The Biggest Neighborhood in the Whole Wide World (updated version)

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A sermon shared at the Suttons Bay Congregational Church

December 30, 2018

(updated)

Scripture: Luke 10:25-37

(the parable of the Good Samaritan)

         The end of the year serves for many of us as an occasion to look backward at how we’ve done so we can move forward with the goal of doing better. This often takes the form of regrets about past years and resolutions for the new one. Alas, the latter may fail to usher us down the storied paths of righteousness. As Mark Twain observed, “Now is the accepted time to make your annual good resolutions. Next week you can begin paving hell with them as usual.”

         Although the odds may not favor me, I cling to Jesus’s assurance that “with God, all things are possible” and so hold out hope. In that spirit, I have recently dedicated some time to looking backward—even way backward—to get a glimpse into the darker corners of my past. This has led me to an appalling, shocking, and dreadful realization that I will confess to you this morning.

Here it comes: when I was young, I did not like Fred Rogers or his television show, Mister Rogers’ Neighborhood.

         My text says: pause here for gasps and to allow people time to leave in a huff or throw chunks of leftover fruitcake.

         My defense, to the extent I have one, rests in my age when his show achieved its popularity.  Mister Rogers hit his stride in the 1970s, when I was approaching and entering my teenage years. I certainly had nothing against him; even through the skeptical and all-knowing eyes of adolescence I could tell that Fred Rogers exuded kindness.

But that was precisely the problem: in those years, kindness did not stand out to me as an quality or activity of the highest order. I associated kindness with softness and at that age I wanted nothing to do with that dreaded “s” word. No, I was fully focused on what I saw as the three most important rituals of fully realized manhood: driving, shaving, and figuring out how to get that girl in my homeroom class to talk to me.

         As I grew older, I came to associate two other “s” words with kindness. One is spontaneity. I think I acquired this idea by living in Ann Arbor and finding myself more or less constantly behind a car with a bumper sticker instructing me to engage in random acts of kindness. I took these to be small and spontaneous things, like holding the elevator door for someone, or giving money to a homeless person, or smiling at a parent who is trying to quiet a screaming child in a restaurant while everyone else glares at them.

Of course, there’s nothing wrong with any of these small acts of kindness—but it also seems fair to ask if we should strive for more. Thomas Jefferson wanted his gravestone to note that he had authored the Declaration of Independence. Who among us hopes that ours will proudly declare: “Always tipped twenty percent.”

Then there’s that third “s” word that we associate with kindness. Actually, I can give you a few “s” choices here, all getting at the same thing: Sensitive. Sweet. Saccharine. Take your pick. Here we equate kindness with niceness or even with some sort of slavish warm fuzziness. A kind person, we think, does nothing to trouble us—except possibly make our teeth ache from the sugar.

Let’s be clear: all of these things contribute to the common good and deserve our praise. The woman with her arms full who has a door held open for her, the homeless man who gets a few dollars from a smiling stranger, the exasperated mother who receives a sympathetic glance from an adjoining table, the beleaguered waiter who discovers twenty percent added to the bill—these acts make their lives better. They matter. We need every last act of kindness we can get these days, regardless of its size.

But this morning I want to suggest that we sell kindness short—and may even inadvertently give it a bad reputation—if we think of it only in the limited ways captured by these characteristics of softness, spontaneity, and sweetness. Jesus had important things to say about this. I have come to realize that Fred Rogers did, too. And maybe, just maybe, we can find in what they have to tell us some useful instruction for how to go about making the coming year a better and more meaningful one.

Let’s start here. Its reputation for softness notwithstanding, kindness sometimes requires courage and can even come at a significant cost. Take the Good Samaritan. We meet him traveling in notoriously dangerous territory—the road to Jericho, famous for its robberies and assaults. He knew violent bandits were in the area because he discovered one of their victims. Rushing to the aid of that stranger put him at substantial personal risk: indeed, this explains why the priest and the Levite crossed to the other side of the road and hustled out of there.

But not our Good Samaritan. He did not flee. He stopped to help. He rescued the man. He cared for him. He paid for his room and promised to cover any excess expenses.

“Good” Samaritan? Talk about understatement! How about the “Gutsy” Samaritan or even the “Gritty” Samaritan? This guy stops in the worst part of town, field dresses a man’s wounds, lifts him up and puts him on a donkey, delivers him to safety, and foots the bill. To use the vernacular, the “Good” Samaritan must have been one “bad” dude.

I never thought of Fred Rogers in those terms—but then I saw a recent documentary about him called “Won’t You Be My Neighbor?” and it completely changed my perspective. Let me tell you: that Rogers guy, in his fussy little sweaters and colorful sneakers, he had courage.

At the time Fred Rogers entered the field, children’s television programming followed a well-established formula for success: a splashy and colorful set, lots of noise and action, and as little talking and thinking as humanly possible. A Punch and Judy show, without the subtlety.

Mister Rogers stood every single part of that formula on its head.

