The Ragamuffin Invitation
5/7/26
Today’s gospel offers an invitation, but it is only to a select group of people. In fact, if you were going to be snarky, you could argue that the invitation is actually discriminatory. It’s not for everyone and is, in fact, only for ragamuffins.
I’ve pinched this Ragamuffin idea, of course, from someone else. ... Today’s donor is someone called Brennan Manning, and he captures this concept of the Master's targeted invitation in his book called “The Ragamuffin Gospel” The Ragamuffin invitation is for:
“The bedraggled, beat-up, and burnt-out. It is for the sorely burdened who are still shifting the heavy suitcase from one hand to the other. It is for the wobbly and weak-kneed who know they don’t have it altogether. It is for inconsistent, unsteady disciples whose cheese is falling off their cracker. It is for poor, weak, sinful men and women with hereditary faults and limited talents. It is for earthen vessels who shuffle along on the feet of clay. It is for the bent and the bruised who feel that their lives are a grave disappointment to God. It is for smart people who know they are stupid and honest disciples who admit they are scallywags and ragamuffins.” The Ragamuffin Gospel, he concludes, is for anyone who has grown weary and discouraged along the Way.
If you identify as a ragamuffin… read on. The terms and conditions of the Ragamuffin invitation are that you are to be fitted with your own yoke, and it’s worth knowing a little bit about what you're getting before it is laid squarely upon your shoulders.
In Palestine, ox-yokes were made of wood; the ox was brought, and the measurements were taken. The yoke was then roughed out, and the ox was brought back to have the yoke tried on. The yoke was carefully adjusted so that it would fit well and not gall the neck of the patient beast. The yoke was tailor-made to fit the ox.
So, think about that, Ragamuffins. The yoke that Jesus offers is individually tailor-made for you. Which means that it is not a burden for us to live as Christ wants us to live. He doesn’t want it to be a burden. And just as importantly, he wants to be yoked with us and with others. We’re not supposed to shoulder it all by our lonesome, solitary selves.
We consistently and frequently make this yoke more complex, heavier, cumbersome and difficult than we need to. When we overthink it, the yoke of gentleness and rest disappears in a puff of logic. And there is also a hiddenness to this yoke.
And I think this Hiddenness is what our brother rabbi was getting at when he said
““I praise you, Father, Lord of heaven and earth, because you have hidden these things from the wise and learned, and revealed them to little children.”
Mmm. It reads like God actually makes a deliberate and conscious decision to hide things from the wise and learned and chooses instead to reveal them to little children.
Why? My guesses are
Because… He wants to show us that you don’t have to be wise and learned to have Him as your friend. You don’t have to have an alphabet after your name to know the mysteries of the kingdom.
Because,… there are some things that we aren’t quite ready for. Perhaps they are just far too dazzlingly beautiful, and we are not quite prepared for His stunning exquisiteness.
Because… we are not quite mature enough to grasp them. In much the same way as a loving parent must choose the right time to explain and reveal some of the tricky facts of life to a child. Like falling in and out of love, like birth and death, like the bitter truth that sometimes life disappoints and is not altogether to our liking and horror of horrors, that our actions do have consequences after all.
But the Ragamuffin yoke is more than just an unseeable object made of wood. I make the outrageous proposal that the spiritual yoke that is laid upon us is actually His divinity. This is the yoke that is crafted for us and made to fit us. The yoke of his divinity, which is both knotty sadness and the heart-warming, cheek glow of giggling after a few red cordials. Every emotion on the spectrum of our humanity. So we get…
‘We played the pipe for you, and you did not dance;
We sang a dirge, and you did not mourn.’
When we share this carpenter-fitted yoke, we learn that he has already been sharing our tears and our chortling. He’s the one who has been pouring the wine for us over dinner. Goodness me, he’s probably been dancing with us too. When we look at our yoke, we discover to our delight that what we thought was just our boring sawdust humanity stuff is actually the very stuff of God.
When we learn this from Him, of Him and in Him, when we live it out, then our yoke becomes easy, and our burden is light. When we are given rest, we can become gentle and humble of heart.
So he says to us Ragamuffins today, ‘Come to me’… and so we come to him at the altar. We arrive at that oasis of rest and peace, humbleness and gentleness. Dear Ragamuffin …Come…shoulder the yoke which is His yoke, which is our yoke, which is your yoke, forever and ever amen.