A 2016 episode on NPR's "StoryCorps" interviewed Francois Clemmons, who played the role of friendly Officer Clemmons on Mr. Rogers' Neighborhood for over 25 years. Clemmons was the first black actor to have a recurring role on a children's television series. Surprisingly, Fred Rogers was clearly going out on a limb to cast Clemmons as a police officer. Clemmons knew this and expressed his reservations: "I grew up in the ghetto. I did not have a positive opinion of police officers. Policeman 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." Still, Clemmons eventually agreed to take on the role.

Over the decades he spent on the show, there's one scene in particular that Clemmons 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. "He invited me to come over and to rest my feet in the water with him," Clemmons recalls. "The icon Fred Rogers not only was showing my brown skin in the tub with his white skin as two friends, but as I was getting out of that tub, he was helping me dry my feet."

He says 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."

Possible Preaching Angles: Of course remember that Mr. Rogers was an ordained minister. As such, there's every reason to believe that he was coming from a place of conviction here regarding what the Christian faith says about human identity. Namely, that you are who God sees you to be, which is a forgiven sinner, a child of God, a son in whom he is well pleased.