Wednesday, September 24, 2008

For the Beat-Up and Burnt-Out



We're in a series called "What Fuels You?" about the greatest message ever preached, the Sermon on the Mount.

I'm reading for the first time a book I should have read about 20 years ago - The Ragamuffin Gospel by Brennan Manning. He was a former Roman Catholic priest and alcoholic who encountered the "furious love of God." If you, like me, happened to grow up in a church who told you what movies not to see and what music you couldn't listen to, at some point you burned all your "secular" CD's. You then turned to the newly-birthed 80's Christian rock scene. It had a cheese factor of limburger, but you didn't care - it's the same reason Chuckie Cheese's pizza tastes delicious if you haven't eaten in 3 days. One of the artists who I heard over and over again was Rich Mullins. While I wasn't a huge fan of his music, I liked the name of his band: the "Ragamuffin Band." It came out of this book. Ragamuffin means, a "shabbily clothed child." Sounds like a word Dickens would coin. Brennan Manning uses it to mean that the gospel is for the bedraggled, beat up, and burnt-out.

Brennan says his book is not for, "the super-spiritual...muscular Christians...Allelulia Christians who live only on the mountaintop and have never visited the valley of desolation..." It's for the "wobbly and weak-kneed who know they don't have it together...inconsistent, unsteady disciples...stupid and honest disciples who admit they are scalawags."

As we learned this past week about being poor in spirit, in order to experience the riches of God, we must first admit our spiritual poverty. People who are poor in spirit are rich in humility. While I wish I could quote the whole book to you, I will pass along a prayer from the end of a chapter:

Lord Jesus, we are silly sheep who have dared to stand before You and try to bribe You with our preposterous portfolios. Suddenly we have come to our senses. We are sorry and ask You to forgive us. Give us the grace to admit we are ragamuffins, to embrace our brokenness, to celebrate Your mercy when we are at our weakest, to rely on Your mercy no matter what we may do. Dear Jesus, gift us to stop grandstanding and trying to get attention, to do the truth quietly without display, to let the dishonesties in our lives fade away, to accept our limitations, to cling to the gospel of grace, and to delight in your love. Amen.

Blessed are the ragamuffins (poor in spirit), for they shall inherit the kingdom of heaven.

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