Becoming a Ragamuffin Again: Lenten Reading
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We’re back.
I’ve been reading The Ragamuffin Gospel by Brennan Manning for Lent. The main thesis is: Modern Christians are crypto-pelagians, consciously and unconsciously believing we must earn the love and forgiveness of God. Yet, there is nothing that we could ever do to earn Abba’s love. Ragamuffins recognize the unmerited love of God because they have received it in the worst of circumstances; prostitutes and thieves, drunks and tax collectors — they all know that they could not have possibly earned God’s love, favor and forgiveness, but they experienced it anyway. When they were covered with mud, slime, excrement and pig fodder, Abba ran to them, surprised them, threw his arms around them, and threw a feast for them.
We try to box it in, lock it up. We try to tame Abba’s love. But it is untamable; he is outrageous in his love for us. I deeply needed that word this Lent.
That experience of Abba’s love for us must be prior to our repentance, otherwise we are trying to earn acceptance and forgiveness from God. I have been contemplating how we can experience Pascha before embarking on Lent, but we already do. The first two Sundays of pre-lent are the Publican and the Pharisee and the Prodigal Son. In the Russian tradition, the Great Fast begins with a service of forgiveness with the hymns of the resurrection chanted softly in the background. The problem is that we don’t focus enough on these as examples of our Father’s outrageous, unmerited love.