Jesus Freak: Feeding Healing Raising the Dead

194 Pages·2010·1.47 MB·English

by  Sara Miles

Praise for Jesus Freak S
A
R
A
“Sara Miles is amazing, a wild, unique, funny Christian who puts her lack-of-money where

her mouth is, which is in loving Jesus and taking care of God’s children. I love her work.” M j e s u s f re a k
jesus freak
I
—ANNE LAMOTT, author, Traveling Mercies and Grace (Eventually) L
E
S
“One of the most inspiring books I’ve ever read.”
—ROB BELL,author, Velvet Elvis; pastor, Mars Hill Bible Church
“I came late to Christianity,” writes Sara Miles,
“When Jesus calls, Sara Miles follows him into the beautiful and messy diversity of human
Hart SARA MILES “knocked upside down by a mid-life conversion
De life, where people long to be fed, healed, and forgiven, and discovers the vibrancy of
Nathan Christian faith that often eludes the institutional church. If this is what it means to be cI ehnadtenr’et dd eacroiduendd t eoa ptirnogfe as sl iatenr aarl tcichluen okf odfo bctrreiande.,
by a ‘Jesus freak,’ sign me up!”
o but been discovered by a force blowing uncon-
Phot —DIANA BUTLER BASS,author, Christianity for the Rest of Us trollably through the world.”
and A People’s History of Christianity
In this new book, Sara Miles tells what happened
“This is a passionate book!” j when she decided to follow the fl esh-and-blood
—TONY CAMPOLO, professor emeritus, Eastern University e Jesus by doing something real. For everyone
s afraid to feed hungry strangers, love the unlov-
u
THE AUTHOR “This is a love story unabashedly, a love story between one woman and Jesus. It is also able, or go to dark places to bless and heal, she
the toughest, tenderest, most textured, poignant, and substantial love story I have s off ers hope. She holds out the promise of a God
Sara Miles is the founder and director of The

ever read.” who gave a bunch of housewives and fi shermen
Food Pantry, and serves as Director of Minis- f
—PHYLLIS TICKLE, author, The Words of Jesus and The Great Emergence r authority to forgive sins and raise the dead, and
try at St. Gregory of Nyssa Episcopal Church in
e who continues to call us to action. And she tells,
San Francisco. Her other books include Take This raising
“Sara Miles writes gorgeous prose . . . She’s way too wound up for toned-down liberals, a in vivid, heartbreakingly honest stories, how the
Bread: A Radical Conversion, and her writing has
and way too out-of-the-shrink-wrap for straight-laced conservatives, and she calls both k ordinary people around her are transformed by
appeared in the New York Times Magazine, the ffeeeeddiinngg hheeaalliinngg the

of them to a new vantage point. She has actually experienced something, and Someone, taking up God’s work in the world.
New Yorker, Salon, and on National Public Radio.
and by hearing her story, you start to catch what she’s caught: which includes a sense
www.saramiles.net dead Sara Miles off ers a fresh, fully embodied faith
of being caught, and caught up, and fed, and empowered to feed others. A beautiful,
that sweeps away the anxious formulas of
joyful, raucous, reverent book.”
religion to reveal the scandalous power of eat-
—BRIAN MCLAREN, author/speaker
ing with sinners, embracing the unclean, and
CHRISTIAN SPIRITUALITY
loving the wrong people. Jesus Freak: Feeding
$21.95 U.S. | $25.95 Canada
Healing Raising the Dead is her inspiring book
for undomesticated Christians who still believe,
as she writes, “that Jesus has given us the power
www.josseybass.com to be Jesus.”
Jacket desgin by Jeff Puda

