Exploring the Neighborhood—John 14: 1-6a
History is filled with people trying to create the kingdom of God somewhere on earth. Doomsday cults, strange offshoots of more common religions, fake prophets and preachers, and folks who just want to disappear into the woods have all tried at one time or another to say they are the kingdom of God, the only city on a hill on earth, or their leaders say they are divine somehow. Most of them have a rather catastrophic failure rate. The Crusades failed to make Jerusalem the kingdom of God in the Middle Ages. Other failures include the People’s Temple in Jonestown, Waco, the Shakers, the Koreshan Unity, and so on throughout the ages.
The problem is that Heaven is not on earth, and it will not exactly be found on earth. My grandmother says caramel ice cream is “heaven on earth,” but that’s about as close as we’re going to get. And yet this idea of the kingdom of God on earth still exists. To truly understand it, we must realize that that it is more than a physical location. We need to look within. That kingdom of God is within us as we live our lives following Jesus each day.
In some ways, I believe Mr. Rogers made his “Neighborhood,” which is often called “make believe,” a sort of image of God’s kingdom. Mr. Rogers grew up in Latrobe, Pennsylvania, and aside from being bullied early on in school had a very privileged and happy childhood and adulthood. His neighborhood looked like and reflected much of his upbringing in Latrobe. Because that life was good for him, he wanted to share it as the heart and soul of his work with children. Conflicts were resolved, everybody found a way to be happy and live well, and all feelings were worked out in Mr. Roger’s neighborhood. But there was also a deeper point.
Jesus says to us in the scripture for today, “I am the way, the truth, and the life.” We always get a little caught up on the “way” part of that and leave off the truth and the life. We tend to jump on the bandwagon that if we believe, we get Heaven, and we’re done. But what’s the point of believing in Jesus if we have no intention to live like him following the example he gave us? Yes, Mr. Rogers created a little make-believe community that he wanted to be like a slice of heaven for children, but the true lessons are in the way he lived his life, following Christ. Christ is still the way, the truth, and the life.
If you want to find the kingdom of God here on earth, it lives and dwells in each one of us, when our faith encourages us to live and be more like the example of the Savior we believe in. Fred Rogers believed in patterning his life on that of Jesus, and following him in everything Mr. Rogers did. Heaven is the reward of a life of faith, but it’s not our mission. Our calling is to be Christ-like in a world that is cruel and often-times ugly. The kingdom of God is within you. It is you. Luke 17: 20-21 says, “One day the Pharisees asked Jesus, “When will the Kingdom of God come?”
Jesus replied, “The Kingdom of God can’t be detected by visible signs. You won’t be able to say, ‘Here it is!’ or ‘It’s over there!’ For the Kingdom of God is already among you.” For the King James members, it literally says that the Kingdom of God is within you.
So how do we live as the kingdom of God, if it is us? Jesus spent his time on earth teaching, healing, loving, and helping. If you want to see the example, look to Mr. Rogers and the neighborhood he created. In the idyllic world of make-believe, he created episodes that addressed turmoil and strife with peace balloons to send a message of hope. In a time of racial strife, he put his feet in the pool with a black man. When war threatened the neighborhood, he had smart women in the characters go and find out that there was no looming threat. He called in the show for investments in education and childcare over bomb-making, and for hope and peace in the background context of the Cold War.
But Mr. Rogers also lived that outside of the make-believe neighborhood. He wrote constantly to children and young adults. He highlighted Jeff Erlanger in his wheelchair as just a normal kid. When the cameras stopped rolling he continued to live what he spoke and displayed on the show.
When we give belts and clothes to the donation bin, give food for the food bank, when we collect for the rescue mission, we are being the kingdom of God. When we sit and talk with those who are different form us, when we listen in love, when we set a wider table and invite more people to join in, we are being the kingdom of God. The hardest work of faith is not getting into Heaven. That only takes you believing. The hardest work of faith is life we live here on earth. Can people look at the life we lead here on earth and know that we meant it when we said, “I believe, and I will follow Jesus?”
I’m reminded of my favorite Flannery O’Conner short story when I read this scripture, and in preparing this sermon. It’s entitled “Revelation.” In it, we meet Mrs. Turpin, a pig farmer, who seems to misunderstand her faith a bit. She tends to look down on others she sees as less than her. The first part of the story sees her at the doctor’s office with her husband, Claud, to get some treatment. She puts people in the waiting room in their categories according to how she perceives them: the “lady” in the room, the white trash, the commoners, those less than her because they don’t own a home or don’t have land.
Mrs. Turpin engages in polite conversation with each of them, but the reader is given her innermost thoughts on each person, and the thoughts are typically less than kind. But there is a girl, Mary Grace, who keeps staring at Mrs. Turpin as if she can read every thought. The girl then throws a book at and attacks Mrs. Turpin, choking her. Once subdued, Mrs. Turpin asks her what she has to say, and the girl, Mary Grace, says, “Go back to the hades you came from, you old wart hog.”
Later that day, Mrs. Turpin goes to the farm to feed the pigs. She interacts briefly with the hired help, then goes to the pen, still stewing on the altercation and words of Mary Grace. She then has quite a confrontation with God, challenging God on how all of this should work. She is then given a vision of a vast horde of souls marching into heaven. At the front of the line are the bands of “white trash, black folks, freaks, disabled people, the intellectually challenged, dancing and singing in joy and hope for the promise of Heaven. At the very, very back of the line are the ones she says, "who, like herself and Claud, had always had a little of everything and the God-given wit to use it right." While she was so busy with the “proper order” of things, she forgot the ones whom Christ ministered to, the least of these, our brothers and sisters.
Jesus said unto them, “I am the way.” But Jesus didn’t stop there. He added, “I am the truth, and the life.” The hope and promise of our faith is Heaven, a place of holiness and perfection. But the kingdom of God is within us, and we have a calling here on earth, to live every moment as if we really do believe in Christ. The hardest part of our faith is not the belief, but the living from then on.
Mr. Rogers once said, "If you could only sense how important you are to the lives of those you meet; how important you can be to the people you may never even dream of. There is something of yourself that you leave at every meeting with another person." And what they should see in meeting us is Jesus.
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