[00:00:00] Well hey Central, it is so good to be with you today. My name is Bri Johns. I am the Weekend Arts Pastor here and we're continuing our series called Oh The Places We'll Go. And so I get to introduce you today to one of my favorite books. It's called The Ragamuffin Gospel by Brennan Manning, and this book has changed my life. [00:00:19] I love that I get to share with you about this today. And so, anyway, let me tell you a little bit about Brennan. Brennan Manning was a guy who was a former Franciscan priest. Who actually left the parish to get married. A little bit of a scandal. And through the ups and downs of life, he struggled with alcohol addiction and his wife actually left him, but like through the ups and downs of life, he always drew back to God and he became this great preacher on the grace of God. [00:00:46] Let me share with you a quote from him. And it says, this has such a human perspective. It says when I get honest. I admit I'm a bundle of paradoxes. I believe and I doubt, I hope and get discouraged. [00:01:00] I love and I hate, I feel bad about feeling good, I feel guilty about not feeling guilty. I am trusting and suspicious. [00:01:08] I am honest and I still play games. Aristotle said I am an rational animal; I say I'm an angel with an incredible capacity for beer. Wow. So I need to start off by saying that this guy, this book is actually very controversial. Brennan uses imagery and illustrations that are a little bit provocative. And as he's explaining the grace [00:01:33] and the love of God he talks about racism. He talks about homosexuality. He talks about prostitution and infidelity. And so just like Cal said in the first week of this series and he talked about, we can learn from anyone. And so as we're growing and we're trying to become better and understand new things as we're on this Places We'll Go series where we want to go new places and stretch our minds and learn new things. [00:01:58] You know, I'm gotta tell, you're going to read this [00:02:00] book and there are going to be some things in it that are going to offend you. You're going to read some things that are, and there's some things in this book that, that are going to convict you. And there's some things that are going to powerfully change you. [00:02:10] And I just love it. It's just, it's such a great place for us to be. Right?. Just open to God growing us and making us into new people. And so this is your warning label that this is a bit of a controversial book. So the theme of Brennan Manning's book, The Ragamuffin Gospel is all about grace. And so let's talk about grace. [00:02:30] You know, if you grew up in church, you remember this. Grace means getting something you don't deserve. And in Christianity that is God's love and forgiveness, right? Because, because we are sinners. And so God sent His one and only Son to come and die and pay the price for our sins so that we might live in freedom. [00:02:49] We might have a relationship with God and we don't deserve a free pass. And I love the way that Brennan explains this in his book. It says, this is the God of the gospel of [00:03:00] grace. A God who out of love for us, sent the only Son He ever had wrapped in our skin. He learned how to walk, stumbled and fell, cried for His milk, sweated blood [00:03:11] and the night, was lashed with a whip and showered with spit, was fixed to a cross, and died whispering forgiveness on us all. That's grace. Wow. You know grace is hard for us to understand as humans, right? I mean, this is hard for us to grasp in general, and we have some hangups about grace. I think all of us do. [00:03:33] And there's some reasons for this, one of your hangups about grace and accepting this from God might be that, that you encountered, or you had a bad experience with a Christian. Maybe a Christian made you feel rejected or not accepted. And so you have this view of God that you're not acceptable, you're not worthy. [00:03:50] You'll never be good enough. And so you view God through this lens. Like how could I receive grace? And another hangup you may have, you might have grown up in a Christian [00:04:00] home or you might've grown up just in a home with legalism, right? Where there were a lot of rules. And so there was this perfectionism that was placed on you to achieve and to be perfect. [00:04:10] And you weren't worthy of love unless you followed all the rules and you were a good little boy or a good little girl. And so you see God this way and you think, how could I be accepted by God, I'm never good enough. Or maybe one of our hang ups in general is just that we're American. Right? Life is good. [00:04:26] We don't, we don't have like a huge need or desire for God. Life is fine. And so just living the American dream and that could keep us from understanding the grace of God, whatever it is, grace is hard to grasp. It