Dr. François S. Clemmons [CC BY-SA 4.0]
Presbyterian Media Mission (presbymediamission.org) has commionessed a liturgy for a Kindness Sunday in celebration of the new film “A Beautiful Day in the Neighborhood” in theaters this month starring Tom Hanks portraying our favorite neighbor Mister “Fred” Rogers. Click here for a review of the movie…
Kindness Sunday Liturgy (Word format)
My sermon on Kindness from Ruth 2:4-13
If kindness had a patron saint in would be Mister Rogers. He invited you to be his neighbor in his neighborhood where an eclectic mix of puppets and people, regular and special guests came to be welcomed by Mister Rogers quiet voice and gentle conversation.
Do not confuse nice with kind. Nice is ignoring trouble, kind is sharing troubles. When the one the set’s goldfish died he didn’t replace it off camera…because death isn’t nice…he built a show around sadness and death. Even burying the fish on the set with a headstone and talking about the death of his pet dog Misty when he was a child. Instead of covering death up with niceness and surround it with kindness.
In 1969, a year after the assignation of Martin Luther King, Jr. segregation was illegal but popular. Mr. Rogers was a Presbyterian Minister and could have preached about the subject. As Tom Brokaw of NBC Nightly News once said “Mister Rogers was an ordained minister, but he never talked about God on his program. He didn’t need to.”
Instead Fred was kind. He noticed that Officer Gibbons, the singing African=American police officer was hot and tired and invited him to join him in soaking his feet in a kiddie pool on set. When Officer Gibbons said he didn’t have a towel Fred said he could share his. They shared a pool and a towel together. Kindness. Fred made room for a black man in his pool and with his towel. He didn’t need to talk about God.
Years later, on his last appearance on the show, Fred and Francois Clemmons reenacted their pool moment and this time…Fred dried Francois feet. Francois said later: “I a black gay man and Fred washed my feet.” It is you I like, exactly who you are.
Ruth was a poor immigrant. No job, no family support, no proof of health care, and supporting her widowed Mother-in-law who had renamed herself “Bitter”. Yikes. Boaz was kind, following the kindness set out in Deuteronomy and Leviticus 23:22, not to take everything from the field, but to leave gleanings for the poor, the widow, the orphan. Boaz made room for her among the workers, provided for her physical and food security.
Do we have a Boaz society today? Do we share with others or do we cheer on those who take it all? Is there room for all in the neighborhood or are we retreating to gated communities with private security forces and insurance paid firefighters serving only those who can pay? Since that last pool party on Mr Rogers the top 1% has done very well, doubling their income, but the poverty rate has remained steady. Productivity has increased but for those being productive income has not followed. Now the top 1/10 of 1% has 188 times the wealth of the lower 90% income. We can build a better neighborhood where there is room for all in the pool of wealth that we’ve created.
Las Vegas has made public camping and sleeping in public illegal. It isn’t nice to see tents and sleeping folks in sidewalks and doorways. Make it nice again by arresting and rousting folks experiencing homelessness to go somewhere where nice people can’t see them.
WWMRD? What would Mr. Rogers do? He would be kind not just nice. For the last three years six churches in Carson City have taken a month each hosting “Night Off the Streets” where folks can have a safe warm place in a church building from 9 PM to 6:30 AM. About 30 people a night to get out of the weather and sleep in the host church. Since the program began, no person has died of exposure sleeping in the open in Carson City. Instead they have been welcomed and shelter by kind people.
Who has been a Boaz to you? Who has been your Mr. Rogers? Who has been kind in your life making room for you in their neighborhood? In commencement addresses and at the Academy Awards in 1997, Fred Rogers gave folks a gift I want to pass on to you. No one got to where they are today without kind people who loved and believed in us, gave us a chance, made room for us. Like Fred used to do, I would like to take 1 minute and give it to you to remember those in your life who have been kind to you. Some might be here with you, some might be in heaven, lets pause and remember the kindness in our lives. I’ll keep the time….
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Time. Think about how happy and proud the folks you remembered would be that you remembered them and their kindness.
I hope you can be kind to others as well. Inviting folks into your neighborhood.