A funeral home in Compton has a drive-thru viewing room for people who don’t have time to go to funerals or get out of cars to view caskets. Speaking of drive-thrus, believe it or not, there is a drive-thru liquor store in North Idaho. The same town that features a Subway with a drive-thru also has a take-n-bake pizza place with a drive-thru window which I know very well and found especially helpful when it was snowing. In Illinois, there is a giant drive-thru for a large retail company that allows customers to pre-order items and then drive through to pick them up. I have heard that our very own Ikea was working on creating a drive-thru system for their store in Mission Valley. My favorite place to watch a movie is the drive-in theater in Imperial Beach. Wedding ceremonies are being held in drive-thrus in Las Vegas, and, as many of you know, there is a drive-thru Starbucks on H Street. I wonder if our court system someday will feature a drive-thru for jury selection.
What does this drive-thru culture say to the Church? ABC News reported a United Methodist Church in South Florida offers drive-thru prayers and The Christian Century Magazine recently reported that in Voorhees, Pennsylvania, Hope UMC offers drive-thru prayer once a week with a twist. Using the drive-thru lane in a former bank building, pray-ers can drive up for a prayer, walk in for a chat, or drop off a prayer request in one of the deposit tubes. Now that is efficiency! My initial reaction was that it cheapens the experience and perhaps even the rite. But, as I was praying the other day behind the wheel, I realized what a hypocritical thought that was of mine. I pray all the time in the car; and not about traffic, but about you. I’ve even prayed with some of you in your cars and I’ve blessed many cars in our parking lot. I am reminded of the story of the apostle Phillip and the conversion of the Ethiopian eunuch (Acts 8). The eunuch was reading out loud from the book of Isaiah while he was riding home in his chariot. Philip was invited into the moving chariot where he turned the official’s heart to Jesus. Later, the chariot stopped, Philip and the eunuch got out, he baptized him, and then the official got back into his chariot and continued home. Was that the first drive-thru conversion? If companies, from pizza, to coffee, liquor, retail, theaters, and funeral homes have taken an interest in drive-thrus, and, since at least two churches have entered into this interesting area, I’m wondering if it’s time for Saint John’s. What if we had a tent on the church side of our traffic circle and had signs inviting neighbors to drive-thru for prayer. What would happen if we held a drive-thru prayer opportunity during the days before Christmas when hundreds of Chula Vista residents drive by our church on their way to see the homes on Christmas Tree Lane. Perhaps prayers would get said that would otherwise go unvoiced. Maybe some would come to see the church not as a place with walls, but as a group of people willing to listen and pray for anyone – even in their cars. I wonder: would St. Philip say, “Right on. Now you’re a driving pray-er.” -Fr. Marshall If you have not heard of ISIS, you should know about it. The Islamic State of Iraq and Syria Group (ISIS) is an al Qaeda splinter group that wants to establish an Islamic state stretching from Iraq into northern Syria. The group has had substantial success battling Syrian President Bashar al-Assad’s security forces and this week appears to have taken Mosul under its control.
