The Ragamuffin Gospel: Grace

On Sunday, my church had its annual recognition of graduates. Of course, my nice parents signed me up for it, even though I graduated 6 months ago. So, there we sat: 7 high school graduates and 7 college graduates (4 of whom were in the same grade and grew up in the church together). They had us go and get recognized, and they gave us a gift: The Ragamuffin Gospel by Brennan Manning.

It is unfortunate that we grow up in a society that makes it difficult to truly love and embrace the gift of grace. We are taught from a young age that we have to fight to earn everything. We are taught that we should never take free gifts from people and how we need to learn to support ourselves as soon as possible. I'll give a brief example. As I did support raising this past semester, a hard thing for me was to accept the gifts of different people that I met with. My natural thought was "I don't deserve this, and they are just giving money because they feel like they have to." I had to kick myself and turn this around because God works in people's lives and they want to financially support the mission of Christ, otherwise they wouldn't agree to supporting financially at all. In other words, it's easy for me to look at things and say I don't deserve it because I haven't earned it, and it is hard to take the free gift.

The term "Grace" is used in many contexts these days. Michael Jordan was graceful as he drove to the basket. The son was a disgrace because he didn't get A's on his report card. We use this term as us doing something. In a similar way, we relate our Spiritual walks into what we do. We talk about how we have to work to earn a closer relationship with the Lord, through spiritual disciplines. Our idea of "worship" is singing songs and what we do in that. These are great things, but so often we make all this stuff about ourselves and what we are doing to try to reach the Lord. The beauty of grace, and the Gospel message, is that this means nothing. We don't have to be the "All-Star" Christian that we all try to pursue being.

Let's take a look in Luke. In vs 15-17, people are bringing their children to Jesus and Jesus replies "Let the little children come to me, and do not hinder them, for the kingdom of God belongs to such as these. I tell you the truth, anyone who will not receive the kingdom of God like a little child will never enter it." In vs 18-30, a rich ruler comes to Jesus and asks him "What must I do to inherit eternal life?" (Note: Notice its all about what the man needs to do, which again shows how so often we make things about how we can earn it). He mentions how he has kept the commandments and Jesus tells him that he needs to sell all his possessions. Later, the crowd asks Jesus who can be saved, and he replies "What is impossible with men is possible with God." (Note: See Jesus switching it up and making it about the Lord rather than us)

I think theres a reason that Luke includes these stories back to back. The little children are embraced, while the rich man is told to fix some things. Children have no way of doing anything to earn the embrace. Luke, I believe, is really showing that Jesus wanted us to see that we can't earn anything, but God's work is all we need. We need to be like children where we aren't trying and working to earn anything, but we are just embracing the free gifts given to us. Children love when they are fed and cared to by others, why can't we love when a free gift, like God's grace, is given to us?