Amos 7:7-17
Psalm 82
Colossians 1:1-14
Luke 10:25-37
May the words of my mouth and the meditations of our hearts be acceptable to you, O Lord, our rock and our redeemer. Amen.
If you know the lyrics, sing along. If you don’t, then just hum. Nobody is going to mind.
It’s a beautiful day in this neighborhood; it’s a beautiful day for a neighbor.
Would you be mine? Could you be mine?
It’s a neighborly day in this beauty wood; a neighborly day for a beauty.
Would you be mine? Could you be mine?
Would you be mine? Could you be mine?
I’ve 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.[1]
New episodes of “Mister Rogers’ Neighborhood” were shown on PBS stations from 1970 until 2001 and on National Educational Television two years before that. Reruns aren’t available on local stations, but they are through the PBS Kids web site.[2]
The show was characterized by its quiet simplicity and gentleness. Episodes did not have a plot, but they did have a theme. They consisted of Rogers speaking directly to viewers about various issues, taking the viewer on tours of factories, demonstrating experiments, crafts, and music, and interacting with his friends. The half-hour episodes were punctuated by a puppet segment chronicling occurrences in the “Neighborhood of Make-Believe.”
At the beginning of each episode, Mister Rogers enters his television studio house singing “Won’t You Be My Neighbor?” He hangs up his suit jacket, puts on a zippered cardigan, then takes off his dress shoes to put on his sneakers. One of Rogers’ sweaters now hangs in the Smithsonian, a testament to the cultural influence of his simple daily ritual.
Rogers covered a broad range of topics over the years, and the series did not shy away from issues that other children’s programming avoided. In fact, Rogers endeared himself to many when, on March 23, 1970, he dealt with the death of one of his pet goldfish. The series also dealt with competition, divorce, and war. Rogers returned to the topic of anger regularly and focused on peaceful ways of dealing with angry feelings.[3]
All of this happened in the context of Mister Rogers’ Neighborhood, a mystical place where the imaginary fourth wall of the television screen magically disappeared for a half hour and we were all welcomed into a world of peace and grace.
Considering Mister Fred Rogers was a graduate of Pittsburgh Theological Seminary and an ordained PC(USA) Minister, welcoming children into a world of peace and grace was his vocation as well as his passion.
So the expert in religious law came to test Jesus asking, “Teacher, what must I do to inherit eternal life?” Jesus replies in true rabbinical fashion, asking a question when an answer is sought. “What is written in the Law?”
The lawyer answers this question by a perfect recitation from Leviticus and Deuteronomy[4] saying, “You shall love the Lord your God with all your heart, and with all your soul, and with all your strength and with all your mind; and your neighbor as yourself.” Jesus affirms the lawyer’s answer saying, “Do this, and you will live.” The experts in the law commonly accepted that observance of the Torah was essential to inherit eternal life.[5] So when Jesus and the lawyer agree on this point, they share the truth of thousands of years of tradition.
But the lawyer’s questions are more than an academic or rabbinic exercise. He wants to justify himself. So he asks Jesus another question, “Who is my neighbor?” This is an important question, more important than we may suppose. What gets lost in the translation of Leviticus is that the original command to love the neighbor specifies “your kin” and “any of your people.”[6] So the lawyer wants to be justified that by helping his family, his people, and his nation he will inherit eternal life.
Then Jesus tells the legal expert a story and asks him another question, “So which of these three, the Priest, the Levite, or the Samaritan, do you think was a neighbor to the man who fell into the hands of the robbers?”
The lawyer answers, “The one who showed him mercy was a neighbor.” This must have been difficult for the expert in the law. He knew it wasn’t his people, the Priest or the Levite, but he couldn’t push the name of his dreaded cousin past his lips. Instead he says, “The one who showed him mercy was a neighbor.”
Saying this, the lawyer, the expert in the law tells the world that being a neighbor is about more than just being kin or members of the same nation. It has to do with action and mercy. Being a neighbor now means more than it did in Leviticus. Then Jesus gives him his charge, “Go, and do likewise.”
