Something for Everyone: Jesus Freak, by Sara Miles

Here we are all- again!- signing petitions about gun control and sending money to service organizations. Here we all are again talking about prejudice and about what kind of fear and rage would lead anyone to plan and carry out a mass murder targeting a specific minority. Finally, here we all are talking harder than ever about what in our American atmosphere makes people think that prejudice is okay, and that our beliefs about any one issue put each of us on a team that is in a fight to the death with all the other teams, and and that disagreement is hate. Like all our talk is going to make a difference apart from divine intervention...

We all know that changing our culture starts with changing ourselves, and that's at least some of what this 0-999 project is about. Reading in general, and reading stories in particular, can increase our empathy for unfamiliar groups of people and ways of life. And increased empathy is what enables us to tolerate the discomfort that comes from difference, to disagree agreeably, and ultimately maybe even to find common ground across barriers. Or at least I'm hoping so.

Jesus Freak is a great example of a story that has the potential to do all these things. Sara is a mid-life convert who ministers through food to some of the most marginalized people in America. She's just the kind of person I deeply admire, but that some people find annoying and weird. She herself opens the book with this quote from the rector of her church: "You're such a freakin' Jesus freak, Sara." But then, she's also a universalist and a syncretist, so Jesus' more illiberal and exclusive teachings get short shrift from her.

Oh, and she's a lesbian. The Internet Monk tried to review the book positively for its focus on care for the poor in Jesus' name, but he realized that once his audience hit the phrase, "my wife Martha," they wouldn't be able to think about anything else.

Yup, something for everyone not to like, and therefore, something for everyone to learn from. It's hard for me to imagine the Jesus follower, Christian, believer, or person of faith of any stripe who couldn't find some way to identify with Miles and some point of irreconcilable difference, big or small. And that's what makes her book so worthwhile!

Miles's story isn't really a story so much as a string of long stories, short anecdotes and meditations all strung together and sparkling, more like rain on a nighttime window than a string of beads. I'll summarize one for you and finish with a quote, just to give you a sense of it.

A group of fourth graders had volunteered at the food pantry the week before, and now Sara is going to their classroom to answer their questions about what they have seen. They start talking about whether everyone who receives food there deserves it.

So I talked with the kids about the idea of 'taking advantage,' explaining that it was impossible to be taken advantage of as long as you were giving something away without conditions. 'If it's a trade, then it's fair or unfair.' I said. 'But if I'm going to give it to you anyway, no matter what you do, then you can't take advantage of me.'

...I had to add one more thing. 'In my church,' I said, 'we say that judgment belongs to God, not to humans. So that makes things a lot easier for us. We don't have to decide who deserves food.' 

Kind of like we don't have to decide whether Miles is in trouble for being too Jesusy, being a syncretist, being a lesbian, or saying a bad word.  Not my problem! All I know is that she is a normal human being who gets annoyed and hot and tired and depressed but who nevertheless has discovered that, by the grace of God, anyone can be like Jesus and feed the poor, pray for the sick, lead the bitter in forgiveness, and sit by the dying. And that's hard to hate.