Skip to main content

Kingdom Come, in the Kingdom of Make Believe?


Parental confession:  my children did not grow up on Mr. Rogers.  They just didn’t fall into that group. They were more Barney and Sesame Street.  This bothered me for a VERY long time.  It bothered me like, how “we ought to be going to church, but we aren’t” bothers some other parents. Is watching Mr. Rogers the same as going to church?  No.  Words matter and Fred Rogers was carefully and fully inclusive; he never spoke of “God” or “sacraments,” but his neighborhood was a study in formation, children’s radical formation where all are welcome, feelings are named, and children are respected.

I think it is Kingdom work to facilitate those same things being found at church.  No, not just at Sunday School – which is usually story telling focused and appropriation tasked.

 I mean, at church:
At coffee hour where there are tables for their size among the adult-sized tables. 
At worship where there are “movement breaks” and welcoming words “just their size.”
At fellowship activities where there are activities for all ages and abilities.
At mission and service events where all hands are welcome.

I think Mr. Rogers’ Neighborhood was a study in Formation and value based, -- how to be church.  It respected children where they were and did not “set aside” a space for the children. It was inclusive.  It was welcoming. It modeled a “kingdom come” sort of neighborhood where kingdom work is done by kingdom hands of all sizes. This gave a sense of belonging and agency to children. 

One Sunday, the small church we attended at the time, ran out of bread and juice for communion.  The decision was made to “skip the kids” so there was” enough to go around.” Not in Mr. Rogers’ Neighborhood! and apparently not in my son’s either.   My young (preschool) son addressed the worship committee that week and informed them that “Jesus would have given me bread and juice.”  From then on there was a children’s elder who served them, always. It’s what Mr. Rogers would have done, doing what Jesus would do.

It is not a quick jump from that to a small town, Bethlehem, that is too full and there is no room for a mother to have her baby.  Babies don’t pay taxes; they can’t pay innkeepers.  Why make room for them? Enter, baby Jesus in a manger.  There is always room.  There is always welcome.  There is always community.

Maybe some children live in Mr. Rogers’ neighborhood even if they didn’t watch the show?  Mr. Rogers taught us, the grownups, how to form community where it is inclusive, accepting, and welcoming. That seems a Kingdom Come idea, and hopefully not just "Make Believe." 


Peace, neighbor,

Kat.


To hear the Rev. Fred Rogers explain the purpose and intent of his PBS program, see his testimony from May 1969. https://youtu.be/eUDVn4d2Rms
Labels:

Comments

Post a Comment

Popular posts from this blog

Directional-ly Impaired

Holy Promise People, Lent 2017, Second Presbyterian Church  My family and friends know that I am a little bit directional-ly impaired.  I’m  fine as long as the smart phone battery hangs in there, but if I forget to recharge…I could be circling 86 th street for quite a while! Life can feel like that sometimes.  There are distractions, obligations, self-imposed expectations, and competing priorities that can take focus away from the joy of a life lived in God .  Could that be why Lent is one of my favorite times of the church season?  Yes, I love the pageantry of Easter and the Christmas music, but there is something soothing and comforting about Lent that reorients me.   http://maiaduerr.com/wp-content/uploads/2013/02/creditcard-trek.jpg Often people give something up for Lent as a sign of self-denial.  One year I had to have jaw surgery and gave up talking for Lent.  (Really!) I have friends that give up chocolate, shopping during the week, and even social media. How
2 comments
Read more

Be a sheep

Here's to Christmas Pageants!  Years ago, okay decades ago, I lived in Crawfordsville, and they had an epic one.      You see, the church let the YOUTH GROUP tell the Christmas story.   We all know that can be a little risky.  It was not told in King James English, or even NRSV.   I didn’t get to see it;  I was in Sunday School. Still, I treasure two memories from that event; yes, they are memories of an event I did not see and yet became part of our family Advent Lore. It changed the way I wait. First memory, the kings arrived down the center aisle on bicycles, and second the shepherds’ big line was, “’Biding’s a bore.”  Any time I have to wait, I repeat that line.  The shepherds are SO RIGHT!  “And in the same country there were shepherds abiding in the field, keeping watch over their flock by night” (Luke 2:8 KJV). They were waiting.  Shortly after that, Christmas Pageants disappeared from the churches I attended.   I don’t know if the contemporary interpretation was
Post a Comment
Read more

God's Hope Floats

  Friends, it is a little TOO easy to relate to the familiar Noah’s Ark story of Genesis.   However, teaching it to a multi-aged class this Sunday taught me something new.   Noah put his reminder on the ground where he would be able to touch it and to remember that even a seemingly forever-flood comes to an end.    Faithfulness means remembering that God is with us.   God put a reminder in the sky where we can remember to look up, to look around, and to remember that God’s love cannot be overcome by any kind of flood, fears, or sorrow.   It had not occurred to me, until today, that we need to build a reminder for ourselves, too. Like Noah, we know that these days will seem far away by next year.   However, we need to remember that isolation, fear, and tiredness do not last forever; God has set a promise in the sky.    So, I encourage our families to build a touchstone in your house or garden to remind us that God’s hope floats.   You might read the God’s Hope Floats story of Noah f
Post a Comment
Read more