Faces on Faith: Stay open and keep seeking
A few years ago, I met an inspiring woman named Sara Miles. She was giving a talk at a conference I was attending, and she told us the story of her conversion. Miles was raised an atheist and lived what she called “an enthusiastically secular life” doing restaurant work and writing. One Sunday morning, “for no earthly reason,” she wandered into St. Gregory of Nyssa Episcopal Church in San Francisco. There she ate a piece of bread and took a sip of wine and found herself radically transformed.
She embraced her newfound faith with gusto. It became clear to her that church was about being fed and feeding the hungry, and so she started a food pantry in the church. The chairs were stacked, and donated food came in to be distributed from the same altar where she was being fed. Through this ministry, she has experienced communion with “all sorts and conditions” of people who come through the church’s doors to receive free groceries each week.
When I heard Miles’ story, I immediately thought of the feeding stories in the four Gospels. In these accounts, a great crowd of people has been following Jesus to hear his teachings. They are hungry. Sometime late in the day, Jesus suggests that his disciples give the people something to eat, and the disciples are perplexed. They don’t have enough money to buy that much food. And so, Jesus takes what they have, a few loaves and a couple of fish, and they become enough to feed the massive crowd and provide 12 baskets of leftovers. Jesus turns a little bit into an abundance, as Jesus turned the mouthful of bread that skeptical Miles received into an abundance for her and for hungry people in San Francisco.
I, too, had a powerful experience of communion a little more than two decades ago in a little church in St. Paul, Minnesota. I had always been a churchgoer but found myself separated from the church. I was hungry for God and connection with others, but I was also wondering if I would be welcome. I will never forget how the priest welcomed us all to receive communion because “this is the table of the Lord.” The only requirement to receive was hunger, just as it was for the multitudes that Jesus fed the Gospels. On that Sunday morning, that small piece of bread changed my life. I ended up joining The Episcopal Church, where I now serve as a priest.
God has a way of taking a little bit and turning it into an abundance. A little bit of interest, a tiny stirring in the heart of a skeptic, a small mouthful of bread for someone feeling disconnected, in these ways and so many others, God is at work, calling God’s beloved children into deeper relationship with God and each other.
Some conversions are profound, most are far more ordinary, the key is to stay open and keep seeking. God is at work in powerful ways in something as simple as a piece of bread.
The Rev. William “Bill” Van Oss is the rector at Saint Michael & All Angels Episcopal Church.