just is. And so I love that Brennan Manning's interpretation of the gospel is that we are all ragamuffins. [00:04:47] We're all ragamuffins. Let me show you a picture of a ragamuffin right now. Check this out. This is a little girl just covered in dirt. She's got ratty hair and she's just, just a kid, right? This [00:05:00] is actually a picture of me when I was like two years old. This is baby Bri. And this is, this is what it means to be a ragamuffin, a child. [00:05:08] A ragamuffin is just a raggedy, you know, dirty clothed child who has nothing. Child who has nothing. And this is who we are as Brendan wants to paint the picture, who we are in the gospel story. And that's why I love this book. Because I didn't grow up in the church. And I actually tell my friends that I feel like I arrived late to the party. [00:05:32] I feel like I didn't know all the Christian things. And when I started going to church, I felt like I had missed out. And you know what this is like, if you arrive late to the party, you know, arriving late to the party is really difficult. You walk in and things are already happening and you walk in and go, I don't know where to hang my coat. [00:05:49] I don't know where the snacks are. Like, what room are people dancing in or like where's the bathroom and there's this party going on. Everybody's a part of it. They've arrived on [00:06:00] time. They know all the rules to the game and yet you feel like I know that when I felt like coming to, to become a Christian that arriving late to the party, I always struggled with, like, do I belong here? [00:06:12] Like, do I actually fit in here? Like, was I really invited to be a part of this because I cuss and because I have done really terrible things that you probably already know about. Right? Because you can read it all over me and maybe this resonates with you. Maybe you're like, I don't know if I fit in this church thing. [00:06:32] I get you, or maybe you grew up in the church thing, you knew all the rules, you are a part of the party, and then later you messed up. And so you feel like, I don't know if I belong here either. And the truth is if we all get honest, we all feel like massive failures in the church. We just wear it differently. [00:06:49] We all feel like imposters and it's just not everyone shows it. Right? Some of us walk in, we're wearing a graphic tee of all of our sins. We're wearing it tattooed across our [00:07:00] forehead, and people know because we've lived hard worn lives and people can tell. The other people can hide it more easily. [00:07:07] But ultimately we all know innately that we need God's grace. We come to God differently and I love how Jesus talks about this in the gospel of Luke. And so we're going to read that right now. If you have a Bible open up to Luke chapter 18, starting in verse nine. It says this. To some who were confident of their own righteousness and look down on everyone else, [00:07:33] jesus told this parable. Two men went up to the temple to pray, one a Pharisee. And that was like a teacher of the loss, somebody who grew up knowing how to follow the law. And the other a tax collector. And this was a person who was a sinner. They were despised by everyone because they stole from the population. [00:07:53] Verse 11. The Pharisee stood by himself and prayed; God, I thank you that I'm not like [00:08:00] other people--robbers, evildoers, adulterers or even like this tax collector. I fast twice a week and give a tenth of all I get. Look at me, God, I'm doing it. I deserve all the righteous, the grace and Your love. I deserve Your favor. [00:08:17] And I'm praying to You to show You that. Verse 13 says. But the tax collector stood at a distance. From the temple, right? He would not even look up to heaven, but beat his breast and said, God have mercy on me, a sinner. Jesus continues. I tell you that this man, rather than the other, went home justified before God. For all those who exalt themselves will be humbled, [00:08:44] and those who humble themselves will be exalted. Wow. Jesus is calling us out. He's telling us to stop playing the game and to admit who we truly are, that we need to humble ourselves. And that, you know, it's so silly, right? Because so many [00:09:00] times we can get caught up being Pharisees in our lives. So many times we can stress out about seeming righteous, about living rightly. And we try [00:09:08] so hard to prove that we're doing this right. And we're being good. And, and it's kind of like, at least I'm not as bad as him. Like, did you see her Instagram account? Like what she was wearing, what she said, don't look at me, look at her. And so I love that Jesus juxtaposes these two people, this Pharisee and this tax collector. [00:09:29] And then he drops the hammer with this. Let's pick up in verse 15. People were also bringing babies to Jesus for him to place his