March 24, 2019 (Lent at the Movies 3) – Isaiah 55:1-9
Isaiah 55:1-9
Lent at the Movies 3 – Won’t You Be My Neighbor?
3rd Sunday in Lent – March 24, 2019
First Lutheran Church – Winnipeg, MB
1969 was a time of great racial tension in the United States.
Among many other things,
some white people did not want black people swimming in the same pools as them.
They did not want to share the same water.
At the height of this – and in direct response – Mr. Rogers taped an episode of
Mr. Roger’s Neighbourhood that dealt with this very issue.
Fred is feeling a little tired and thinks it would be refreshing to take his shoes off and
soak his feet in a little paddling pool he has on set.
While he’s doing this and talking about how good it feels,
one of the other regular cast members comes on set.
It is Officer Clemmons, who is black.
Fred says how refreshing it is to soak his feet in the pool.
He asks officer Clemmons if he would like to join him. He says, “Yes!”
So Officer Clemmons takes off his shoes and soaks his feet in the same cool water as
Fred Rogers, and they both talk about how good it feels.
The message is: there is nothing to fear from sharing your water with a neighbour,
regardless of the colour of their skin.
You have to love Mr. Rogers for that – and for so much else.
For 40 years he asked North American children, “Won’t you be my neighbour?”
It wasn’t coercive: it was an invitation:
I’d like to be a good neighbour to you: will you let me?
At the heart of today’s reading from Isaiah, there is also an invitation to neighbourliness,
a very amazing one considering the context.
This is the situation: the prophet addresses the exiles in Babylon who are
just at the end of their time in exile.
They have been in exile for at least 50 years, since the Babylonians came and
destroyed their homes and took them from their land.
Having no land of their own, they must pay for food, and food is not cheap.
Their homes have been destroyed, they are impoverished, and going home will not be easy.
Worse, there will be others, of course, living on and working their land – what will they do?
The prophet announces a great hope in the reading today.
The people will return to the land and there they will be served a rich feast that
they will not have to pay for – you that have no money, come buy and eat!
come buy wine and milk without price!
eat what is good and delight yourselves in rich food!
You can imagine what good news that would sound like to the people!
But the prophet goes on: there is more!
This return to their land and to at least limited sovereignty means
they have more freedom to be the people God is calling them to be:
that is, more freedom to be the good neighbours God has long called them to be.
The prophet barely stops to take a breath as he continues:
you shall invite your non-Israelite neighbours to share in the feast!
See, he says, you shall call nations – that is, non-Jewish people – that you do not know to
this feast in the new land, and they will run to you to share the gifts of the land.
The people finally will have the freedom once again to be the people God called them to be
way back in Genesis 12 as children of Abraham: God will restore all creation by
blessing them so that they can bring blessing to all the families of the earth.
In this case, God will bless them with a feast so that they can invite others to it and
create new communities of peace and well-being and plenty for all peoples.
They can create a place where all are welcome to the table.
They can participate with God in restoring creation to its intent in being blessing for all people.
They can create a new world.
And it begins be being good neighbours.
By knowing they are loved by a good and gracious God, and loving their neighbours in return.
The neighbours are not competitors after all, but neighbours to be loved and valued.
Well – one can only imagine the people’s shock at hearing this.
So God can only say, “My ways, are not your ways. You’re gonna have to trust me on this one.”
My ways are not your ways: truer words were never spoken.
Today, the prophet invites the people to let others get into the pool with them.
To take refreshment with them.
The prophet invites the people to simply to be good neighbours.
The Old Testament scholar Walter Brueggemann has said that God’s project throughout scripture
is re-orienting the world to increasing neighbourliness.
One might say the same of Fred Rogers’ ministry.
His repeated, weekly call was “Won’t you be my neighbour?”
Ah: but how to be a good neighbour?
How to bring blessing? That is what his show was about.
Rogers was an ordained minister of the Presbyterian Church of the USA.
He got sidetracked into television when he realized that it could be a very powerful
communication tool with children.
He considered his television show as his ministry,
and indeed it was recognized as such by his church.
In his show, he became – and modelled how to be – a good neighbour to one of the most
vulnerable populations in the world: children.
Children were not well served, he felt, by television of his day.
What children needed was to be taken seriously.
Their feelings needed to be taken seriously, especially their fears.
Children needed to be taught that they can control their feelings and how they respond to them.
Above all, being a good neighbour to children meant communicating to them their specialness,
their uniqueness, their belovedness – just as they were.
In order to be good neighbours, children first had to know they were loved –
and capable of loving in turn.
We see this over and over and over again in the wonderful documentary showing on Netflix,
Won’t You Be My Neighbor?
God loves us into loving.
And most often, God loves us into loving through those who love us.
From the time you were very little, he says
at one point, you have had people who
have smiled you into smiling, people who have talked you into talking, sung you
into singing, and loved you into loving.
This is the definition of being a good neighbour: loving others into loving.
And it is how the world is changed.
It is how creation is restored.
When someone invites you into a pool into which you are not sure you are welcome,
it will open you to inviting others into your pool in turn.
And so the circle of neighbourliness grows – and the world is re-oriented to neighbourliness.
Fred Rogers’ program was of course aimed at children.
But as a parent who watched the show with my child, I can tell you it was as comforting and
as nurturing for the child as it was for me.
I think this was many peoples’ experience.
He wasn’t just addressing children – he was addressing us all.
He was telling us all we are beloved children of God.
He was telling us all that we are special and unique just the way we are.
He was telling us all that each of us can bring blessing.
It was about as radical and as world changing as what the prophet said to the Israelites
all those years before.
And it is just as needed – if not more.
9-11 happened after he had retired from his show, but PBS felt the country really needed
to hear a word from him in the wake of the tragedy – so they filmed some promos.
True to form, he simply reminded us all of our responsibility in being repairers of the world.
No matter our particular job, he said, we are all called to be . . . repairers of the world. Thank you for whatever you do to bring joy and light and hope and faith and pardon and love to your neighbour and to yourself.
I imagine in the wake of the tragedy in New Zealand last week his message would be the same.
Be a good neighbour.
It is above all what God is calling us too
Won’t you be my neighbour? There is such a strong desire in that simple question.
The question, he says, is an invitation for somebody to be close to you.
Everyone longs to love and be loved.
The greatest thing we can do is help someone know they’re loved and capable of loving.
Thank you for everything you do in helping people know they’re loved and capable of loving –
at home, at work, in your communities, in our congregation – and at Sargent and Victor.
Thank you for striving to be good neighbours.
Thank you for playing your part in restoring the world to increased neighbourliness.
Thank you for whatever you do to bring joy and light and hope and faith and pardon and love
to your neighbour and to yourself.
So together – let us say, “Amen.”
Pastor Michael Kurtz
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