Dunbar UCC
May 24, 2009
 
God Bless.....What!!!???

Vinnie Lavorgna gave me a bumper sticker that says:  “God Bless The Whole World No Exceptions.”  I thought of putting it on my car, but then I thought, “Someone won’t like it -- someone will see it and get angry -- they’ll take a key or a nail and scrape it along the side of  the car or the hood -- they’ll slash my tires.” So the bumper sticker still sits in my desk.  I still might put it on.

But isn’t that funny?  The idea that someone would be angry at the thought of God blessing everyone? Some people think that God takes sides -- usually the one they’re on. But that’s not what Jesus taught.  He said God makes his rain to fall on the just and the unjust.  God shines his sun on the good and the bad.  God loves blesses everyone -- even suicide bombers and serial killers and rapists -- and ordinary people like us, who are sometimes good and sometimes bad, but probably not extreme either way.  
 
God loves the whole world, no exceptions -- including the people who get angry when they hear that. Maria had dinner with us yesterday.  I asked her about a girl she used to be friends with that I hadn’t seen in a while.  “She’s a gossip,” Maria said.  “She’s friendly to your face, then says mean things about you behind your back.  So I don’t see her any more.”  “Who does see her?” I said?  “Who are her friends?”  “She doesn’t have any friends,” Maria said.  No one likes her.  But God likes her.  She can gossip all she likes, and God still loves her.
 
The apostle Peter was preaching a sermon and the Holy Spirit “fell” on everyone listening -- even on the Gentiles -- the people who didn’t follow Jesus -- the people who weren’t members of the church -- people who probably gossiped and some were probably lazy or immoral.  And the Holy Spirit fell on them too!!!!  And people were amazed by this.  “Why do they get God’s blessing???!!!” they wondered.  They aren’t good, like we are.  They are atheists!  They are homosexuals!  They are people with prison records!  They are Mexicans here illegally!  They are Arabs who despise us!  They are gossips and liars and thieves!  Gentiles!!!!  And why is God blessing them too??????”
 
Well -- Peter said, Jesus said -- we don’t make the rules here. It’s God’s Holy Spirit -- and God blesses whomever he will -- which is all of us, no exceptions.  Thank goodness. Jesus said it this way:  “Love one another as I have loved you.” But I hear that and don’t like it -- I don’t like it at all.  There’s a lot of people I don’t want to love.  Congressmen/women and Senators.  Bigots.  The thieves running the corporations and banks and Wall Street.  Loud-mouthed radio personalities spewing hate and prejudice.  And people in my own community and family.  And George Bush and Dick Cheney and Donald Rumsfeld and the rest of the neo-con war criminals.  I hate them. But I can’t hate them -- not if I want to follow Jesus. O Jesus -- do I have to love even Bush and Cheney?  Yes? Well -- not my will -- but yours.  But help me out here.  I need some help here.