us.
In Mr. Roger’s neighborhood the word neighbor was as much a verb as it was a noun. It was not simply a static concept defined by geography or status. It was a choice to act in a neighborly way. It was synonymous with the act of being a neighbor to another. To neighbor was to extend oneself in service to another through acts of sacrifice, friendship, generosity and love. Fred Roger’s neighborhood of make believe was a gentle place where even acts that threatened the neighborhood were confronted in a gentle way. And because of this it could at times seem a bit unrealistic and maybe even a bit creepy. It was therefore easy to make fun of it and many did just that.
I have certainly been among those scoffers. But I must admit that when my children outgrew this show, I grieved a bit. For I needed to hear Fred Rogers call me special as much as they needed it. I needed to recognize the Lady Elaine Fairchild, the King Friday the 13th, and the Daniel Striped Tiger in me. I needed to hear Fred Roger’s reach out to the cynic, the narcissist, and the timid, uncertain one who lived in me. In his gentle way, Fred Rogers was calling all of us to be gentle with those parts of ourselves that needed to be invited into a bigger space.
There is enormous power in this kind of confident gentleness. It is the power that does not retreat from hard truth or attempt to somehow gloss it over with feigned kindness or cheap grace. It is the power that chooses to engage and know the other even when all evidence suggests that the chasm between the other and us can never be bridged. It is the power that enables us to become neighbors to those we never before acknowledged to be neighbors. It’s the power embodied in Jesus, who though he was in the form of God did not count equality with God a thing to be exploited, but emptied himself of that power for our sake and chose to become our friend and neighbor.
Rejoice in the Lord always; again, I will say: Rejoice.
Let your gentleness be known to everyone. The Lord is near.
Do not worry about anything, but in everything by prayer and supplication with thanksgiving
let your requests be made known to God.
And the peace of God, which surpasses all understanding,
will guard your hearts and minds in Christ Jesus our Lord.
(Philippians 4:4-7)
David Rohrer
06/16/2023