Easter People: Lucy Craft Laney

Acts 11:1-18

Fourth Sunday of Easter:  April 28, 2013

Al, you’ll all agree, is a great liturgist.  But, I think no matter how well this passage is read out loud during worship, just hearing it once is not enough to have any sense of what's going on.  I have to tell you it took me about 15 minutes of going through this passage verse by verse, slowly following what was happening before I had any idea who was doing what, where, when and why.  So, I’m going to save you that 15 minutes and take just a couple here to paint the scene for you.

First, before we can understand what’s happening in this passage, we have to know that one of the questions of the early church was whether or not Gentiles – basically any non-Jew – could be followers of Jesus without becoming Jews first. 

To be a part of the Jewish faith, things were required of you.  You couldn’t just visit a synagogue, sign up for a new members’ class and join a few months later.  You were required to do everything a Jew did.  You were required to be circumcised, you were required to keep kosher laws, you were required to live by the purity laws – there were about 613 laws total.  Being Christian at that time was the same as being a part of the Jewish faith, so, some argued, anyone who wanted to join in had to become Jewish.

Others, however, weren’t so sure.  Others thought that central to Jesus’ message was that all are included without restriction or requirement.  It was a radical – extremely radical – idea.  Jews had always kept to themselves, lived as their own communities by their own customs and laws.  There wasn’t a lot of intermingling with Gentiles.  To declare that a Gentile was a part of the community of believers, without becoming Jewish, was a violation of custom, law, and purity.

Peter was one of those who came to believe that Gentiles were very much included in the community of believers – and they didn’t have to be Jewish first.  And, at the beginning of our passage, we see that he had apparently been called to the principal’s office because of his views.  Some Jewish Christians were upset:  They had heard reports about his ministry to the Gentiles.  They wanted him to account for himself. 

So when the passage begins, Peter is sitting with these concerned folks, and he’s making his case.  He’s laying out for them exactly what happened that converted his heart and actions.  In other words he’s telling them a story about what had happened to him recently so that they would come to accept Gentiles as well.

Peter first tells them about a dream he had where he was commanded to break some of the most sacred Jewish commandments.  After the dream, Peter tells his audience, three men came to get him and take him to the home of a Gentile when they got there, the owner of the house told Peter that he had been visited by an angel who told him to send some people to Joppa to get Peter.  The angel told the man that if he did this, he and his entire household would be saved. 

Finally, Peter tells them of his amazing experience in that house.  “It was incredible,” he said.  “I was about to say something, but all of a sudden the Holy Spirit fell upon them – just like it did on us at Pentecost.  And I remembered that Jesus came to baptize with the Holy Spirit, so I’m like, ‘who am I to stop God from doing what God does!?’” 

And that’s the end of telling the story for Peter.  Who am I to hinder God?  In the next verse we get the response of the Jews listening to him:  Silence.  They were so stunned by the story they didn’t know what to say.  So they were silent for a moment until they realized that the only appropriate response was to give thanks to God for such a great thing:  It’s not just us that are a part of God’s realm of love – it’s everyone.  All are welcome.  They were completely convinced by the story.

Lucy Craft Laney had a story to tell.  And a pretty tough audience.  And though Peter seemed to get his whole audience on board, Laney learned that it only takes one.

Laney was born in 1854 in Macon, GA.  Her parents had been slaves, but had bought their freedom.  Her father was a Presbyterian minister and a carpenter.  Laney, for her part, was destined for education.  She had an incredibly quick mind and a good instructor in her earliest years:  She learned to read and write by the age of four and could translate difficult passages in Latin by the age of twelve, including Julius Caesar's Commentaries on the Gallic War.  In other words she was Ed Phillips’ dream student.

She excelled at high school and then at the newly formed Atlanta University, where she was a member of the first graduating class when she was 19 years old.  While there, there were some hints of a temperament that would serve her and her purposes well.  Someone wrote about when she found out that women were not allowed to take classic courses at Atlanta U.  She, as they wrote, “responded with blistering indignation.”  A child of slaves, living in the south, and a woman in the 1800s:  I don’t know what it must have taken for her to stay the course, but surely determination and passion, and the Holy Spirit played a role.

When she graduated, she noticed that there was a group of folks who were being relegated to the margins of society, just as the Gentiles had been from the Jewish communities:  black children – especially girls.  For ten years after she graduated, she taught in several different schools – but she never found one adequate enough to really be educating these kids from beginning to end.  They weren’t getting the rigorous studies, the courses in Latin, classics, math, and science that they needed to make it in higher education and beyond.  She knew how important it was to society that children be educated and able to be citizens in our country that would have a true impact for the good. 