Jesus shares the vision of inheriting eternal life written in the Torah with the lawyer. Then he shows him that the Living Torah, the person and the work and the word of Jesus Christ, expands the Torah given to Moses. Justification by the Torah now means that loving God and loving your neighbor are inseparable.[7] Being justified means more than just taking care of business as usual.
The hardest part about this story is that the holy men in the parable, the priest and the Levite, were doing what they were supposed to do. They were going to work. They were doing what was right in the name of the Law. They followed the rules and abided by the regulations approved by the General Assembly, er, the Presbytery, er, the law handed down to Moses. They did the right thing in the eyes of the law, but doing what was right was no longer enough in the eyes of God.
To the Greco-Roman world, the cradle of Western culture, mercy was a character flaw; the ideal was justice. Since mercy involves providing unearned help or relief, it was contrary to justice. This unearned relief, we call it grace.
Sociologist Rodney Stark put it this way. “The notion that the gods care how we treat one another would have been dismissed as patently absurd. This was the moral climate in which Christianity taught that mercy is one of the primary virtues—that a merciful God requires humans to be merciful. Moreover, the corollary that because God loves humanity, Christians may not please God unless they love one another was something entirely new.”[8]
Mercy is the new benchmark in justification. Mercy is the new benchmark in being a neighbor. Mercy has a place in the administration of justice in the Christ’s kingdom and only the Samaritan acted in accord with the living Torah.
Only the despised Samaritan showed love in an act of mercy. Only the loathed foreigner connected loving God and loving your neighbor as the way to being justified. Only the reviled outsider saw his brother left beaten on the side of the road. Only the detested alien saw the way to justification through mercy. Only the abhorred stranger showed the divinely required attitude we are to share with one another.
An ancient rabbi once asked his pupils how they could tell when the night had ended and the day was on its way back. “Could it be,” asked one student, “when you can see an animal in the distance and tell whether it is a sheep or a dog?” “No,” answered the Rabbi. “Could it be,” asked another, “when you look at a tree in the distance and tell whether it is a fig tree or a peach tree?” “No,” said the Rabbi. “Well, then what is it?” his pupils demanded. “It is when you look on someone’s face and can see… your brother. Because if you cannot do this, then no matter what time it is, it is still night.”[9]
In the past month, there has been quite a commotion about Mr. Rogers. The people at Fox News found a 2007 article by Jeffrey Zaslow from the Wall Street Journal titled, “Blame It on Mr. Rogers: Why Young Adults Feel So Entitled” [10] At the center of the article was LSU finance professor Don Chance who observed a “culture of excessive doting” in 21st Century university students The article begins:
[The professor] says it dawned on him last spring. The semester was ending, and as usual, students were making a pilgrimage to his office, asking for the extra points needed to lift their grades to A’s.
“They felt entitled,” he recalls, “and it just hit me. We can blame Mr. Rogers.”
Professor Chance notes Asian students, students who did not grow up with Mr. Rogers, accept “B’s and C’s as an indication that they must work harder, and that their elders assessed them accurately.” The article continues:
By contrast, American students often view lower grades as a reason to “hit you up for an A because they came to class and feel they worked hard,” says Prof. Chance. He wishes more parents would offer kids this perspective: “The world owes you nothing. You have to work and compete. If you want to be special, you'll have to prove it.”
If there is one thing I can agree with after working over ten years in higher education, it’s that there is a sense of entitlement among students. I have seen that sense of entitlement reinforced by some parents and grandparents who called to ask if there wasn’t any way I could give Junior one more chance. I don’t say that Professor Chance is wrong about that. I do say that his finger pointing is misdirected. I won’t say where it should be directed, but putting this on Mr. Rogers is wrong.
Looking at Mr. Rogers’ point of view, we need to remember that he was a Christian and a Presbyterian minister. He pastored children daily for over 40 years. He told children, the weakest members of any society, that in the eyes of God they are loved and have value. He told misfits they are loved. He told fat kids they are loved. He told bullied kids they are loved. He told poor kids they are loved. He told abused kids they are loved. Even if it is just in his neighborhood, they are loved.
