Why is it that so many of us desire and long for friendship? Why is friendship so elusive and seemingly difficult.

For the past two weeks, I have read and reflected on Brennan Manning’s memoir All is Grace. Throughout the past few years, and through some pretty dark periods of my life, Brennan Manning has walked with me and reminded me that God loves me. When I despaired at my failures, his Ragamuffin voice reminded me of God’s relentless love. 

His Ragamuffin Gospel has been in a friend to me, which has walked me through the rocky paths of my life. The Ragamuffin Gospel is one of those books that I treasure for the matter-of-fact way it pulls away the curtain from my sin and reveals a Father God who remarkably still loves me despite it all. For someone who sometimes has plumbed the depths of self-hatred and self-pity, the notion that I have a God who still loves me is really quite amazing.

God love us unconditionally as we are and not as we should be.

Through his books Brennan Manning has preached an accessable God who makes Himself known to people like me.  He expecially favors messed up people.

So perhaps it shouldn’t surprise me that All is Grace is about a person who is also messed up. All is Grace is a story of man who was broken by life and broken by his own weakness and yet who found that God loved him. All is Grace is by no means a comfortable book to read. There is a raw pain there, since a man is tearing away the scabs of his deepest hurts and revealing himself to us. He shares that he was too drunk to go his mother’s funeral. He talks about how his own selfishness resulted in his divorce from his wife. His is a story of disappointment, addiction, dysfunction and divorce, so in this way it is a story not different from many of us.

As Christians we are so invested in maintaining appearances. It’s like our life is a house that we are trying to get ready for sale. We’re terrified about the home inspection, that someone will realize that our foundation is rotten and the roof needs replacing. So we do our best to clean up and paint over our problems, but of course our problems are all still there, they are just hidden from plain sight.  As much I may tell people that Jesus came to save sinners and that I am a sinner, I have a hard time owning my own sins. I am too invested in trying to live a Christian life, which is a life that often seems based around appearances.

Maybe I am not really convinced that Jesus really came to save sinners. Maybe I think that if I own those sins, then I am putting in question  my own status in Christ, since would a real Christian have these kinds of problems?! I found Brennan Manning’s transparency and honesty totally refreshing.

One of the ongoing themes of All is Grace is about relationship. As both a child and an adult Brennan Manning had a difficult time gaining acceptance from his parents. Throughout his life he longs for friendship and he has this ongoing fantasy of having someone approach him and ask, “I want to be your friend.” As a youngster, a neighbor boy fulfills this fantasy and becomes his friend, only to unexpectedly die of cancer.

Brennan Manning’s struggle with relationships are hardly unique. I believe that many of us similarly struggle with relationship, even if we don’t have Manning’s background.  I’ve always had a hard time with relationships and with maintaining friendships. As a youth I  despaired of ever having someone whom I could call, “friend.”  I recall laying in my bed, staring at my ceiling and thinking to myself, “You’re going to die alone without any friends.”

For Brennan Manning, the measure of relationship was to have someone say, “I want to be your friend.” For me the measure of relationship was to have someone say, “I need you.” I think part of the difficulty and obstacle for me in relationships has always been my fear of being vulnerable. To admit my own loneliness and my own desire for friendship is to confess my inadequacies.

I’m participating in a small group at church and one of the things we do in small group is to pray for one another. People share all sorts of prayer requests and are willing to be vulnerable. Well, during the past year one of my common prayers to God, has been for friends. I want God to bring friendship into my life. Yet, it’s funny, because as much as this has been a common prayer for me in private, it’s been a prayer request that I felt ashamed to share with others. I’d almost rather share about some hidden sin. Sharing about my inability to share in friendship almost seems as if I am telling people,”I am so socially inept and desperate, that I need to pray to God for friends.”

I think this is one of the reasons why All is Grace so impressed me. Brennan Manning enters into the process of telling his own story without any fear or insecurity. He is confessing his hurt and his need before us. During the last part of his life, he forms a relationship and a type of community with a group of men who call themselves The Notorious Sinners, In this place he finds acceptance, love and relationship. With people in his life who saw him as God saw him, He could experience God’s grace. I couldn’t help but feel as if Brennan Manning, a man who has consistently spoke about God’s love for the broken, was able to experience this love in his relationship with the Notorious Sinners.  He found people who were willing to love him through the very worst parts of his life.

In describing the Notorious Sinners, Brennan Manning writes that their common qualification was that all of these men were “broken.” These were men without presumption, who were not trying to maintain appearances, or exercise their ego through their relationship with one another. These were men who had met failure and loss and who had come out of it, having found the love of their Abba Father God. Maybe this is one of the “secrets” of friendship. So often we burden our friendships and relationships with an unreasonable expectation of perfection. We expect others to be perfect even as we expect perfection of ourselves and this makes friendship nearly impossible.  When others disappoint us we respond indignantly, and we are no better at dealing with our own failings. Afraid of judgment, we remain hidden in our relationships. There is no trust that others will love us even through our failures.  If instead, I understood my own brokenness, then I would understand God’s love and grace, and this would in turn allow me to bestow a similar grace upon my friends and brothers and sisters in Christ.

Another thing that I impressed me about the Notorious Sinners was its intentionality.  Brennan Manning basically reached out to different men and asked them if they would like to “hang out.” Part of me wonders whether one of the reasons why the “Notorious Sinners’ worked, was because of Brennan Manning. If Brennan Manning calls you on the phone and asks you to hang out, of course you say, “yes.” That said, with the Notorious Sinners, Brennan Manning wasn’t gathering a fan club. In making this invitation to these men, Brennan Manning was taking a chance. He was pulling away the curtain on his life. In reading about these Notorious Sinners one gets the sense that this crazy things called friendship is worth all of those risks. Yes, there is the possibility of disappointment and maybe even shame, but then there is also something of love and acceptance and being able to taste something of that same relationship that our Father God desires with us.

As strange as it sounds I felt inspired after reading “All is Grace.” For all his faults and  failings Brennan Manning is now at the end his life, able to confess God’s love and blessing in his life. He has found love and friendship. He is able to rest in the arms of his friends and in the arms of His loving Savior.  If I could share in a similar confession at the end of my own life I would consider myself truly blessed.