She moved to Augusta, Georgia where she started the first school for black girls.  She began with six students in the basement of a church.  I don’t know if Laney had visions, or saw angels who told her what to do, but she was inspired.  Her class of six turned into a class of more than 200 – girls and boys – within a couple of years.  Her success created a new problem:  now she needed funding.  She needed to tell her story to some people who worshipped the God she did – the God of radical inclusion – and who would know how important it was to educate young black kids who were not getting what they needed from schools.

At that time, public schools had not long been around and churches were the ones building and running schools: denominations like the Presbyterians, Methodists, and others saw education as a major mission priority.  Lucy needed funding, and knew the Presbyterians were meeting in Minneapolis for their yearly General Assembly in 1886.  It was a long shot.  This was not the typical school that churches supported; these were black children in a school being run by a woman.  But long shots were not deterrents for Laney.  She scraped together the money she needed for a one-way bus ticket to Minneapolis, and headed there without enough money to get back.

This was pretty much a room full of white men.  There were some women there, but not many.  And I don’t know for sure how many black people, but even today the PCUSA general assembly gathering looks pathetically pale.  So a black woman stands in front of GA and tells them they have to pay for her school.  It was a tough crowd.

Different accounts give slightly different descriptions of the response of GA in terms of how friendly it was, but all agree on the fact that the only support she got from the denomination that year was a prayer and her fare home….from the denomination.  Luckily there were some women there, and one of them was named Francine Haines.  She was completely compelled by Laney, and became a lifetime benefactor.  The school was eventually named the Haines Institute. 

In the 20 years she was a principal of the school, Laney never stopped seeking funds.  She continued to remind the church of their commitment to education, and ultimately they supported the school with more than prayers.  After all, who were they to hinder God?

And of course, who are we to hinder God?

God is on a relentless path to inclusion.  God works in all people, giving them the Holy Spirit that they might be agents of God’s love, justice and hope in the world.  Our job, as people of faith, is to go with this – to support it, and to get others on board as well.  It makes me think: Who might be in need the church’s support to continue to grow in faith?  Where is the Holy Spirit moving?

This morning, given Laney’s work with children, I think of especially the kids.  Laney believed in educating the kids not just because it was fair or just.  She believed that each child had something to give the world, and to not educate them was to thwart that purpose – to hinder God’s plan for them.  Education for her was for the sake of the world, not just the child.  She wanted them to grow into good citizens and agents for change in a world that desperately needed change.  She knew the spirit was in and with each child, and she wanted to make sure the spirit had as much room to work as it needed.

Many articles about Laney pointed out that the students she taught went on to schools like Harvard, and many became influential in society on behalf of civil rights.  To be educated at her school was no small thing, and it was the door to being an agent of change and freedom in the world. 

 

Today we baptize three children.  Today we give bibles to 3^rd graders.  Each child in our church is unique.  Each will need different things from us in order to grow in faith in such a way that they will flourish in this world and make a world a better place.  I share that goal with Laney.  Rigorous education in the faith at every age is necessary to form disciples who will spread the love of God to those who most need it – to a world desperately in need of love.

The spirit is upon each of our children – I think you all can see that.  In our baptismal liturgy, after I put the water on the head and baptize in the name of the triune God, I place my hand on each head and say, “The Holy Spirit work within you, that being born through water and the spirit, you may be a faithful disciple of Jesus Christ.”  The Holy Spirit work within you.  That’s what Peter saw that day in that house.  The Holy Spirit works within everyone, whether we think it does or not. 

Our job is to not hinder that spirit.  So let’s ask ourselves:  Are we?  Are we at this church, or we as a denomination, religion?  Are we hindering the spirit with doctrines?  Are we hindering the spirit with behavioral requirements?  Are we hindering the spirit with a requirement that they have to be or stay Christian in order to get our support? 

The spirit is wild, radical, unpredictable, inscrutable.  We need to be willing to do whatever we need to in order to not hinder that Spirit.  We, like Peter, need to be willing to change rules – sometimes even break them. We need to be willing to teach service and justice instead of doctrines and cultural norms.  Like Lucy Craft Laney, we need to plead our case in unlikely places to let people know this is not just a place where you become Christian, but a place where we let the spirit move and work in you no matter what religion you become.  We need to not just give the kids bibles, we need to help them read it and study it with critical and inquisitive minds.  We need to find funding for the best possible curriculum, we need to continue to have the best possible teachers for our kids, we need to think about each child individually and what we need to do for them so the spirit can work and move within them.

