Come and See

It’s a terrible thing to admit, but our Lenten speaker author and food pantry guru Sara Miles made me feel somehow inadequate in the realm of doing God’s work. Don’t get me wrong—I was a fan before she came, have read both books (Take This Bread and Jesus Freak) and was thrilled when Patricia asked me to write a preview Q&A, which required a phone interview with Sara.

Anybody who has read her books or heard Sara Miles speak can’t help but be in awe of her physical work running a food pantry that feeds 600 people each Friday out of her home church, St. Gregory’s of Nyssa in San Francisco. It is a place where those in need of groceries, without exception, can go and “shop” for mostly whole foods piled up on tables covered in beautiful cloths and situated in the sanctuary around the altar. It is a quite literal example of God’s feast, of God’s Word made flesh.

And it all began—the story she told to the 85 of us who showed up for her Lenten lectures, Friday at St. Dunstan’s and Saturday morning at St. Bede’s—when she in mid-life wandered into a church (St. Gregory’s), took communion for the first time and had what she calls a “radical conversion,” she actually tasted God in her mouth. And she kept coming back because she was hungry for more. She was baptized. She took what she experienced and set out to take God’s word to heart: Feed my people.

St. Gregory’s, of course, may have lent itself to this expression of faith, this calling. It’s located in an urban area, where poor, homeless, disenfranchised folk tend to congregate, a place where there are public services and transportation.

As Sara spoke Friday night at St. Dunstan’s, I imagined our sanctuary filled with nourishing food for the hungry. Our altar was overflowing with carrots and onions and potatoes. I could see Gilda and Pricilla and Elizabeth, and Rick and Steve, everyone, happily manning “battle stations” working alongside the guests, also volunteers who had become a whole second congregation. I even saw Peachy and Helen outside in the sunny spot by the parking lot, directing workers in a lush, bountiful organic vegetable garden.

That’s such a great image. But we have one problem, which Keith Latimore pointed out in the Q&A part of the lecture, we have no bus service. We are politely located in what some might call a “residential” area. But I think the more accurate impression was one I heard the next morning at St. Bede’s from one of the ladies from the Cathedral bookstore: “You’re from St. Dunstan’s? It’s very . . . affluent, isn’t it?”

Well, yes, and no. Our rector’s office was called the most beautiful in Christendom by her predecessor. She looks out to nature, hawks, foxes, trees, ponds, birds. We are affluent in that we care for each other and affluent in our desire to share what we have with others. We’d love all of our neighbors in the big mansions with the rolling lawns and $13 million for sale signs to worship with us and fill our adult and children's Sunday School classes, to clutter up our sign-up sheets to bring food to Holy Comforter, to fill the Beech Grove with children’s laughter, to walk the Stations of the Cross, now set up and ready for the Lenten season, up the long path through the woods. But truth is, a good portion of St. Dunstan’s congregation commutes, from places like Avondale and Decatur and Duluth. Many of us choose to make a 30-minute drive on Sunday mornings to get to St. Dunstan's, even though there are other Episcopal churches much closer to where we live.

For example, a group of us St. D’s folks were sitting around a table in St. Bede’s parish hall Saturday morning before Sara's talk, eating the beautiful breakfast they put together, partaking of their generous hospitality (fresh fruit, egg casseroles, bagels, thick bread, butter, cream cheese) when I noted to Patricia, it actually only took only seven or eight minutes for me to drive from my home in Avondale to St. Bede’s. “No, it doesn’t,” she said definitively. “You just went the wrong way.”

I wouldn’t dare think of going any place else. I am nourished. I am comforted by our intimate community of faith. It’s unlikely because of our location (no bus line, buried deep in an expensive residential neighborhood) that we’ll ever be home to a food pantry teeming with hundreds upon hundreds of people, strangers that we can welcome en masse as our honored guests.

But I know that we do look for ways to welcome the stranger and we do have affluence to offer (not in our treasury unfortunately) but in that we are in a unique location where we can see the absolute beauty of God’s hand in the world. Now, I think part of Sara’s speaking serves to shake people up, to question themselves: Am I living as God would have me live? Am I following in the footsteps of Christ? Am I loving my neighbor unconditionally?

But like Sara, who’s calling was so obvious, so in the moment, such a clear need, I think we can’t try to find our great love. Lovers show themselves, they are seldom sought out. And I don’t know what that one thing is for us. We had a vestry meeting last night and Patricia mentioned she was attending a meeting next Monday in which a bunch of area churches are looking at providing shelters for homeless families and the organization actually has a van. Could that be our calling? Our way to live out God’s plan for us? I don’t know.

Meanwhile, I think there’s another Sara line that could benefit us greatly as we go about our daily work during the week, as we meet people and talk to friends and family—to put out the invitation to come and see.