hands on them. When the disciples saw this, they rebuked them. Like, hold up, hold up, this is the Master. Like don't cramp His style. Like He doesn't have time. Children at the time had no status. [00:09:50] And so this was a waste of people's time and that's at least what the disciples thought. And so they rebuked, like this is bad for Jesus's PR can we just hold off on the children? Jesus needs to [00:10:00] teach right now. And I love what Jesus does in verse 16. It says, but Jesus called the children to him and said, let the little children come to me and do not hinder them. [00:10:11] The kingdom of God belongs to such as these. Truly I tell you, anyone who will not receive the kingdom of God like a little child will never enter it. I love too, that there are four accounts of Jesus's life in the Bible. They're called the gospels. Matthew, Mark, Luke, and John. We just read from the gospel of Luke and Matthew talks about this in his gospel, the same encounter. [00:10:36] And I love the way that he words it. Would you read this with me? Matthew chapter 18, verse two and three. It says, he called a little child and had him stand among them. And then he said, I tell you the truth, unless you change and become like little children, you will never enter the kingdom of heaven. [00:10:55] Therefore, whoever humbles himself like this child is the [00:11:00] greatest in the kingdom of heaven. Unless you change, you will never enter the kingdom of heaven. You've got to become like a child. You've got to recognize your ragamuffin-ness. I love this example because children, right? Children, I have children, I was a child. [00:11:18] Children bring nothing to a relationship. They don't have anything. They can't exchange anything. Like when you give them a gift, they can't do anything for it. They can't pay you for it. All they can do is just take. And I love how Brandon says it this way, as he talks about our struggle and not understanding that we need to come to God as a child, it says the kingdom belongs to people who aren't trying to look good or impress anybody, even themselves. [00:11:44] They are not plotting how they could call attention to themselves, worrying about how their actions will be interpreted or wondering if they will get gold stars for their behavior. To those of us caught up in the boasting about our victories to those of us fretting and flapping about our human [00:12:00] weaknesses and character defects. [00:12:01] The child doesn't have to struggle to get himself in a good position for having a relationship with God; he doesn't have to craft ingenious ways of explaining his position to Jesus; he doesn't have to create a pretty face for himself; he doesn't have to achieve any state of spiritual feeling or intellectual understanding. [00:12:20] All he has to do is happily accept the cookies: the gift of the kingdom. Can you remember what it was like to be a child and just receiving, just because you were loved. I mean like pinatas are a great example of this. We beat it open up and all this free stuff comes out just because we're loved. Candy and toys. Or when your grandma and grandpa came and visited and they would bring you gifts. [00:12:46] Or when your parents took you to the zoo or to Disneyland, they did this all because you're just loved and there's nothing you could give for it. There's nothing you could do to earn it. It was just because you were loved. And so I'm actually the [00:13:00] weird girl who named my child after Brennan Manning. My son, my second born, actually Brendan Manning died two months before my second born was born. [00:13:10] And his name is Deacan Manning. I mean, I'm telling you this book transformed my life. It meant so much. I wanted to put his name on my child's name. So my child Deacan, he's six years old. And he is awesome. Here's a picture of him. He's kind of a free spirit and just wild at heart. And what I love about Deacan, [00:13:30] he just kind of lives in the moment. And just recently my mom came and picked the boys up to take them to her house and they hadn't had breakfast yet. And as they're sitting and they're getting their, their seatbelts connected, my mom, hands them two bags of sour patch kids. For breakfast and Deacan takes it, rips it wide open and just enjoys. And I'm thinking to myself like how, he didn't even ask me for permission. [00:13:58] And you know, like thinking like Deacan, he [00:14:00] didn't think about the calorie count. He wasn't thinking about whether or not he did something good to deserve it. He didn't think about like, like whether or not I would approve. He just enjoyed what was given to him, children happily acept the cookies or the sour patch kids. [00:14:16] That's just who they are. And I love how Paul says it in Ephesians chapter two, eight and nine. It says, for it is by grace you have been saved, through faith--not