Summer Sampler: God’s Way of Abundant Welcome
Welcome to the Summer Sampler Series! This summer, we are celebrating the beautiful, diverse ways God is working in and through the women in our community. Psalm 107:2 declares, “Let the redeemed of the Lord tell their story.” Every week, our Summer Sampler series will feature a different author sharing a personal glimpse into the story God has been writing in her life and ministry lately. These are authentic, honest reflections of faith, encouragement, and everyday ministry experienced “along the way” of regular life. So, grab a cool drink, pull up a chair, and join us this summer as we celebrate His presence in our everyday lives!
By Bethany Stewart
I went to worship with my small Presbyterian congregation last Sunday tired and sad.
I was tired and sad from carrying the weight and weariness compounded by years of living within communities marked by fear of transgressing boundaries, of “Others” whose beliefs, traditions, and practices were not like ours. This was the only type of community I knew.
“Weary” might be a strange descriptor for living in communities like that. In fact, it sometimes surprises me to name the feeling as “weariness.”
But I’ve come to realize that I long, with all my being, for relationships that cross boundaries. I know from experience how rich and rewarding those can be, how communities that embrace difference feel expansive and generative rather than insular and suffocating. My whole being craves diversity that delights with the surprise of new sounds, new colors, new flavors, new discoveries, and new insights. When that craving for the fullness of created goodness in all its diversity is stifled, the resulting feeling, for me, is weariness.
When I came to worship last Sunday, tired and sad, I carried that weight. As a woman called to pastoral ministry after years of hearing that female pastors are public enemy #1, I wrestle with internalized feelings of shame and inferiority every single time I prepare to preach. The fear of deviation from norms of orthodoxy—in both belief and behavior—was programmed into me from an early age. Even though my thoughts have changed, that fear lodged itself in my body, my nervous system, and my subconscious thought patterns.
As I sat there waiting for worship, I wondered if there would be grace enough for that weight. It was a communion Sunday, and my whole being was hungry for it.
Just before my pastor began the Liturgy of the Great Thanksgiving, she looked out at the congregation. She said, “I don’t know about you, but when I am operating out of a grace deficit—with myself, or with other people—it looks a lot like this.” And with that, she held up one of the tiny cubes of bread that had already been cut and placed into the communion dish—a cube that looked barely big enough for even a single satisfying bite. The tiny cube that looked a lot like what was currently filling my “gas tank.” No wonder it felt like running on fumes.
But she wasn’t finished. “That is not how the Kingdom of God operates. The grace of God looks more like this.” With that, she took out a huge, crusty, hearty loaf of bread that looked like it could fill plenty of stomachs. A loaf that looked like it had been prepared with love and intention for a table full of friends, instead of anxiously cut with an X-Acto knife.
The grace of God looks more like this. … A loaf that looked like it had been prepared with love and intention for a table full of friends, instead of anxiously cut with an X-Acto knife.
I looked again at the loaf that my pastor held in her hands, watched her break the loaf and proclaim, once again, Christ’s body, broken for us. I looked around the room and saw not a room but a sanctuary, a community of people where my family and I have found the abundance and welcome we needed most. And my whole body knew it all over again as I ate my little bite of the bread and drank the gulp of grape juice with this community that I love.
The weariness began to melt away. My hunger was satisfied—not because the bite of bread filled my physical stomach, but because it reminded me of what I had forgotten: God’s way is one of abundant welcome that never runs out—one where the more we share what we have, the more we receive Others as gifts, the more we all have.
In the Kingdom of God, the table is full of hearty loaves of bread, each baked in a unique and culturally distinct way, each given and received freely, with gratitude. It could not be otherwise, for the body of Christ, broken for us, is made up not of one part, but of many (1 Cor. 12:14).
And at this table, love and joy bind us together, breaking apart the walls we put up in our fear and clinging to control. At this table, weariness melts away. Thanks be to God.
Bethany Stewart is a student at Fuller Seminary in the Master of Divinity program. She is currently pursuing ordination as Minister of Word and Sacrament in the Presbyterian Church (USA). She lives in Bellbrook, Ohio, with her husband, Andrew, and 6-year-old daughter, Eliana. She loves deep conversations, reading, hiking, drinking coffee, and learning about gardening with native plants. She writes (sporadically) on Substack: https://wholism.substack.com/.