The Kingdom And The Neighborhood

In my grief over the death of Fred Rogers, I have been thinking about the Kingdom of God a lot. Perhaps it is because he was not only a dear personal friend, but a friend in Christ who with great gentleness and powerful integrity has helped me over the years to glimpse just a little better what this Kingdom is all about. The outpouring of love that his dying has occasioned is staggering, but not surprising. It has been wonderful being in the Neighborhood together, and being reminded over and over again by his words and beautiful face that we are indeed special, just the way we are. Fred could keep on saying this with confidence and love because he knew that it is God who is making it so.

The first three Gospels present Jesus' core message with astonishing succinctness: the Kingdom of God is at hand. (cf. Mark 1:14) Jesus preached and taught a lot more than this, of course, but it is striking how consistently Matthew, Mark, and Luke kept coming back to this way of expressing the heart of it all. The Kingdom is all about God's incomprehensibly magnificent graciousness to us, to all of us, notwithstanding our sins and our difficulties trusting that his love is indeed all-surpassing, unconditional, never-ending, and ultimately transformative of all our defects and despair. It is God's countenance lifted toward us, his face shining on us. (Numbers 6:25,26.)

Is the Neighborhood anything like the Kingdom? Well, yes and no. Certainly Fred knew who our true King is. And he knew that the true Neighborhood is nothing less than the whole of the world that God is creating. What happens in Mister Rogers' smaller neighborhood is only a sign of what God is struggling to make happen everywhere. It's a good sign, though, for when God's work of reconciling the world does come to completion someday, the world will not only be a better neighborhood to live in; it will be everyone's very best neighborhood ever, and it will be more than just a little like Fred's. For now, though, his television visits have served more as a kind of refuge, against all the other 'Hoods' out there in which peoples' only specialness is as commodities for others' exploitation.

Like the Kingdom, the Neighborhood is both here, and yet to be. From a boat on the Sea of Galilee, Jesus told people sitting on the shore of seeds growing on patches of good soil surrounded by rocky ground, well-trodded footpaths, and choking weeds. (Matthew 13: 1-9) From a piano bench in a television studio, Fred told an interviewer of a little girl retreating to a small TV set, the volume too low for her abuser and rapist to hear, listening transfixed to songs about being special and having a true friend. Whether it is about the Kingdom or the Neighborhood, the question really is the same: can the world as we know it ever really become a place of safety, nurture, delight, and encouragement, in the midst of painful truths faced honestly by people who love each other without ceasing?

Only a few hours after Fred died, his colleagues in the television industry began airing video clips of his life and ministry. For me, the most poignant was one in which he spoke passionately about what television can and should be in our society. It reminded me of a number of conversations that he, his beloved Joanne, my own beloved Nancy, and I have shared over the years on the same subject. I couldn't help experiencing this particular clip against the backdrop of both the conversations and the painful fact that not even rapid channel surfing relieves us anymore from programs that denigrate, degrade, and deform the best that is in the human spirit.

The Kingdom of God is all around us, but in the midst of rocks, concrete, and weeds. Eventually, though, Jesus assures us, its seeds will produce crops thirtyfold, sixtyfold, even a hundredfold. Mister Rogers' Neighborhood is just the next channel over from lonely and angry people vying to be their own neighbors' humiliators, falsely assuming that the only alternative is to be humiliated instead. Its creator never lost hope that the medium containing it is as capable of depicting the soul's inherent goodness as it is of exposing its wrecked possibilities.

We owe a debt of gratitude to Fred Rogers, for reminding us so many times that the Kingdom is within us as well as beyond us, and that it is within us now ---especially when we can hear over the din of other television programs his wonderfully kind voice telling us how special each of us really is.