jesus freak
feeding healing raising the dead
SARA MILES
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LibraryofCongressCataloging-in-PublicationData
Miles,Sara,date.
Jesusfreak:feeding,healing,raisingthedead/SaraMiles.
p.cm.
ISBN978-0-470-48166-0(cloth)
1.Miles,Sara,1952-2.Christianconverts—UnitedStates—Biography.3.SaintGregoryof
NyssaEpiscopalChurch(SanFrancisco,Calif.)—Biography.4.Churchworkwiththe
poor—California—SanFrancisco.5.Foodbanks—California—SanFrancisco.6.Christian
life—Anglicanauthors.I.Title.
BV4935.M525A32010
283.092—dc22
[B]
2009043621
PrintedintheUnitedStatesofAmerica
FIRSTEDITION
HBPrinting 10987654321
c o n t e n t s
AuthorNote v
Introduction vii
Come and See 1
Feeding 21
Healing 63
Forgiving 107
Raising the Dead 125
Follow Me 163
Acknowledgments 167
The Author 171
iii
for Paul
my Boyfriend’s boyfriend
AuthorNote
Thisbookisaworkofnonfiction.Toprotectprivacy,some
nameshavebeenchanged,aswellasafewidentifying
details.
Iusedletters,e-mails,andmyownnotesaswellasmemory
toreconstructeventsandconversations,compressingstories
andchronologyinsomeplaces;Iregrettheinevitableerrors.
Toreviewmyreporting,Icheckedfactsandquoteswith
participants.Still,whathappenedoverthecourseofwriting
thisbookwasfrequentlywilderthanIwasabletorecord.

introduction
Y
ou’re such a freakin’ Jesus freak, Sara,’’ Paul said. ‘‘I
mean that in the nicest possible way, of course.’’
The two of us had been cooking for hours, preparing
lunch for the volunteers at our church’s food pantry. Paul
Fromberg was my friend and the rector at St. Gregory’s,
where I was a part-time lay staff member; together we
served in the beautiful, Byzantine-inflected liturgy on Sun-
days. But every Friday we turned the sanctuary around
the altar into a free farmers’ market, opening it to anyone
who walked in the door, giving away literally tons of free
groceries to as many as eight hundred hungry families.
Thefoodpantrywasledbyagruffex-conwithmissing
teeth, who organized a hardworking crew of nearly fifty
volunteers, mostly misfits and oddballs who’d come to get
food. Thevolunteers were generally poor, andoftendidn’t
get enough to eat during the week, so we liked to make
this lunch into a big family meal, with a couple of courses
and a home-baked dessert.
vii
Introduction
In the grimy, maddeningly small kitchen, Paul and I
had been bickering and banging into each other, cursing
the dull knives and the broken Cuisinart. Two of our
hotel pans had gone missing, so I’d made the green chile
enchiladas in an assortment of cake pans. We ran out of
oil. Then the oven rack, which someone had jammed in
backwards, fell out as Paul was removing a tray of saffron
rice, which spilled everywhere, nearly scalding him.
All morning long our volunteers had been wandering
in to talk, even as, with mounting irritation, I kept shooing
themout.Acoupleofjunkieswereskulkingaround,trying,
purely out of habit, to get over on us. A thin schizophrenic
girl kept hovering, asking me for candles and matches
and glasses of water. The sweet middle school Latino kid
who’d been suspended for cutting class wanted to hang
out and brag to Paul about his girlfriends, and his mother
kept dragging him away. ‘‘Carlos, just do one thing useful
today, OK?’’ she’d snap. Out on the floor, a pallet of
potatoeshadspilled infrontof theiconof theVirginMary,
and our whole argumentative cadre of head-injured men
was quarreling with a group of developmentally disabled
adults over the right way to set up the snack table. ‘‘When
is lunch going to be ready?’’ asked the tenth anxious
helper, sticking a head into the kitchen. ‘‘What’s for lunch?
Are we eating soon?’’
But I’d interrupted Paul just as he was plating the
enchiladas. A young man in a black windbreaker had
come by, worried about his upcoming visit to his sister
and asking for a blessing. ‘‘You just always want to put
your hands on everybody,’’ Paul grumbled to me, but
viii