by anything of your own, but by a gift from God. It's not by anything you have done so that nobody can claim the credit. It's a gift. It's a gift from God. [00:14:40] It's a gift. You cannot earn this. God has these amazingly sweet chocolate chip cookies that He wants to share with you. He wants to give to you. And all you have to do is happily accept the cookies, this grace and this radical love that He has for you. And I get, I get our hangups. I get that this [00:15:00] is like, is this for real? [00:15:01] Like, what's the catch. I didn't really believe growing up that I deserved this cookie, this grace that God had for me, it took me a while to figure that out. And so I was shown by an incredible church who loved me regardless of my sins or my appearance. You see, they, they built a wall around my legs. They built a wall around my legs. [00:15:22] When I first started coming to church, the worship director found out that I had played piano since I was eight years old. And so he had asked me if I would play Sunday mornings, like three services. And I was like, I'm new here. Okay, sure. I'll play in the band. And so I show up and I'm ready to play. [00:15:39] And there's Mary Ed. She's like a hundred year old lady. That's playing the grand piano. They put me on the keyboard. And she's sitting there and she's probably been playing for 50 years and she's grumpy and I'm ready to play. I'm so excited. And as I'm there, I didn't notice that they had, I was modestly not modestly dressed. [00:16:00] [00:16:00] And so they built a wall around my legs. They built a wall around my legs. And you know what? I never noticed this. Every single Sunday morning as I was playing the keyboards, just joyfully, enjoying worship actually learning about worship as I was playing worship. I never noticed that they were covering me rather than confronting me. [00:16:21] I never noticed that they never mentioned my attire. They never mentioned that I needed to change in order to belong. They just built a wall of grace around me. And I found out later when I was more mature about this, they were joking about this in front of me. Like, remember that wall that we had to put up because Bree was, was dressed a little scandalously. I almost died of embarrassment. [00:16:45] I almost thought like, why didn't you tell me? And they're like, and we didn't want to tell you. And, I think about this now, you know, in my adult years and I just am so grateful. I'm so grateful that they didn't treat me like the Pharisee [00:17:00] praying about the tax collector and how unrighteous I was and how undeserving I was of God's favor, you know, because I don't know if I would be here today [00:17:08] if they treated me that way. Instead, the church offered me love and grace and acceptance. And so, isn't it just real. That we all need a wall of grace around us. That we can learn. I know that I learned worship songs while I was learning how to play these worship songs. I was not distracted because nothing was required of me. [00:17:31] I just got to show up as a ragamuffin and let the Holy Spirit do His work. And I love, and I'm so grateful for this little church that loved me this way. So, let me be clear before I close, because I feel like there are some of you who may be thinking this, because I know, I know the church good now. I know the church [00:17:49] well. Some of you may be thinking, we can't talk about grace like this. We can't just say you get a free pass. Like this is giving people a license to sin. This is giving people a [00:18:00] license to live loose and out of control lives. We can't have that here. Where will our witness be? How will we be set apart? [00:18:07] We need others to see that we are Christians. And so we need to be different. This is not what God wants. And guys, if you're thinking this right now, I got to tell you. When you're broken, and when you realize on your own, not with someone forcing it down your throat, but when you realize that you're not worthy and you understand exactly who you are, just a ragamuffin beat up by life and saved and accepted only by grace, the gift of grace, you can't even fathom taking advantage of that. [00:18:38] You can't even imagine that that's what grace does for us. You're not looking for ways to skirt the system. You're just grateful. And if you're looking for ways to skirt the system, I'm telling you right now, you don't, you didn't accept grace, You don't understand grace at all because understanding grace compels me to love and to return that love and to grow and [00:19:00] to allow the Holy Spirit to transform my life. [00:19:02] And that pours out into my relationships. That pours out into my speech. It pours out into who I am as I draw closer to God. And this is a lifelong process and Brennan Manning understood that, that we're all ragamuffins. We all have not, and will not