Please, Won’t You Be My Neighbor: The More You Love Someone

One of Mr. Rogers’ friends talked about learning from Mr. Rogers about parenting. He said, “I find myself using his moves all the time. The other day I inadvertently said something that upset my 16-year-old daughter. When I tried to make up for it, she waved me off. So I said calmly, ‘Oh, you aren’t ready for an apology right now. That’s fine.’ A total Fred move.”
I Peter was written to Gentile converts who were upset; they were experiencing persecution. The writer reminds them and us, “Life is short, and we get to choose how we will live ours.”

Regardless of what is going on around you, four ways to pattern your life will allow you to live by the will of God. Prayer, love, hospitality, and being good stewards of everything God has given you.

As I have studied Mr. Rogers’ life, I have seen how he lived these four ways. He got up every morning at 5am to pray and read his Bible. Every morning, he prayed for his family and friends by name and gave thanks for those on his list who had passed away. He didn’t finish his prayer time and then go on with the rest of his day, though, his prayers continued throughout the day. At 7:30 as he jumped in the pool to swim, he sang, “Jubilate Deo” – “Rejoice in the Lord.” As he walked into the studio, he prayed, “Dear Lord, Let some word that is heard be yours.” With his calm demeanor, slow pace, appreciating silence, taking time, I think I imagined that Mr. Rogers was always peaceful.

But, he got angry sometimes. His son, John, tells about a particular time he was angry. He recalls, “I only remember 20 minutes of my life when we were angry at each other. I’d had a few minor accidents, so he’d taken my car away. One evening I needed to get my girlfriend home. I grabbed the keys and drove out in an ice storm…and slid into a lamppost. The damage wasn’t series, but Dad and I really got into it. After all the shouting, Dad got read quiet and said in his normal voice, ‘Wow. That’s the angriest I’ve ever been. That felt pretty good.’ And that was it.”

Mr. Rogers wrote, “That’s what a family really is – people who care about each other deep inside: honest and forgiving. When it comes to growing into a healthy human being, it will always be love that counts the most.” In an interview with their alma matter, Fred’s wife shares that she believes, “He’d have a hard time today. It bothered him a great deal when people wouldn’t forgive each other or reconcile their differences.”

The writer of I Peter explains this ability to be reconciled by quoting Proverbs saying “Above all, hold unfailing your love for one another, since love covers a multitude of sins.”
It doesn’t say that love entitles us to sin against each other. But it does say, that when we hurt one another, and we love each other, we can deal with it and move on together.

New Testament scholar, N.T. Wright, writes that the gift of love we are invited to offer one another minute by minute, day by day throughout our lives actually transforms situations, so that the ‘multitude of sins’ which were there before are taken out of the equation. They are forgiven! We can be reconciled! Instead of squabbling and fighting, we can now live together and work together. All sorts of things will no doubt go wrong in human relations. That is how things are. But there is no need to despair.” Above all, says the writer of I Peter, to people who were in the midst of persecution and fighting and stress, “above all, hold unfailing love for one another.”

Mr. Rogers knew the truth that the more we love, the more we live God’s way. He wrote, “Love isn’t a state of perfect caring. It is an active noun like struggle. To love someone is to strive to accept that person exactly the way he or she is, right here and now.”

And he didn’t just love people in his family or people he knew; Mr. Rogers accepted strangers with openness too. His hospitality was evident to everyone who met him. Interviewers have recalled that when they sat down to interview Fred Rogers, suddenly they were the ones answering questions because he took such interest in them. The word here in I Peter is that kind of reciprocal relationship, “hospes” originally meant both host and guest. Hospitality happens when two or more are gathered and you can’t tell who is the host and who are the guests.
When he was just out of college, he went to New York to work for NBC. And he was hired to for coffee or juice or Coke or whatever the directors and producers wanted. Fred Rogers saw that it was a good experience for him because there were those who treated him well and those who treated him like a servant and didn’t acknowledge him bringing them their coffee unless he hadn’t brought their cream that he should have put in the coffee. Being in that position, there were people who felt that they could treat him as something less. And then one day, he met a movie star and everyone was taking her picture. Fred asked if he could take her picture. Her response was, “I’d rather not.” He remembers he was crestfallen because she was…well, he said, she was somebody I wanted to take a picture of. As a result, Fred Rogers never declined a picture.

And he showed hospitality not only to people who wanted to interview him, and people who were his fans and wanted to take his picture. Paul Lally, who was one of the directors of Mr. Rogers’ Neighborhood, tells about walking in New York City with Mr. Rogers one day. They were uptown, crossing at 5th and 152nd Street, and halfway across the street a man shouts, “Hey, Mister Rogers!” We’re used to that happening all the time. But what happens next is that the guy says, “I was the actor on that Burger King spot.”
Do you remember the Burger King spot with Mr. Rodney’s Neighborhood, where the actor pretended to be Mr. Rogers and has a flashcard to teach the word “McFrying”? When it aired, Mr. Rogers called the Senior Vice President of Burger King and told him, “To have someone who looks like me doing a commercial is very confusing for children.” The $150,000 spot (the equivalent of about $375,000 today) was pulled.
So, here is the actor who parodied Mr. Rogers in the middle of the road and Fred comes to a complete stop and smiles to beat the band. “You did a marvelous job. I’m proud of you.”
The actor grins, “Thanks, Mister Rogers.” Then frowns. “Look I’m sorry it made fun of you.”
Fred says, “I am too, but more importantly, I’m sorry you won’t be getting any residuals. (because the more the spot plays the more the actors get paid).
And the actor shrugs. “There’s always another day.”
And Mr. Rogers responds, “Exactly, and you’re going to do just fine.”
The lights change, traffic is starting to roll, Fred and the actor shake hands. And he wishes him the very best.

We might think that Fred Rogers was an anomaly. In some ways that is true, we are, each one of us, unique, unrepeatable miracles of God. And Fred Rogers would want us to know that. But Fred’s ability to love was also shaped and formed, like all of us are, by those he loved.

He grew up in wealthy family, and his parents were extremely active in using their money to take care of friends, employees and neighbors. Fred’s mother, Nancy Rogers, apparently bought about 1,500 Christmas presents, “sometimes more,” every year for members of the community. She was known to help a large number of poorer families in Latrobe. “Eventually the school nurse at Latrobe Elementary School would just order shoes, coats, eyeglasses, and even furniture and have the bills sent directly to Nancy Rogers.” (Maxwell King)

Fred Rogers chose to live a simple life. A life of prayer, of love, of hospitality, and of service. He gave generously of the gifts God had given him in service to the common good. And above all, he loved deeply. In fact, every day of his adult life, he weighed himself – 143 pounds – 1 for the letter I, 4 for the letters in love, and 3 for the letters in you.

Maybe we’ll be one of Mr. Rogers’ friends who shares how much we learned from him as we notice a “total Fred move.” Life is short and we get to choose how we will live it. May we choose lives of prayer, love, hospitality, and generosity to the glory of God. Amen.