The Mission Foundation
Sunday Evening, August 30, 2015
Dear friends,
Recently Becky and I watched a film that came out in 2014 but for some reason had flown under our radar: Ragamuffin, the life story of Rich Mullins. As you may know, it was Rich who gave us “Awesome God” and other songs that many of you have sung countless times. But, as you may not know, Rich Mullins lived in almost constant desperation to survive the turbulence of his soul.
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In his days as a child with two brothers and two sisters on a farm in Indiana, Rich was not like the other children. He was a musical prodigy who studied classical piano. He says that, as hard as he tried, he never seemed to be able to do anything right on the farm. This garnered the strongest disapproval from his father John Mullins who had to work extremely hard to support his family. Seemingly unaware of the lasting injury he was causing, Mr. Mullins related to Rich in a manner that bruised and bruised until at last the mark of the blows was unfading. Even when Rich was an adult and had reached great heights of success, the rawness of those wounds was regularly renewed by jab after jab of rejection by his father. And then there was the devastating blow: a breakup with the girl whom he met at Bible college and he was sure he would marry. It all left him staggering in the ring. He battled against despair. At least a couple of times, he mustered late night courage to call his father, but his father refused the phone. Rich’s spirit sank lower and lower as he smoked another cigarette and took another drink.
Although Rich’s struggles never seemed to go away completely, by the gracious workings of God, he learned something that we must all learn and learn and learn some more: Our Heavenly Father loves ragamuffins! What is a ragamuffin? Merriam-Webster defines a ragamuffin as “a child who is dressed in rags and is usually dirty and poor.” As I write this, I am reminded of the very first words of Jesus’ Sermon on the Mount: “Blessed are the poor in spirit . . . .” The favor of God is upon those who recognize that they are ragamuffins!
Rich came to understand God’s love for ragamuffins through a man with whom some of you may be familiar – a native New Yorker who spent most of his life serving our Lord in the city of New Orleans – Brennan Manning, author of The Ragamuffin Gospel. It all began one day when Rich was driving to yet another city to take his tortured heart onto another stage and give of himself, which he did with an uncommon vulnerability. His traveling assistant pled earnestly with him to listen for just a few minutes to a certain sermon. As the tape was inserted, a most pleasant and distinguished, baritone voice said:
In the 33 years since I was first ambushed by Jesus in a little chapel in the Allegheny Mountains in western Pennsylvania, and then, literally, the thousands of hours of prayer, meditation, silence, and solitude over those years, I am now utterly convinced that on judgment day, the Lord Jesus is going to ask each of us one question and only one question, “Did you believe that I loved you? that I desired you? that I waited for you day after day? that I longed to hear the sound of your voice?” The real believers there will answer, “Yes, Jesus, I believed in Your love, and I tried to shape my life in response to it.”. . . . Jesus Christ in this moment comes right to your seat and says, “I have a word for you. I know your whole life story. I know every skeleton in your closet. I know every moment of sin, shame, dishonesty and degraded love that has darkened your past. Right now I know your shallow faith, your feeble prayer life, your inconsistent discipleship. And my word is this: I dare you to trust that I love you just as you are, and not as you should be – because you’re never going to be as you should be. (excerpt from a sermon by Brennan Manning)
As Bec and I watched that film, I asked myself, “Is it true that the central question for us when we get to heaven will be ‘Did you believe that I loved you?’” My mind was taken to Genesis, Chapter 3. We humans, in our parents Adam and Eve, chose not to believe that God loves us. We believed that God’s prohibition with regard to “the tree” was more restrictive than it really was: Eve told Satan that God said that they were not even to “touch it.” We believed that God had lied to us about the consequences: The Serpent said, “You shall surely not die.” We believed that God was withholding good from us: Satan said, “God knows that you will be like Him . . . .” We chose to believe that God did not love us!
What a dishonor to God! Dishonor by those whom He had created to be the recipients of His love! But God the Son became a Man and honored His Father with the sacrifice of His own blood – love unto death – as He the Divine Man suffered dishonor at the hands of His own creatures, having made Himself their fellow man. He endured this in order that you and I might be forgiven of disbelieving in His love and that we might become men and women who will one day stand before Him and say, “I believed that You loved me.”
May God bless you, my fellow ragamuffins!
Rod (for Bec and me)