He loves them. He is their neighbor. He invited children into that neighborhood daily not so that they could beg for grades from Professor Chance fifteen years later, but so that they could know grace and peace and mercy and love and hope. It’s true; this world isn’t looking to do them or anyone else any favors, but through Christ God offers us grace, peace, mercy, love, hope, and salvation. We are freely offered grace as a gift, not as payment for services rendered. If it were, it wouldn’t be grace. This is what Mr. Rogers offered his audience daily.
Gentleness, love, mercy, peace, grace; isn’t this what we want from our neighbors? It sure beats the scorn and ridicule, derision and division we see every day. We want people in our lives showing the fullness of God’s mercy to everyone, not just some.
We want to know what it is to receive divine mercy, God’s divine loving-kindness. We must realize that this mercy arises out of a mutual relationship one for another, not just as a winner-take-all justice the ancient Greeks favored.
If Professor Chance and Fox News want us to believe we have no value outside of what we can do for our economy and ourselves that is their business. It is after all the way of the world. On the whole though, I prefer to live a state of grace, a place where I know what is most important cannot be earned, it can only be given. A place where that grace is freely given, even if it’s just for 30 minutes a day with a man in a zip up cardigan.
Luke shows us the lawyer accepts Jesus’ revision of the Torah. He learns that the one who shows mercy like the Samaritan is the neighbor, not those who share family or heritage like the priest and the Levite. What might have started as a theological exercise between the lawyer and teacher becomes more when the Torah comes to life in Jesus Christ.
When the law comes to life, we can no longer answer these questions like we’re taking a college entrance exam. We now have to answer the questions with our hands even more than we do with our heads. Jesus commands us to be good neighbors; loving the Lord our God with all our heart, and with all our soul, and with all our mind, and with all our strength; and our neighbor as ourselves. On this the words of the Law and the prophets hang.
This is our call, this is our vocation. It is no longer enough to do just what the written law tells us; now there is more. We are called to this new word of discipleship when Jesus charges the lawyer, “Go, and do likewise.” Or as Mr. Rogers once said:
When I was a boy and I would see scary things in the news my mother would say to me, “Look for the helpers. You will always find people who are helping.”
Friends in Christ, Mr. Rogers tells us, Jesus tells us, those who help are our neighbors. 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?
[1] Rogers, Fred, “It’s a Beautiful Day in the Neighborhood.” Pittsburgh, PA: Family Communications, Inc., 1967.
[2] From the PBSKids.org websie retrieved July 12, 2013.
[3] Mr. Rogers’ Neighborhood, http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mister_Rogers%27_Neighborhood, retrieved July 8, 2010
[4] Leviticus 19:18, Deuteronomy 6:5
[5] “Adlet and Blink,” Commentary section, from Homiletics Online, http://homileticsonline.com/subscriber/printer_friendly_installment.asp?installment_id=930000347, accessed June 10, 2007.
[6] Cousar, Charles B., Gaventa, Beverly R., McCann, Jr., J. Clinton, Newsome, James D., Texts for Preaching, A Lectionary Commentary Based on the NRSV, YEAR C. Louisville, KY: Westminster John Knox Press, 1994, page 427.
[7] Kittel, Gerhardt, “Theological Dictionary of the New Testament, vol. vi, page 316
[8] Galloway, Paul, “How Jesus Won the West: Christianity became dominant because it offered better ideas and unexpected mercy,” The Lutheran, November 1998, 19.
[9] Thompson, Marjorie J. “Soul Feast” Louisville: Westminster John Knox Press, 1995, 127.
[10] Zaslow, Jeffrey, “Blame It on Mr. Rogers: Why Young Adults Feel So Entitled.” Wall Street Journal, July 5, 2007, retrieved July 12, 2013.
An especially helpful sermon offered by a gifted preacher. Many thanks.
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