Ultimately, we are not required for the spirit to work.  As Peter saw, the Holy Spirit was coming with or without him.  But I do think we can either help or hinder it.  Who are we to hinder God?  Amen.

Easter People: Jane Parker Huber and Carolyn Winfrey Gillete

Acts 9:36-42

Fourth Sunday of Easter:  April 21, 2013

I’ve been thinking about resurrection.  Given today’s text, not to mention the fact that we are still in the Easter season, you can probably imagine why.  Anyway, what I’ve been thinking about is that there are multiple resurrections in our scriptures.  While it’s rare, and clearly a sign of major power in the one who resurrects, it is not unique to Jesus.  There’s Lazarus, Jarius’ daughter – both raised by Jesus.  And then today we have Tabitha – raised by Peter himself.

When we look at the non Jesus resurrections we notice that in all cases, after their resurrection, they are alive again, basically as they were before…at least physically.  And, we know they will die again.  They are still mortal.

One of the things I take away from this is that, for the authors of our bible, resurrection is not about living forever on this earth – never dying, never escaping our mortality.  But I don’t think we can deny that resurrection, at least symbolically, was, for them, about moving from death to new life…something in the person changes.  Something in the world is different even if the physical surroundings remain.  New life, in the midst of the old, is always possible. This is good news because it means resurrection is happening all around us and can happen anywhere, anytime.

Tabitha was resurrected – new life.  Yet she was also her old self – fully human, still living in, and subject to, all the forces of good and bad we know in our lives.  The combination of old and new life gives us clues, I think, to how we might live resurrection today.

Too often we think new replaces old.  New is good, better; old is outdated, obsolete.  But even in resurrection, some of the old is retained.  Resurrection means the old continues to live, but in surprising new ways that bring new life.  In resurrection, we learn there is always something new to be found – something that, while connected to the past, bursts forth giving the past new meaning and life.

Religious music is an incredible example of this kind of resurrection.  For music to be able to move us to transcendence, it must continue to live; to constantly be resurrected, but I do think we lose something if the new merely replaces the old.  And unlike the bible, since Jesus’ time the church has felt free to compose new music, write new words, to speak about God to the faithful people of the day.

There are two great Presbyterian hymn writers that have found ways to do this, and it has affected many, many people who love to connect to God through song:  Jane Parker Huber and Carolyn Gillette Winfrey.  Both of these women realized that, while the music of the church had for centuries connected people to God, some of it had also grown problematic because the language and theology had not grown with that of the Church’s, and so was losing its life for many people.

We know that God is always speaking a new word in our midst.  Contexts change and, because we will never know the fullness of God completely, we continue to grow in our faith, finding new ways to understand God today.

Both Huber, who has passed away, and Gillete, a Presbyterian minister in Delaware, have participated in the church at every level and have always loved the church deeply.  They also both found an inner need to write new words for our time and place.  Each experienced a tension between loving old hymns and feeling, at times, alienated from the words, because so many things had changed since the original words were penned.

One of the first hymns Huber wrote is one of my favorites, and we sang it on Easter:  Live Into Hope.  The original words set to this tune, in 1642, began with, “Lift up your heads, ye mighty gates, behold the king of glory waits.”  These words, I suspect, were very timely and contextual in 1642, but it’s not language we tend to use today. 

Huber explains that when she wrote Live into Hope in 1976 it was, “a time when people were beginning to realize that there were many ideas alive in the church but without expression in hymnody.” 

“Live into hope of captives freed,

Of sight regained, the end of greed,” her words begin. 

Economic and racial disparity were at the forefront of people’s minds, and in discussions within the churches.  Ideas alive, but without expression in hymnody.  And so Parker began a career in expressing new ideas in old tunes. 

Carolyn Gillette Winfrey is well known for writing hymns that speak to present issues.  Often when tragedy strikes our world, people turn to her for new words connected with old tunes that evoke our deepest emotions.  She writes, “It times of great joy or challenge, reflection and recommitment, awe and emotion, we [often] find ourselves remembering and singing the music of the church…I hope that these new words will help congregations to reflect on their faith in new ways and make connections between the Christian faith and contemporary life.”  Remembering and making new:  Resurrection in musical form.

This week [week of the Boston bombings], many churches were lifting up her hymn “God of Mercy, You Have Shown Us”, set to a very familiar tune:  Beech Spring.