According to a recent blog post by the Rev. Canon Andrew White, Vicar of St. George’s Church in Baghdad, “ISIS… has moved into Mosul, which is Nineveh. It has totally taken control, destroyed all government departments. Allowed all prisoners out of the prisons. Killed countless numbers of people. There are bodies over the streets. The army and police have fled, so many of the military resources have been captured. Tankers, armed vehicles and even helicopters are now in the hands of ISIS.” In Biblical times, Nineveh was an important location, binding together commercial routes from the Mediterranean Sea and the Indian Ocean. It was the location to which Jonah was sent to preach; a hill above the massive city is where he sat waiting for God’s judgment which never came because the people repented and God forgave them (ironically, much to the chagrin of Jonah). About Nineveh, Canon Andrew writes, “The area is the heartland of the Christian community. Most of our people come from Nineveh and still see that as their home. Many Christians fled to Nineveh from Baghdad, as things got so bad there. Now the Christian centre of Iraq has been totally ransacked. The tanks are moving into the Christian villages destroying them and causing total carnage. The ISIS militants are now moving towards Kirkuk, major areas to the oil fields that provide the lifeblood of Iraq. We are faced with total war that all the Iraqi military have now retreated from. People have fled by hundreds of thousands to Kurdistan for safety. The Kurds have even closed the border, preventing entry of the masses. The crisis is so huge it is almost impossible to consider what is really happening.” According to one news source, “This is a profound development for the Christian Church which has had a two-thousand-year presence there. And it will have long-term national-security implications for the West. American political leaders overlook the fact that religious pluralism and diversity are among today’s casualties. As one Chaldean bishop lamented, ‘This is very sad and very dangerous for the church, for Iraq and even for Muslim people, because it means the end of an old experience of living together’.” So what can we do? If you were thinking, pray, I agree. A prayer posted as a reply on Canon Andrew’s blog, by Lyn Cole from New Zealand, is as follows, “Come O Almighty Lord/King of Kings and Lord of Lords/The Lion of Judah/ and surround and protect all your people in this land right this moment…right now.. I am interceding for all in the Middle East and Europe at this time…We live in dangerous times even here in NZ as far away as we are. Come Lord Yeshua/Jesus…Shalom shalom.” Let us all pray for peace, in our land, in Nineveh, and especially for St. George’s Church in Baghdad. To read (and contact) Canon Andrew, here is a link to his blog http://frrme.org/please-please-help-us-crisis/ -Fr. Marshall I don't often swear. But I had not even caught my breath after the Santa Barbara shooting when I got news of the violence at Seattle Pacific University, a Christian school, and then the shootings in Las Vegas. On Tuesday afternoon I heard there was yet another shooting and I swore. Maybe you did, too. I was a bit surprised at myself that I opted for swearing rather than praying but that is what I did.
Just prior to hearing the news on Tuesday, Saint John’s hosted a very prayerful diocesan clergy gathering. The subject of gun violence came up. Later, two different priests told us how over the past two weeks, their churches have been desecrated; in one instance items were stolen from the church.
I thought, what in the blankety-blank is going on?
There, I did it again.
Swearing is a release of pent-up negative emotion and some say it helps. Somehow, though, even if it has beneficial effects, I don’t want to get known as the priest in charge of the Swearing Congregation. I’d rather be known as the one who serves the Praying Congregation.
This Sunday, we will take time to pray for peace. Even when the country appears to be shaking apart at the seams, prayer is something that you and I can do. God, the author of peace and lover of concord, wants peace – not as the world gives but as God gives through grace. I believe that our praying congregation can make a difference with our prayers.
Life is short, pray hard. Have you ever been at an airport and could not help but overhear the phone conversation next to you? The Rev. Daniel Heischman, who is the Director of the National Association of Episcopal Schools, overheard a phone conversation recently, from a hiring manager to a prospective employee. When it came time to discuss benefits, the manager said, “You will start with twenty-one vacation days,” and then added, “Of course there is no such thing as vacation any more.”
A recent commercial for a cruise line showed a family on vacation. The previous vacation, viewers learned, the dad had spent the entire time working on his computer and looked rather dour as a result. But this cruise line had fast Wi-Fi so dad was happy and, in one picture, was actually dancing. Is this what we’ve come to – advertising vacations where you can get your work done faster so you can spend a little time with your family and managers telling new employees that “there is no such thing as vacation any more.” Our school and other schools in this area are going on summer vacation. Ethan has a list of things Saint John’s School requires while on summer vacation – reading and memorizing states and capital cities. There is solid evidence to show that children who engage in reading and other brain-stimulating activities during the summer excel when school resumes in the fall compared to kids who only play video games and watch Sponge Bob Square Pants. But what about true vacation. I think it comes down to priorities. Summer reading lists are accomplished during non-family times. Ethan will study his states and capital but he won’t stay up late doing it. In fact, there will be very little sacrifice of time on his part to accomplish his summer learning program. Scripture shows us priorities regarding rest and vacation. Jesus had the most important and most demanding job in the history of the world. Yet, he found time to get away, unplug and rest. Scripture shows us that although God had the most intense engineering project ever conceived by creating everything, God rested once the work was complete. It appears that God makes vacation a priority. I hope that as I take vacation time this summer and that as you take vacation time that we will follow Scripture and prove a particular hiring manager wrong, that there is such a thing as a true vacation. - Fr. Marshall |