A few years ago, my daughter and I were joking about how we’d trade that week: She’d go to the church and do my job being the pastor, and I would go to her preschool and play and draw and practice the alphabet. We had a lot of fun with this idea. I asked her, “Okay Pastor, if you’re writing the sermon for church this Sunday, what do you want to say?”

She said, “God is for everyone, even the mean ones.”

“God is for everyone, even the mean ones.” 

That’s it, right? That’s the gospel, From the mouths of babes … The good news that Jesus embodied and shared. A four-year old can get it. But it’s something else to know it and live it, day after day, year after year, as we come to know more of the world’s meanness, and of our own. 

There is no one whom God does not embrace, and no part of ourselves. God is for everyone. So, if you feel yourself outside of the love of God, or if you feel some part of yourself to be outside of the love of God, that is simply an illusion. The deeper reality is, in the words of Martin Laird, “Because God is the ground of our being, the relationship between creature and Creator is such that, by sheer grace, separation is not possible. God does not know how to be absent.”

We can run, but we can’t hide. 

We can close our eyes, but the light’s still there. 

In the words of Psalm 23, “Surely goodness and mercy shall pursue me all the days of my life.” This is often translated as “Surely goodness and mercy shall follow me…” but the Hebrew word here is like “hunt down,” “pursue.” You can run, but you can’t hide. 

This is true for everyone, and it is true for every part of ourselves.

God does not know how to be absent. 

But we sure do. We can run from grace, we can close our eyes, we can deny it for ourselves and for each other. And this causes suffering and crisis for ourselves and for our society. The antidote is the gospel. 

Now, notice the shift I made from “God is for everyone, even the mean ones;” to “God is for every part of ourselves, even the mean parts.” This is a very important connection, which Jesus taught. “The measure by which you judge is the measure by which you shall be judged.” How willing we are to admit the grace God has for other people, is tied in a profound way to how much we are willing to admit that we need God’s grace, and to let that grace in. Personal experiences of grace helps us to be humbled in knowing our own belovedness, as well as the belovedness of all others. 

Our society desperately needs this grace. 

There are big crises that come down on the one hand to individuals who come to believe they themselves are unworthy of life or fullness of life; and, on the other hand, to people who believe that others are unworthy of life or fullness of life. 

As a society we are being torn apart by judgment – whether it is judgment of others or judgment of oneself – and bitter fruit of judgment we call resentment. Judgment and resentment, only do damage to human hearts and human societies. 

There are urgent life-and-death issues that confront us, daily. Yet we’re divided into who’s worthy and who’s unworthy of the basics of dignified life, who’s deserving and undeserving of mercy and generosity. 

The gospel is an antidote to these division wrought by judgment and resentment, which in other times of crisis in history have torn people apart. As Dr. King said, “Have we not come to such an impasse in the modern world that we must love our enemies – or else? The chain reaction of evil – hate begetting hate, wars producing more wars – must be broken, or else we shall be plunged into the dark abyss of annihilation.” And this was before we realized the urgent global of human caused climate change – just one more reason why we can’t afford to be tearing each other apart. 

The gospel is the antidote, but it’s a challenging course of medicine. 

The gospel forces us to see how those whom we consider depraved and despicable are beloved by the God we all share, and deserving of wellness and dignity. God is seeking them out with the same zeal by which God seeks us out, with the divine knowledge that no one is beyond redemption. Somewhere within that meanness is a lost sheep, frightened and alone.

The gospel also forces us to see how, in the words of Alexander Solzhenitsyn, 

“If only it were all so simple! If only there were evil people somewhere insidiously committing evil deeds, and it were necessary only to separate them from the rest of us and destroy them. But the line dividing good and evil cuts through the heart of every human being.” This is from someone who suffered at the hands evil deeds done by people who thought they were doing good by separating out the evil people and destroying them. 

The way of Jesus is the way of humility to see hard truths about ourselves and our own meanness and negligence and denial of God and that-of-God in others, and to allow the embrace of God’s love to reach those places in ourselves and our society. 

The gospel is an experience of grace, not of guilt. It is about the joy of the shepherd who finds the lost sheep, the relief of the woman who finds the lost coin. 

The gospel is an experience of grace, not of guilt. 

I’ll say it one more time: Grace, not guilt.  

Grace for ourselves. Grace for others. Grace for this beautiful and broken world. A humbling and healing grace that helps us each and all mature into more of who God has created us to be. 

This gospel of grace is so deeply needed in this age of such severe judgment and resentment. The urgent need to be mature and accountable for our human violence, our racism, our greed, our despoilment of the earth, and the ways these bitter seeds have born bitter fruits. 

God’s promise, God’s covenant is that however much we try to run, we can’t hide; however much we close our eyes, God’s light is still there. And if we surrender and say Yes to this, and keep alive a humble faith that lives by God’s grace, then periods of crisis and chaos will indeed pass. 

God has created us for life and for fullness of life. Jesus came so that we all may live and live fully. 

For this I give thanks to God. 

I also give thanks to my daughter for the sermon idea. As a post script, let me tell you the end of the story: 

After she told me that, “God is for everyone, even the mean ones,” I asked her if she wanted to share that for the children’s sermon that Sunday. She was excited about the idea. So, we rehearsed that week saying, “God is for everyone, even the mean ones.” And when the day came at church, I called the children to the front and told the kids about how she and I were joking about trading jobs that week. I said that she had come up with a good message to share. And here it is. I gave her the mic. She took the mic, took a look around at everyone, and said, loud and clear, “Sermons are boring!” 

(Delivered Sunday, October 9, 2022, by Rev. Nathaniel Mahlberg at the United Church of Christ at Valley Forge)