Maundy Thursday 2018
One Maundy Thursday I preached about how Jesus gets right to the hearts of things on this last night of his life, leaving in a way, his last will and testament. During the last Supper he tells his disciples to do three things: to gather, love and serve with the implication that each of us is invited to figure out what this means in our lives. How is God calling us to gather, love and serve?
I want to share with you a simple story tonight, about how one Presbyterian minister did just that in his own unique way. As you may already know Fred Rogers of Mr. Roger’s Neighborhood studied to be a minister, but having been concerned with the content of children’s television, he asked if he could serve the church by becoming involved in children’s entertainment. And as you probably know, last month marked the 50th anniversary of his first broadcast.
I want to share with you this evening Fred Roger’s Maundy Thursday sermon. It was not strictly speaking a sermon, but it might as well have been. This is from an episode in 1969 and was then recorded for Story Corps and reported on Morning Edition on National Public Radio[1] back in March, 2016 (the following is both quoted and paraphrased from the website cited below).
So as the story goes, back in 1968 an African American named Francois Clemmons joined the cast of Mr. Rogers. He was reportedly the first African American to be cast regularly on children’s programming. Fred Rogers had first noticed Clemmons, or his voice actually, when he was singing in church and Fred Rogers admiring his voice asked Clemmons to come on to Mister Roger’s Neighborhood to play the role of a policeman.
Clemmons said, “Fred came to me and said, ‘I have this idea: You could be a police officer.” Clemmons said that he did not care for the idea saying:
“I grew up in the ghetto. I did not have a positive opinion of police officers. Policemen were siccing police dogs and water hoses on people, and I really had a hard time putting myself in that role. So I was not excited about being Officer Clemmons at all.”
But Clemmons came around to the idea eventually and became a regular cast member. In Story Corps he recalls a particular scene from the show that he remembers with great emotion.
“It was from an episode that aired in 1969, in which Rogers had been resting his feet in a plastic pool on a hot day. [Clemmons recalls] He invited me to come over and to rest my feet in the water with him. The icon Fred Rogers…was showing my brown skin in the tub with his white skin, as two friends.”
Now that would have been a remarkable story at the time in and of itself, but Fred Rogers went one step further, as Francois Clemmons was taking his feet out of that little plastic kiddy pool, Rogers helped Clemmons dry his feet with a towel.
Clemmons commented at the end of the interview, (which Clemmons and Rogers revisited in their last episode together, in 1993) touched him in a way he hadn’t expected.
Clemmons reported, “I think he was making a very strong statement. That was his way. I still was not convinced that Officer Clemmons could have a positive influence in the neighborhood and in the real-world neighborhood, but I think I was proven wrong,” he says.
He said he’ll never forget the day Rogers wrapped up the program, as he always did, by hanging up his sweater and saying, “You make every day a special day just by being you, and I like you just the way you are.” This time in particular, Rogers had been looking right at Clemmons, and after they wrapped, he walked over.
Clemmons asked him, “Fred, were you talking to me?”
“Yes, I have been talking to you for years,” Rogers said, as Clemmons recalls. “But you heard me today.”
“It was like telling me I’m OK as a human being,” Clemmons says. “That was one of the most meaningful experiences I’d ever had.”
And so on this Maundy Thursday evening, when Christ tells us to gather, to love and to serve, I invite you to think about what unique way has God asked you to gather, love and serve in the world? There are millions of ways to do it.
Amen
[1] www.npr.org/2016/03/11/469846519/walking-the-beat-in-mr-rogers-neighborhood-where-a-new-day-began-together
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