HCLM BLOG

Last night I saw on TV that Off. Virgil Pickelsheimer of the Lake Mary Police Dept. is retiring at the age of 72 after 22 years on the Lake Mary Force. The streets of Lake Mary will be a little safer for speeders from now on. They said that in his career here he had handed out more than 500 DUI tickets. The TV did not mention how many speeding and moving violation tickets he had given but I would bet that the number would be staggering! I say this because Officer Pickelsheimer has given me 8 to 10 tickets in the last 22 years. If you were stopped in Lake Mary the odds were good that you got to know this officer. He is famous for finding the most out of the way spots to set up and watch drivers. You could find him on North Sun Dr. behind the Medplex, on Old Lake Mary Road near the railroad track, on Broadmore half way to SCC, and on the long curve of Country Club where the speed goes down to 30.

While I am aggravated by the hundreds (thousands?) of dollars that his tickets have cost me over the years as I look at it now in this writing I realize that his vidulance has caused me to drive more carefully in the city of Lake Mary. Therefore we say a fond fairwell to Officer Pickelsheimer, but not really since he said that he was going to continue to patrol as a volunteer at least once a week.

So to all of you speeding drivers out there, as the officer used to say, "You drive safe next time you hear!"

So I am reading through first and second thessalonians for this weekends talk. There is some interesting stuff in those letters; several things caught my eye, but one that I'll mention here. In 2Thess 3.10 Paul says,

"If a man will not work, he shall not eat."

Now that is interesting. As I mentioned last post, I am trying to build more serving the community into my life. Just this past monday I gave some money to a guy on the street who wanted a bus ticket. I am trying to think through what Paul is saying there. I am wondering, does this apply only to folks in the church. Some churches at that time pooled some of their resources, maybe people were trying to take advantage of the generosity. Maybe some were just taking and not contributing to the pool. Is that different from folks who choose not to work and live on the generosity of others? There are a lot of questions here, but I want to take Paul seriously. I suppose it is good if the text makes me ask questions.

I got a phone call yesterday asking about a news story I hadn’t heard. Looking around on the Internet today, my only excuse for not hearing it is that I spent half the day in the car (otherwise the story would have certainly hit my ears). Tragically a man was shot Sunday morning as he was passing out bulletins at a Lutheran Church in Wichita Kansas. The person walked up and killed the usher with one bullet. Bad. Real bad.

Someone got the plate number of the car as it drove away and the police have apprehended the guy. Apparently the suspect was on the FBI’s radar as a potentially violent anti abortion activist. See the usher at the church was one of only three doctors in the United States who would perform third-term abortions.  His office has been sort of infamous: it has been bombed and attacked.

Immediately when you hear the story your heart goes out to that guy and his family. It is so weird every time we are faced with the frailty of these bodies: alive and ticking one minute, worthless the next. As I got the story on the phone yesterday I was pretty taken aback; then the question really had me back peddling. It went something like this, “How could a guy who performs this sort of abortion, be an usher at a church?” Abortion is more complex than a blog post. But the question has gotten me thinking about how much people are watching us, whether we realize it or not. I mean I looked up official statements from the Evangelical Lutheran Church in America (Holy Cross is affiliated with a different family of Lutheran Churches). But then I realized that the belief of individual members is not found in official statements but in the choices they make everyday. What we really believe is revealed by the way we live our life at work, at home, on vacation and the world is watching.  Unfortunately, they seem to always be looking for the inconsistencies.

The second generation Hoyer family is spending the weekend in Pensacola. I have the privilege of officiating at the wedding of Megan’s cousin and our friend. We drove up after work on Thursday; the seven hours was a little long that late at night, but it was nice to have Wes sleep most of the way. When we arrived my Father-in-law was sitting amidst a whole slew of letters. He is an elected member of the school board and all the letters were from folks who wanted him to hear their opinion. Over the next half hour we got the scoop.

Some time ago the ACLU brought a suit against the school district. The union was concerned about the place prayers had been given in various aspects of the schools, including graduation ceremonies. So this year the board is being very careful: because the valedictorian and salutatorian are selected without faculty influence they can speak and even pray (if they want),however because student government officers need recommendations from faculty(which means they are somehow endorsed by the school) they cannot pray.  This has caused quite a stir.

There are signs in yards all over the area that read “Pray for Our Schools.” A local church held a rally where people came together in some show of solidarity against the changes, we saw a car this morning with “let them speak” on the windshield, and school board members like my father in-law are being pressured with slews of letters and emails.

The letters speak of disappointment and Christian foundations; the rally’s call for grand gestures and refusals to cooperate.They’re reacting like they are a church under persecution. They seem to think limiting prayer during public school ceremonies is persecution. The irony is that most of the churches pushing this view grew out of the revivals of the first and second great awakenings. The leaders of those movements were great proponents of a clear separation between church and state. They knew if the lines were blurred it would be bad for the church.

They knew that if we started relying on the government to teach creation, we’d get some watered down version like intelligent design.They knew that prayer would boil down to “our thoughts are with you” or prayers sent out to god generically (think of the political conventions last year). I appreciate a clear separation of church and state it lets Christian and government be themselves unabashedly.