Between Sundays

This Sunday we continue our “Won’t You Be My Neighbor” series with a message called “It’s You I Like.” To tell you why, I have to take you back to 1981.On an episode of Mister Rogers’ Neighborhood that year, Fred Rogers welcomed a ten-year-old named Jeff Erlanger. Jeff used an electric wheelchair, and right there on the show he demonstrated how it worked and talked openly about why he needed it. There was no script and no rehearsal. It was simply two people having an honest conversation, and it ended with the two of them singing one of Fred’s best-loved songs, “It’s You I Like.” The whole message of that song, and really the whole message of Mister Rogers, is beautifully simple. You are liked, you are loved, just for being you. Not for what you can do. Not for how you look or what you can or cannot manage. Just you, exactly as you are. Rogers later called that visit one of his most treasured moments in all his years on the set.

If that sounds familiar, it should. It’s the Gospel in a Mr. Rogers cardigan and ked tennis shoes. It’s God leaning down over every one of us and saying what God says to Israel in Isaiah, you are precious in my sight, and honored, and I love you. Not someday, when you have it all together. Now. As you are. That is the good news we so often forget we are allowed to believe about ourselves.

The story does not end in 1981, and neither does Sunday’s message. Eighteen years later, in 1999, when Fred Rogers was inducted into the Television Hall of Fame, a grown-up Jeff Erlanger was brought out to surprise him, and Fred was so overcome that he leaped up out of his seat and climbed onto the stage to reach him. Watch the video below, and keep a tissue handy. It is one of the most beautiful moments TV has ever captured.

Fred Rogers understood the power of a screen to shape a soul, and he spent his life asking one question that he mentions in this Hall of Fame acceptance speech. How do we make goodness attractive? That is our question too, friends. In a loud and often unkind world, how do we make goodness, and belonging, and the radical welcome of God, something people can see and feel and want?

We start by telling the truth Mr. Rogers told, and the truth Isaiah told long before him. You are precious. You are honored. You are loved. It’s you God likes.

Come Sunday, we will have a little surprise for our in-person congregation whipped up by Joche on the organ as we welcome him home to Calvary. Apologies to our online viewers, this little part of the service will have to be muted for copyright reasons. All the more reason to join us in person if you’re in town.