God, we pray for those who suffer when this world seems so unfair;
May your church be quick to offer loving comfort, gentle care.
And we pray: Amid the violence, may we speak your truth, O Lord!
Give us strength to break the silence, saying, "This can be no more!"

Our hymns this morning are written by these two amazing women.  The rest of our music is provided by this amazing choir.  A living example right in front of us of the same kind of resurrection.  We are blessed with a whole group of additional Easter people this morning.  Sacred music – old and new.  In this case we have pieces that draw on the familiar words of the bible; “Let’s go to the house of the lord, “Make a joyful noise to God all you people,” “the Lord bless and keep you and make his countenance to shine upon you.”  Words from ancient, sacred writings, set to music in the present.  It’s resurrection, and it takes us somewhere.  We can feel that this morning; we know that.

I give great thanks to all these music makers.  Huber and Gillete have used their words and poetry coupled with tunes that reside deep in our hearts to speak to us in new ways about God and this world.  And when people can make music as beautifully as this choir [Pella Christian Chamber Choir] can, there is no way I can’t sit in awe at what God has made possible.  Huber says, it’s music that teaches us about faith.  I love what we’re learning today.  Amen.

Easter People: Mr. Rogers

John 21: 1-19

Third Sunday of Easter:  April 14, 2013

Imagine a teacher – say a second grade teacher.  He hands out a math test with a bunch of addition problems on it.  One student turns in the test, and she gets many of the answers wrong.  If the problem is 2 + 1, she writes 4.  If the problem is 5 + 0, she answers 3.  The teacher is a bit grieved, because he knows this student tries hard, but just doesn’t quite get it yet.  So, before handing the paper back to the student, he changes all the problems to match the answers given.  He changes 2 + 1 to 2 + 2.  5 + 0 becomes 3 + 0, and so on.  Questionable teaching method.  But it seems he must have done his student teaching with Jesus.

We all know the story:  Jesus asks Peter three times if he loves him.  And each time Peter answers yes.  And then Jesus follows Peter’s declaration of love with an instruction…three, actually:  Feed my lambs; tend my sheep; feed my sheep.  But we know the story in English, and we have only one word for love:  this passage uses two.  The first two times Jesus asks Peter if he loves him, Jesus uses the word “agape” for love.  When Peter says he loves Jesus he uses the word phileo. 

Agape, many argue, is a pure, divine kind of love.  It is the love God has for us.  Full, complete, transcendent.  Phileo is more of a family love – kinship or love between close friends.  It is powerful, but when compared with agape, it falls short of reflecting the love of God.  So this conversation is really something like Jesus saying, “Do you love me?” and Peter answering, “Yes, I’m incredibly fond of you.”  Point being, the first two times Peter and Jesus are using different words for love.

And so the story kind of sets up the anticipation that Jesus is going to keep asking him until he gets the answer right.  Do you love me, Jesus asks using agape.  We think, the third time, Peter must have finally said “yes..agape…I love you.”  No:  The third time he still says phileo.  But here’s the thing:  So does Jesus.  Peter never gets it right – he misses the boat from beginning to end, so in the end, Jesus changes the question to match the answer.  I love that. 

We often, and rightly so, focus on Peter and what we are supposed to learn about the relationship between loving Jesus – loving God – and feeding and tending to the people in this world.  But I love stopping for just a moment and looking at what Jesus did – how Jesus loved Peter so much he met him right where he was – he changed the question to match the answer.

Meeting people where they are with an almost incomprehensible love.  For 30 years, Mr. Rogers did this for thousands, then millions of kids 5 days a week. 

Now let me say three things here:  First, I love Mr. Rogers – I loved him as a child, and I have loved reconnecting with him as Lydia meets him for the first time.  I have dozens of pages of things I wanted to include in this sermon.  I didn’t, but I wanted to.   Second, mostly because of that, I can’t call him Fred Rogers.  I can’t call him Fred and I can’t refer to him as Rogers.  He is to me, and will be in this sermon, Mr. Rogers. 

Third, I always want to avoid the danger of over-romanticizing people who history proves have done great things.  Everyone is human.  Everyone has their foibles and flaws.  If you ignore this, people are unreal – no one can relate to them.  So I always think it’s important to see the human, flawed side to folks.  I’m sure Mr. Rogers had foibles.  I’m sure he was human.  But I’m in a bind because I just couldn’t find the flaws. 