Do you remember the set? It looked like something your eccentric uncle had cobbled together out of cardboard, spit, and glue. You worried that if he sneezed it might topple over.

No loud displays here. Mister Rogers spoke in a quiet and thoughtful voice. And no one could accuse the show of being action-packed.

Most, importantly, though, Mister Rogers completely changed the substance of children’s programming. Rather than offer kids more of the nonsense and slapstick violence that routinely washed over them from their television sets, he took on countless tough subjects: Death. Divorce. Prejudice. Segregation. Sickness. The assassination of Robert F. Kennedy. The Challenger disaster. 9/11.

Over and over again, Fred Rogers proved himself to be the Good Samaritan of children’s television. He never fled to the easier side of the road. He met kids where he found them. And he picked them up and took them someplace better, where they could heal from the world’s wounds.

The lessons of his program remain hauntingly relevant. Consider this: in a five-episode series in 1968, controversy erupts in the Neighborhood of Make-Believe when King Friday XIII—one of the puppets on the show—wants to build a border wall to keep people out who frighten him. Sound familiar? And that was fifty years ago.

All this kindness took a lot of planning on Fred Rogers’ part. And, indeed, while the kindness shown by the Good Samaritan probably qualifies as spontaneous—our second “s” word—we often have to do some advance work as we go about the business of God’s love. We may find we even need to be a bit calculating in the process.

We might bristle at the idea of associating kindness with calculation, but we shouldn’t. If we “love it when a plan comes together,” then we should love it even more when the plan is one of love. And remember that God’s greatest expression of compassion is reflected in a plan that took a few millennia to implement: the fulfillment of an ancient prophecy that brought a savior into the world.

Jesus understood that sometimes we will need to be calculated, canny, and crafty in our kindness. I think this explains why he said to his disciples: “I am sending you out like sheep among wolves, so be as wise as serpents and as innocent as doves.” Translations vary here, rendering the word “wise” as “shrewd” or even “cunning,” but they all get at the same point.

Spontaneous outbursts of love have their place. But we live in a hard world—one with disquieting resemblances to the Jericho Road. So we need to have our wits about us and to strategize kindness—not just respond warmly when an opportunity taps us on the shoulder and says “Hey you! Over here!”

        

This brings us to our third “s” word—sweetness. Fred Rogers certainly embodied this characteristic and, over the years, I’ve heard a few sermons on the Good Samaritan that cast him in this light as well. And, please, don’t get me started on all the songs and paintings that portray Jesus as this sweet, amiable chap who’d never offend anyone. As a minister friend of mine was fond of observing, “angry crowds do not call for the crucifixion of nice guys.”

Alas, this strong association of kindness with sweetness may trap us into thinking that compassion routinely comes to us coated in layers of gooey frosting. This ignores the role that candor—and even confrontation—can play in kindness. And we find that reality embodied in the person of Jesus Christ.

Think, for example, of the rich young man who comes to Jesus and asks what he needs to do to inherit eternal life. Jesus responds bluntly and offers no spoonful of sugar to help the medicine go down. He says: “Sell everything you have, give your money to the poor, and follow me.” The young man does not take this well, the scriptures tell us, because he has lots of cool stuff—again, translations vary.

This passage includes an important nuance that we might read past if we don’t slow down and notice it. The rich young man may not have welcomed these words, but Jesus clearly spoke them out of care and kindness. The Gospel of Mark expressly declares that Jesus looked warmly at the young man, felt love for him—and then delivered the hard news.

We sometimes call this “tough love” and, as the author Julian Barnes observed, it is “hard on the lover,” too. If you have ever loved someone who you had to confront about their drug addiction, their alcoholism, their gambling problem, their eating disorder, their unhealthy relationship, or their abusive spouse then you can attest to this. Kindness can demand that we say uncomfortable words to people who have become too comfortable in the wrong places and on the wrong paths. It can even require that we intervene in their lives to try to interrupt the unfolding tragedy.

I have had to do this a number of times in my life—perhaps you have as well. It is not for the faint of heart. In all honesty, sometimes it did not work. And this much is clear: there is absolutely nothing “sweet” about it.

So kindness may come to us as soft, spontaneous, and sweet. Or it may require courage, calculation, and candor. But here’s the thing: I don’t believe that the gospels view any of these as being the most important characteristic of kindness. In order to get at that, we need to return to the two geographic territories that have occupied our attention this morning: the Jericho Road and Mister Rogers’ Neighborhood.

Think back on the parable of the Good Samaritan for a moment. Jesus tells this parable in response to a question posed by a lawyer. This lawyer asked the same question raised by the rich fellow whom Jesus advised to go sell everything. Both asked: what do I need to do to inherit eternal life?

Now, I want you to notice something about this question: in both cases, these men are asking Jesus about themselves. They might as well have been asking about driving or shaving or getting the attention of the girl in homeroom—it’s all about them. They want to know what they need to do in order to get themselves a front row seat in the deluxe car on that great Amtrak to immortality.