arrive in our faith. And we sang this song earlier. It was this old children's church song. [00:19:26] Jesus loves me. Jesus loves me this I know for the Bible tells me so. I'm going to call you back to your childhood. I want to call you back. Remember when you were out with your, if you grew up in the church here with the little kids, or maybe you've heard this on TV growing up, Jesus loves me this I know for the Bible tells me so. And you just were smiling and you knew the hand motions and you were into it and yes, Jesus loves me. [00:19:57] Yes. Jesus loves [00:20:00] me. Yes. Jesus loves me. The Bible tells me so. Right? and you just believed it, you sang it with all your heart and you knew, Jesus loves me because the Bible tells me so. And I got to think, and we played this in service on purpose for us to think. Do we overcomplicate this as adults? Do we miss this? [00:20:23] Do we believe Jesus only loves us? Jesus only loves me when I'm good. When I checked the box, and I did all my Bible study and my devo and I prayed and, and I didn't sin. I didn't do any, you know, sins of omission. Do I believe that Jesus only loves me when I'm successful? Like I have God's favor, not when I'm failing, not when I've screwed up, not when I've done something that I am ashamed of. [00:20:48] Do I believe that Jesus only loves me when my marriage isn't straind, when things are happy, when my kids are doing good in life. No. Do we believe that [00:21:00] Jesus loves me just because the Bible tells me so? You know towards the end of Brennan Manning's life, what I love that he did, and you can Google this on YouTube. [00:21:10] He spoke a lot and he used this illustration that I really feel like it's going to rock your world. I want to read it to you right now. It says I'm utterly convinced that on Judgment Day, the Lord Jesus is going to ask us one question, and only one question. Did you believe that I loved you? [00:21:35] Can you imagine that. If that was the only question on Judgment Day? Did you believe that I loved you? Did you honestly get this, you know, all of our stressing about what we think Judgment Day's gonna be like, I mean, some of us from either cartoons or learning about this from others, we think that we're going to get to Judgment Day and stand before God, [00:21:58] and there's going to be this shame [00:22:00] reel of all the bad things that we've done and we're going to cower and we're going to cry and we're going to fear that God's going to send us to hell because we weren't good enough. And we didn't, we didn't do enough. Or we sinned so bad that we're just not worthy. And so we're cowering or worried about this. [00:22:14] I remember as a kid, somebody told me in my childhood that you have to accept Jesus into your heart if you want to be saved and you have to ask Jesus for forgiveness of all your sins, and if you don't, then you won't be saved. And so I remember as a child, I remember asking Jesus every single night when I went to bed, my parents didn't even know this. [00:22:36] Like I need to ask Jesus. I asked Jesus into my heart every night, and then I prayed for forgiveness. God, please forgive me for what I said to my brother, forgive me for my bad attitude. Forgive me for all the other sins I can't remember right now. God, please forgive me because I want to be saved. [00:22:54] This is like a fear based mentality of who God is. And I've heard some [00:23:00] people say that we often will associate God with how we view our earthly fathers. And I have a great relationship with my dad, but some of us, I mean, think about those many Judgment Days, right? When you're a child and your dad calls you into the room. How are you feeling? [00:23:18] Do you remember this? When your dad is calling you into the room where you first feeling like your thought, your first thought was like, oh no, what did I do? I'm going to get a whooping. And you're scared for your life or when your dad called you into the room, were you like my dad, I love him! [00:23:37] You go skipping into the room because you're so excited to see him, you know, the way that we live indicates how we see God, the way that we live indicates. If we really understand that at the end of our lives, God is only going to ask us. Did you believe that I loved you? Do you believe that He loves you? [00:23:58] Do you fully embrace this [00:24:00] love and this gift, you know, your whole life, you know, I want to live like this. I want to live in freedom. I want to live with that assurance. I want to live kind of letting things go because I do believe that Jesus loves me. Just because. I want to live like a ragamuffin child that just comes dirty and banged up by life. [00:24:20] And I made mistakes and I keep coming back to God because I know that all He does is He wants to love me. He wants to lavish His love on me. And so I just live my life