You see, no matter what I read about him from people who knew him, interviewed him, or worked with him, I could only find statements like this one:  “It’s entirely possible that Fred Rogers is not a saint, but I have found little evidence to suggest otherwise.”  Or this one, written by a reporter-turned-friend of Mr. Rogers:  “I felt like I was testing him, searching for a foible, for something I could say or do that would finally render him incapable of unconditional regard…He responded with what can only be described as supernatural love, wholly without judgment, and with perfect clarity, wisdom, and compassion.”  One person called him a “human embodiment of heaven.”

I could go on and on – each person saying it in a different way.  What’s so incredible is that everyone I read felt they needed to comment on this- that they went in with the assumption that he is flawed, but only found him more incredible than they anticipated.  So, the best I can do is just call him a saint and move on with what I think he teaches us.

From early on, Mr. Rogers had a love-hate relationship with TV.  He knew it was a powerful medium.  He knew it reached into the lives of children and adults alike.  And he hated the shows that were on TV – especially children’s shows.  But he also figured, since TV was here to stay, and if it was going to reach people, it could, in fact, be used for good.  And use it for good he did.

He began with a couple of early children’s shows, produced both in Pittsburg and Canada.  But he came back to Pittsburg, close to his childhood home, and there he stayed until he died, producing and hosting Mr. Roger’s Neighborhood for 30 years.

Mr. Rogers was a pastor.  Early on in his TV career, he went to seminary to deepen his theology and faith knowing this would enrich what he was doing in his show.  He was ordained by the Presbyterian denomination.  But in an unusual move, he was ordained to do exactly what he did:  produce children’s television shows.  This was his ministry – and none of us, I suspect, and certainly not my child, would deny that he was an incredible minister.  (as an aside….I can’t help but wonder what TV would look like if all of the producers of programs were ordained to that work by their faith communities.) 

His job – his mission – was to meet kids right where they were and show them how much they are loved.  Each moment of every show was designed for this very purpose.  In telling the story of PBS, David Stewart writes, “Every element [in Mr. Roger’s Neighborhood] has meaning and is there for a purpose.  The most obvious, perhaps, is Rogers’ arrival, singing his opening song (which of course he wrote), changing into his informal sweater and sneakers.  ‘Now,’ he seems to be saying, ‘I’m all yours.  This time is for you.’  - in most children’s lives, rare behavior for an adult.”

He worried about children who were being ignored, or children who were being “taught” how to behave – which usually involved teaching them that what they were feeling was wrong and needed to be kept inside.  He worried about the things kids learned – things like suppressing their feelings, or expressing them in destructive ways.  He worried they were not learning to love the world and marvel at the gifts of people and creation. 

So he takes off his coat, puts on his sweater, changes into comfortable shoes and looks at the camera and sings:  music was the thing that most deeply touched Mr. Roger’s soul, and he brought that divine sense of music to children.  He believed it could change you.  And so he looked them in the eye and sang: “I have always wanted to have a neighbor just like you.  I’ve always wanted to live in a neighbor hood with you…Please won’t you be my neighbor.”  And of course, he ended every show, in song, telling the children exactly when he would be back – a promise he always kept.

Mr. Rogers listened for the answers kids were giving and then met them right there, never expecting them to get it right.  Just loving them and convincing them they were already wonderful the way they were.  He wanted to know the inner workings of children’s emotions, psyches and brains.  He took the need to understand where children were and what was going on in their heads so seriously.  He had a friend named Margaret McFarland.  She was a child psychologist, and his most important mentor, and he consulted with her almost daily until her death in 1987.  He wanted to know how to reach children with his show – how to understand them and meet them where they are – so that he could best affect them with love and caring.

“Somehow,” says Rogers, “early on, I got the idea inside of me that childhood was valuable, that children were worthy of being seen and heard, and who they were would have a lot to do with how our world would become.  Childhood goes to the heart of who we all become.” 

I wonder how many people in children’s programming today consult with a child psychologist for any other reason than attracting their viewers – and not so they can tell them anything profound, but so that they can show them ads that will make them excellent consumers.

I asked some friends about their experience of Mr. Rogers.  Many, like me, knew him both from childhood and from when they got to re-encounter him when their kids watched the show.  One friend said something that really struck me – something I do think we can learn…all of us.  He said that one day on the show, Mr. Rogers stood behind a big fish aquarium filled with water.  Just water.  He took a bottle of blue food coloring and carefully put a drop into the water.  Then he just watched it.  He watched what it did.  He didn’t say anything for quite a while.  He just watched. 

