Sara Miles – The Work of Ordinary Saints
Another beautiful story from Spencer Burke and TheOozeTv:
The ability to act as Jesus acts is not something that belongs exclusively to ordained clergy or ‘holy” people, but is something we all have by the simple virtue of being human and having God’s life breathed into us. These are the hopeful words of author Sara Miles in her ThinkFWD interview with Spencer Burke.
Sara’s recent book, Jesus Freak, is based on her belief that ordinary people are “authorized and empowered to do Jesus’ work of feeding, healing and raising the dead.” The Spirit moves through all people in every time and place, says Sarah, and the term “saints” refers to all of God’s holy people. Whether working in a food pantry, at the office, or conversing with friends—we are about God’s work.
Sara is the director of the Food Pantry at St. Gregory’s Episcopal Church in San Francisco. Each week the food pantry is set up in the center of the church and over 600 families in need gather to receive food. “It’s like a farmer’s market in heaven,” laughs Sara. “We are gathered around an altar and surrounded by saints. Everything is free and everyone is welcome.” In keeping with the “we’re all saints doing God’s work” philosophy, the Food Pantry is run by volunteers, many of whom came to get food, and stayed to help out.
Yeah, like that. I'm not fond of the notion that there are a special class of priests/pastors/ministers who are the 'professionals' and the rest of us who stand and watch in awe. As Chesterton said (I think) the problem is not too many priests in the church but too few.
Good point Joe. I heard a real interesting interview last night on our local NPR station with Clark Strand, author of “How to Believe in God.” He discussed how people are picking the pieces of religion that work for them now – vs accepting on whole religion as “gospel truth.” He mentioned the priests and pastors being a very week point of traditional Christianity and that it will likely drastically change in the near future. http://www.wpr.org/book/090830a.cfm
Well, I'm no expert on these things, but it seems to me that people like watching other people 'doing' Christianity rather than actually doing it themselves – so I doubt that the class will ever be destroyed. So we may move away from paid professionals, but we're always going to have people who are a cut above the rest, wear special clothing and have special functions – until as Kierkegaard suggested, we close the churches.
My all time fav Kierkegaard quote is this one:
“In the maginficent cathedral the honorable and Right Reverend Geheime-General-Ober-Hof-Pradikant, the elect favorite of the fashionable world, appears before an elect company and preaches with emotion upon the text he himself elected: ‘God has chosen the base things of this world, and the things that are despised’ – and nobody laughs.”
And this is the main problem in church – we take all the wrong things far too seriously.
Don't disagree with that at all.