SERMON                                                                                                “Welcome to the House of Love”

Sixth sermon in a series,

titled, “The Ragamuffin Gospel”

Excerpts from The Ragamuffin Gospel by Brennan Manning
Multnomah Publishers

1)   The question had become not “What does Jesus say?” but “What does the church say?”  This question is still being asked today.

      Sad but true:  some Christians want to be slaves.  It is easier to let others make decisions or to rely upon the letter of the law.

2)   Raised from the dead, Jesus remains present in the community of disciples as the way to freedom.  The Kingdom of God is a kingdom of freedom.  Jesus invites and challenges us to enter this kingdom, to walk the royal road of freedom, to be set free by the Father’s love.  He calls ragamuffins everywhere to freedom from the fear of death, freedom from the fear of life, and freedom from the anxiety over our salvation.

3)   Christ bore my sins, took my place, died for me, freed me from fear to walk the path of peace…

4)   Living by grace rather than law leads us out of the house of fear into the house of love.  “In love.  “In love there can be no fear, but fear is driven out by perfect love:  because to fear is to expect punishment, and anyone who is afraid is still imperfect in love” (1 John 4:18).

5)   Home is a sacred space—external or internal—where we don’t have to be afraid; where we are confident of hospitality and love.  In our society we have many homeless people sleeping not only on the streets, in shelters or in welfare hotels, but vagabonds who are in flight … people who have an address but are never at home, who never hear the voice of love or experience the freedom of God’s children.

6)   The author of Hebrews describes Jesus as the one who has “set free all those who had been held in slavery all their lives by the fear of death” (Hebrews 2:15).  The gospel of freedom proclaims that death is an illusion, a phantom, the bogeyman of little children:  death is simply a transition into the one experience worthy of the name life.

7)   “Christians ought to be celebrating constantly.  We ought to be preoccupied with parties, banquets, feasts, and merriment.  We ought to give ourselves over to veritable orgies of joy because we have been liberated from the fear of life and the fear of death.  We ought to attract people to the church quite literally by the fun there is in being a Christian.”  Unfortunately, we sometimes become somber, serious, and pompous.  We fly in the face of freedom and grimly dig deeper into the trenches.

8)   Christ’s call on your lives is a call to liberty.  Freedom is the cornerstone of Christianity.

9)   Freedom in Christ produces a healthy independence from peer pressure, people-pleasing, and the bondage of human respect.  The tyranny of public opinion can manipulate our lives.  What will the neighbors think?  What will my friends think?  What will people think?  The expectations of others can exert a subtle but controlling pressure on our behavior.

      As the chameleon changes colors with the seasons, so the Christian who wants to be well thought of by everyone attunes and adapts to each new personality and situation.

10)  For most of us it takes a long time for the Spirit of freedom to cleanse us of the subtle urges to be admired for our studied goodness.  It requires a strong sense of our redeemed selves to pass up the opportunity to appear graceful and good to other persons.

11)  Let us suppose you give your three-year-old daughter a coloring book and a box of crayons for her birthday.  The following day, with the proud smile only a little one can muster, she presents her first pictures for inspection.  She has colored the sun black, the grass purple, and the sky green.  In the lower right-hand corner, she has added woozy wonders of floating slabs and hovering rings:  on the left, a panoply of colorful, carefree squiggles … Later at the office, you share with your staff your daughter’s first artistic effort and you make veiled references to the early work of Van Gogh.

      A little child cannot do a bad coloring; nor can a child of God do a bad prayer.