My friend said, “as I saw this I realized he was doing something almost no one else does for us:  He made time for wonder and awe.  The antidote to frenzy.”  Another person put it this way:  “The style is an almost unbelievable departure from most loudly exuberant, frequently violent and fast-cut contemporary programs designed for the same audience.”  Mr. Rogers knew that without wonder, without being able to look at the wonder of the world, life would be gray…deadened…depressing.  Children’s minds would atrophy and life for them would be all frenzy.

Now lest we undersell this man, Mr. Rogers did not only change the lives of children.  His impact on adults was incredible.  He knew the needs of adults as well.  He knew they were in as much need of feeling known and loved as children.  And reading things that people wrote about meeting Mr. Rogers was inspiring and more than once brought tears to my eyes.  If you want to see how he could, for example, affect an old, crusty senator who was reluctant to give the first-ever national funding to PBS, watch a speech Mr. Rogers gave during senate hearings on the subject in 1969.  Pretty powerful.  And of course he did, in fact, secure the first ever national funding for PBS.

He was patient, kind, gentle, and affirming.  He wanted to know about you – whether you were a child, an acquaintance, a reporter, or a colleague.  He asked questions about your life and listened as deeply, and then without hesitation, and with an intimacy that people from disarming, he affirmed you, loved you, for who you were.  A reporter from Esquire magazine called it an “unashamed insistence on intimacy.”  It changed people.  Encountering him changed people.  And it’s because he never expected you to be anything you weren’t, and he never thought someone shouldn’t be loved exactly where they were. 

I was thinking about the power of what Jesus did:  Jesus calls Peter’s name:  He looks him in the eye, and he speaks of the most intimate thing there is:  Love.  He invites him to a love so incredible, Peter couldn’t comprehend it.  Then he changed the question, and finally he says, “Follow me.”  Until that moment, Peter had given up after Jesus died.  He went back to his old life. 

Maybe meeting Peter with unashamed insistent intimacy was finally the thing that enabled him to get out of locked rooms, quit the fishing business once and for all, and spend his life feeding and tending sheep.  We know Peter went on to dedicate his life to the ministry of Jesus.  Knowing what he knew was enough; knowing phileo, even though not perfect, was enough.  It was enough to leave everything behind and follow Jesus: the one who knew agape.

What did Mr. Rogers do for millions of children and adults over the years?  What did he allow them to become that they might not otherwise have?  Of course, we’ll never know…we are complicated human beings who are who we are for as many different reasons as there are grains of sand by the oceans.  But, when I watch him today with Lydia, I immediately re-connect to something.  I immediately feel the importance of wonder, creative play, and the constant message of “you are important, you are loved as you are, you are worthy of my undivided, kind, gentle, grace-filled presence.”  I wonder what sunk in when I watched him, but I know intuitively that this show was not your typical TV show…it was good.

Because he knew how to connect with children and adults alike, he knew he must connect with their pain as well.  Mr. Rogers was kind and gentle, but he wasn’t naïve, and he didn’t shy away from the broken world.  He knew the real world in which we all live, and dealt with that as only Mr. Rogers would – going to great lengths to ensure he spoke about difficult things to children in a way that would only be caring and life-giving, and taking time to connect with parents in ways that helped them navigate tricky waters with their kids.  He spoke of death, disease, divorce, addiction, cruelty, and how that brought agony to those he loved.  

In fact, amazingly, Mr. Rogers continues to speak to us in the face of great tragedy.  After the shootings in Newtown, adults all over the world turned to their childhood friend.  A quote by Mr. Rogers went viral, and though it was simple, it connected deeply with me and, judging by facebook, many, many others as well.  With all the “adult” coverage that sought to make meaning of the event, all the pundits focusing on guns and violence, what seemed to help some people most were the words of our favorite neighbor. 

It was something he said often, actually, but it was made famous after an interview he did soon after 9/11.  He said that his mother always taught him:  “Look for the helpers.  You will always find people who are helping.”  Then he said, “To this day, especially in times of ‘disaster,’ I remember my mother’s words, and I am always comforted by realizing that there are still so many helpers – so many caring people in the world.”

In a world that focuses on the frenzy, the mega-this and mega-that, that uses the violent images to tell the news, and entertains children with slapstick and bombastic images, it’s incredible to think about this man who spent his life in people’s living rooms with the sole purpose of offering a divine love.  “The older I get, the more I feel that this is true:” Mr. Roger said, “There’s a loving mystery at the heart of the universe, just yearning to be expressed.”  I may only be capable of phileo…but that’s agape.  Amen.