The Body of Christ Just Flew All Over The Lawn

Ara Weston
Sep 1, 2021
5 min read

Updated: Sep 2, 2021

Reflecting on the Summer of Covid-19

*Please note all comments made here are my own opinion and should not reflect this profiled group as a whole. Always do your own research and come to your own conclusions.

During the summer of 2020, my dad’s minivan, which is gray with flame decals on the sides, became our church. The seats became our pews. The dashboard radio was tuned to 99.3 FM. It became our altar.

The parking lot of Trinity Lutheran Church in Spencerport, NY, was filled with cars every summer Sunday during 2020, 9:30am sharp. Every car was parked so the passengers could see the church entrance, where a pastor stood in front of the pulpit that had been taken from the sanctuary. There were speakers set up on the lawn, in case the projection to the radio frequency we were all given failed.

Rachel, a long-time friend of mine, and I dubbed this, “Drive-In Church,” the intimacy of a drive-in movie coupled with the droning sermons of Lutheran Christianity. Like an unemployed college graduate, we were “in-between” pastors; thus the one who stood at the lectern all summer was not a permanent fixture. The congregation fervently prayed that Drive-In Church would also be so temporary.

Now, nothing I say here is meant to malign any member of the congregation. These people are like my family. I grew up with them and know they care deeply about others. My comments in this piece should be applied exclusively to the messages sent by the interim pastor's sermons, which many of the members disagreed with in conversations with me.

Artist credit: Sarah Frey

Covid-19 swept our world throughout in March of 2020. We’ve suffered the infection and deaths of millions. Along with that loss of life, we’ve lost parts of our everyday routines—visiting friends, going into the office, physical contact, and nearly all leisure activities. Religious services, too.

As the coronavirus hit the US, doors shuttered quickly. Many congregations immediately set up a YouTube channel to broadcast messages of hope and prayer. Others sent words of encouragement to their members with promises of a speedy reopening. Some refused to close or follow CDC guidelines until they were forced to.

Rachel and I would sit in her old, beat-up coupe during those drive-in services, AC blasting in the summer heat. Our masks were never removed. Looking back on this, Rachel recalled the messages we heard that summer seemed off. “They seemed to be directly tied to the Republican News,” she told me in a laid-back interview in November 2020.

When I brought up a particularly jarring service that I’d remembered from a few years earlier—an extremely politically charged message about abortion—we both made faces.

“When thinking about politics and the state of our country,” Rachel replied. “I’m reminded of a German adage: Herr, wirf Hirn vom Himmel! Oder Steine, Hauptsache er trifft.” A moment later she stated the translation: “Lord, throw some brains from heaven! Or stones as long as he hits the mark.”

Spencerport, a suburb near Rochester, NY, is a more conservative town. But were places of worship in notably liberal towns acting differently?

Take Burlington, VT. It's a notably freewheeling town of purported hippies. I myself went to college there. And the vibe seemed noticeably different.

Burlington Church of Christ, a modern non-denominational church, set up online services and uploaded sermons to podcast sites like Spotify and Apple Podcasts. The local Unitarian Universalist Church quickly set up Zoom meetings for services, group meetings, and provided a guide to Zoom for newcomers to the technology. Ohavi Zedek Synagogue set up similar events, such as providing Zoom instructions and offering Shabbat services and Evening Minyans, among others. A few minutes away in Shelburne, the Vermont Zen Center, a Buddhist temple, set up online meditation services for its members. The Roman Catholic Diocese of Burlington did not officially close until March 25, setting up a deliverance shrine for parishioners to pray at, a week prior. As of November, they still offer Mass online.

The reaction of Burlington’s Catholic Diocese struck a chord with me. My church had delivered similar messages at the beginning of the pandemic, emphasizing the deliverance angle to the sickness. While continued prayer for those suffering is an essential component of guided prayer, there was another message—reopen the economy. This was coupled with an affable attitude towards the deadly danger of the virus.

This corresponded directly to the GOP signaling the country that we were going to reopen things as soon as we possibly could, even if we didn’t have proper measures, cleaning supplies, or a mask mandate. In fact, a few prayers printed in the bulletin (that yes, was still distributed to cars upon arrival) did speak about the sickness, but when praying for specific groups of people, placed essential workers after the military and the police, respectively. This was emphasized during the BLM protests. Even during this unrest, the sermons compared that suffering to the inability to attend church inside, and how “unopened” the economy still was.

I'm not certain how much of these prayers was written by those in our congregation who take the task of printing the bulletins, or from the pastor directly. Since they were applicable to the present day, I could only assume it was a product of the pastor's office. Again, the congregation is a caring group. The comments of any religious leader should never be applied straight out to all adherents of a faith.

An article from Crosswalk, a conservative Christian outlet, offers a cross-section of viewpoints on Christians during historical pandemics. It quotes many biblical passages about helping the sick and details missionaries bringing medicine to dying Native Americans during the European encroachment. During the Bubonic Plague it talks of many “pockets of Christians who, as in other plagues, sacrificed their own lives to care for the ill, doing all they could to live out Christ’s command to serve in love.” These views are certainly more niche, as European settlers brought deadly illnesses to native populations, while a well-documented case shows such diseases were caused purposely with smallpox-infected blankets.

The language used around these arguments, that speak to the missionary's supposed godliness for treating a disease they helped perpetuate, echo around today’s Covid-19 pandemic through the actions of some churches, specifically the ones I have profiled here. “Drive-In Church” is an ingenious step to comply with large crowd restrictions, but the portrayed message from the pulpit was that of economic stunting, not of lives lost from carelessness. And this message was not wholly supported by the congregation. Safety was their first priority.

Artist credit: Sarah Frey

During church one Sunday, Rachel and I sat in different cars with our families during the service. The church council agreed that they should be able to dispense communion despite the risks, and the wafers and wine sat on a table on the front lawn, ready for distribution.

There had been a decent breeze that morning, but a sudden gust of wind was particularly disruptive. The family minivan was parked a bit farther back than Rachel’s car, so I watched a few volunteers run around frantically around the table without seeing why. My phone received a text message from Rachel:

The body of Christ just flew all over the lawn.

Despite the laughter we both shared over the incident, it came to me then that we chased after an experience we could no longer have—when it would’ve been smarter just to let it go.