going, whoops. But coming back to God and saying here care for me, please help me. Now are you running away from God in fear of punishment because you feel such intense guilt and shame, and you don't feel worthy in his presence? [00:24:46] You don't feel comfortable around church or around God talking people because it just makes you feel so unworthy. Or are you exhausting yourself trying to do all the right things? You're trying to earn a gold star to be [00:25:00] righteous and to be right before God. Ephesians chapter two, eight and nine. We're just going to read that again. [00:25:07] Cause I feel like we need this reminder. For it is by grace you have been saved, through faith, not by anything of your own, but by a gift from God, not by anything you have done so that nobody can claim the credit. It's a gift. And we've been saved by grace and it takes a lifetime to understand that God just loves us and he accepts us, and we need to accept this gift of grace. [00:25:42] And it's like a wall, right? It's a covering. Jesus covers all of our sins. And I think if you don't want or need this, if you think you don't deserve this, then you may, you may not understand who God truly is. And so, as we close today, I just want [00:26:00] to challenge us with two things. I have two things for us to do number one, read the book. [00:26:06] I feel like it's going to rock your world. Like it rocked mine. Maybe you won't name your kid after Brennan, but I think you're going to love it. And number two, personally accept the wall. Personally accept the wall. And for some of us that means to personally accept the wall of grace for the first time in our lives that God wants to cover you and your sins. [00:26:26] He loves you. He doesn't want to shame you. You are a ragamuffin, you will always be a ragamuffin and he's not requiring anything, but just that you would accept this wall of covering and believe that He loves you. And for the rest of us, who've already made this decision and we're just living this out. [00:26:44] We're bumping around life and we know we're ragamuffins. I'm going to challenge the church right now. Church, could we be a church that builds walls of grace around others, as they show up dirty and [00:27:00] disheveled, and they don't have it figured out. As they show up and we're not requiring them to clean up. And we're not requiring them to figure it all out and know all the rules because they're late to the party, but can we be a church that builds walls around the legs of people who show up and they need Jesus and they meet to know his love and they need to see it in us. [00:27:21] They need to be able to belong before they believe. Let's not shame others. Let's not make others feel uncomfortable. Let's be so accepting. So wildly friendly that people go well, that's different. That's weird. But in a good way, like, I want to be a part of that party. I want to, I feel accepted in this party, no matter what weirdo I am, I can be a part of this party because they're covering me and I'm covering them. [00:27:48] And this is how we do church. This is community and this is the church that Jesus wanted us to build. It's us loving each other. It's us being the hands and feet of Jesus [00:28:00] to each other. It's us showing God's grace. And this is just a fraction of the grace that God gives us through Jesus. In these little ways that we bestow grace to others, could we be that type of church? [00:28:13] Do you believe that all He wants you to know is that He loves you? How might that impact your life today, your week today, your family today? How might that impact? If you really understood that it's just all about me believing that Jesus loves me and there's nothing I can do for that. And we're on this journey to accept God's grace daily and that's just, that's a daily thing and it outpours into all that we do. [00:28:38] And so I just want to remind you, God loves you, period. He loves you and we can live joyfully and freely in that. Will you pray with me? Heavenly Father, God, thank you for the wall of grace around us. Thank you for the love of accepting us like little children who [00:29:00] have nothing that we can give You, God to deserve your love. [00:29:04] God, I pray that we could remember what it's like to be a child. God remember that heaven's probably going to just be filled with five-year-olds. Lord, I pray that we live in that freedom and we accept that grace. And for those who are listening right now, who are making a decision to follow you right now, they've never heard of this radical grace right now. [00:29:23] God, speak to their hearts. God love them. Show them your incredible love in tangible ways. And God, let us please be the church that loves this way. That loves each other. Cause we're all ragamuffins. Lord, we love You, and we pray all these things in Jesus name. Amen. [00:29:43]