Where to start with this book? The Neland ladies met to talk about Take This Bread two months ago, I finished it a month ago, and it's taken me this long to write about it. That's not due to a lack of interest on my part. There is so much in this book that I had to chew on, one piece at a time (no pun intended).
Sara Miles is a left-wing, lesbian journalist who was raised in an intentionally secular home by parents who both grew up as mission kids. Sara is also a Christian, quite possibly a follower of Christ like none you have met before.
Food had always been an important part of her life, including experiences like sharing food with poor revolutionaries in Central America in the 70s and working in a restaurant.
One day, on a whim, Sara entered St. Gregory's Episcopal Church in San Francisco. She sat through the church service, observing, until it came time for communion. St. Gregory's has open communion, and Sara took it. The experience was completely unexpected, and it changed her life.
Sara became a member of St. Gregory's, and soon she organized a food pantry at the church. The pantry began to attract 200 people or more on any given Friday. Her experience led her into a lot of "church" issues, namely that being part of a church congregation means being in communion with people you don't necessarily like, trust, or even want to be associated with. God lives inside of people we don't even like! Sara has a particular love for the different, the broken, the needy; she sees that truly, that's who we all are at the foot of the cross.
Annetta, our leader for the night, shared with us that she has been to St. Gregory's for worship. She reports that it is a lovely place with beautiful music, a wonderful experience. This book club meeting was very well attended, and most people loved the book even if they didn't agree with everything in it.
This meeting reminded me of a discussion we had a few years back after reading Anne Lamott's book Traveling Mercies. We all loved hearing Anne speak at Calvin and reading her book. She's so funny, alive, self-deprecating, and joyous. Then we wondered what would happen if she walked into Neland. She wouldn't be "like us." Same goes for Sara Miles, in some ways. Would we be welcoming? We'd like to think so.
Personally, I have been recognizing several things about my spiritual life and worship experience which this book illuminates. I am craving diversity of community in my church body--diversity of skin color, ethnicity, socioeconomic status, educational status, any and all of it. I am inspired by people who are seeing Christianity as a holistic identity--I don't just think like a Christian, I am Christian in body and soul. Which means that a more physical, incarnational experience is important to me. And so Sara's description of the patchwork nature of the food pantry, as well as the pantry's ability to feed people in both body and soul, really hit home for me. I'm still fumbling my way through trying to figure out what this all means to my day-to-day life.
If you think you might have a dim view of a Sara Miles when she walks into your church, be assured that she may take a dim view of your church as well. Several passages about the kinds of attitudes or arguments or bottlenecks or inertia that hamper ministry hit painfully close to home. If you have been in a traditional church for any length of time, something in this book is likely to offend or hit you wrong. But the basic principle, that Jesus asks us to "feed his sheep," is irrefutable. And Sara, while disdaining doctrine, has a good handle on both Scripture and the life of Christ.
She points out that we should specialize in the "undeserving poor," since that's exactly what we all are. So while you might feel you should take it with a grain of salt, you should definitely Take This Bread.
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