In both cases, though, Jesus turns the question on its head: he moves the focus of the conversation away from the inquirer and toward others. Indeed, the rich young man experiences so much despair over the idea of selling his cool stuff that he misses the fact that Jesus isn’t talking about him or his beloved possessions—he’s talking about the poor.

An identical dynamic sets up the parable of the Good Samaritan. “What must I do to inherit eternal life?” the lawyer asks. And Jesus answers: “Love the Lord with everything you’ve got and love your neighbor as yourself.” Again, Jesus tries to reorient the inquirer away from himself and toward others. The lawyer persists: “But who is my neighbor?”

Now, when we read this passage, we tend to emphasize the words “who” and “neighbor”: “But WHO is my NEIGHBOR?”

I think, though, that this misunderstands what’s going on here—and why Jesus answers the question by telling the parable of the Good Samaritan. In my view, properly understood the question sounds like this: “But who is MY neighbor?” That seems to me much more consistent with the self-directed nature of the whole line of questioning.

So Jesus tells the story of the Good Samaritan and the answer becomes clear: 

Everyone is YOUR neighbor. All people. No exclusions. No exceptions. Do you want to follow Jesus Christ? Then YOUR neighborhood has to be the biggest neighborhood in the whole wide world.

Do you remember how Mister Rogers started every show? He came in through his rickety front door and sang: “Would you be my? Could you be my? Won’t you be MY neighbor?” Now, think about that for a minute: he sang those words into a television camera, not even knowing who was watching and listening. He did not sing it to anyone in particular. He sang it to everyone in particular.

Notice how this message completely inverts the way we normally think about the concept of a “neighbor.” Here, YOUR neighbor is not the person with whom you share a street, or a property line, or a barbeque in the summer, or a cup of eggnog in the winter, or a church pew on Sundays. No, YOUR neighbor encompasses every last child of the living God. This concept stands the world on its head—and, as usual, Jesus says that is exactly the right way to think about things: upside down.

The great preacher Frederick Buechner wrote a wonderful sermon he called “The Clown the Belfry” that gets at this theme. In it, he tells the story of an old New England church that had suffered some damage and so, in 1831, repaired the structure and topped it with a handsome new steeple. A written history of the church observed that “When the steeple was added, one agile Lyman Woodard [celebrated by standing] on his head in the belfry with his feet toward heaven.” Buechner writes:

“That's the one and only thing I've been able to find out about Lyman Woodard, whoever he was, but it is enough. I love him for doing what he did. It was a crazy thing to do. It was a risky thing to do. It ran counter to all standards of New England practicality and prudence. It stood the whole idea that you're supposed to be nothing but solemn in church on its head just like Lyman himself standing upside down on his. And it was also a magical and magnificent and Mozartian thing to do. If the Lord is indeed our shepherd, then everything goes topsy-turvy. Losing becomes finding and crying becomes laughing. The last become first and the weak become strong. Instead of life being done in by death in the end as we always supposed, death is done in finally by life in the end.”

A savior—in a stable.

A tomb—empty.

A messiah—from the backwater town of Nazareth.

A respected priest—cowardly.

An obscure Samaritan—heroic.

The world turned upside down.

Of course, turning everything on its head and seeing our neighborhood as the biggest one in the whole wide world has consequences. It’s not exclusive real estate. It’s not a pretty, tidy, orderly gated community. We will find ourselves rubbing shoulders with people we don’t know, with whom we have little in common, and who we do not particularly like. And it’s not the safest or most welcoming place, either: as Jesus, and the Good Samaritan, and Fred Rogers all understood, the Jericho Road runs right through it. But that’s precisely the point—that’s why we are needed there.

         Fred Rogers liked to refer to the Jewish concept of “tikkun olam”—the idea that through our acts of kindness we can be “repairers of the world.” But there is no fixing it from the outside. When it comes to healing the world, we have to be in it to begin it.

         In the next week or so, many of us will ask ourselves the question: “What resolutions shall I make to give myself a better trip around this sun this time?” There’s certainly nothing wrong with doing that: I’m confident that God has no objections if we hope to get in better shape or to eat healthier food or to engage in that vast archeological dig that we call the cleaning of closets.

         But the stories of the rich young man and the Good Samaritan tell us that we will not really change our lives until we change our questions, re-focusing them away from ourselves and toward others. So, as we ponder our new year’s resolutions, I think Jesus invites us to ask ourselves these questions as well:

How can I be sure that I don’t miss any of the chances at soft, spontaneous, and sweet kindness that come my way?

What do I need to do so that this year includes some courageous, calculated, candid, and even crazy kindness as well?

How can I put myself on the roads that will lead me to those who need to be carried and cared for?

         What can I do for my neighborhood—the biggest neighborhood in the whole wide world?

         How can I make sure everyone feels welcome there?

         How can I help fix it?

         How can I help it heal?

         And the people said: Amen.