Gutenberg
Any views or opinions expressed in “Gutenberg” are those of the author and do not necessarily reflect the views or opinions of the Watershed Voice staff or its board of directors.
My stomach sank like a freshly devoured pack of jellybeans as I read the e-mail from the bishop:
“With heavy hearts and hope-filled spirits, we are compelled to offer a new Pastoral Directive in response to COVID-19. These new directives are in line with the recommendations of the Centers for Disease Control (CDC) and the World Health Organization (WHO),” the email read.
“In addition to continuing to forgo all public, in-person worship services, we direct you to cease all other Sunday, Saturday and weekday in-person gatherings, including weddings, funerals, memorial services, and non-emergency baptisms, and place all of the groups that gather at your congregation on hiatus for the CDC’s recommended eight weeks, or until May 10th, including both Holy Week and Easter. We encourage you to make arrangements to offer your education classes or other meetings by video or phone conference call as you are able.”
Easter: canceled? Can they do that? It sounds like the set-up of a plot out of an animated Christmas movie—you know where a lovable Claymation character has to “save Christmas,” err…Easter, at the last minute.
Well, the short answer is: Yes, they can. The longer answer is: No, they really can’t.
Now would be a good time to talk about how Easter is something that happens in our hearts and as long as we have the true meaning of Easter there, we are all fine. That is certainly how the climax of my imagined Claymation movie: “How PJ Saved Easter” would go. But the truth is, not being able to gather together for Easter is a real bummer.
Easter is not something that happens each in one’s individual, own heart. It’s something that happens when we gather together as a community: from the first time the risen Jesus appeared on Easter evening and broke bread with his disciples in Emmaus (Luke 24:13-25) to the very next Sunday when he appeared to his scared disciples and to so-called “doubting” Thomas in the locked room (John 20:24-29), and every Sunday since for almost two thousand years now. Easter is something that happens when we Christians gather together in community.
So in a way, I have to agree that it would indeed be beautiful if we could gather together for Easter.
But the problem is: that’s not the reality of the situation. One criticism nonbelievers have of Christianity is that it is a denial of reality. This is simply false. Easter is a profound affirmation of reality. When Jesus appears to his disciples, he is resurrected with new life, but he still bears the scars from the thorns in his head, of the spear in his side, of the nails in his hands and feet. For Jesus to be raised to new life means that he is still always the crucified one, the one who has died. Easter and Christianity offer not an escape from reality but a promise that no matter how bad reality is, God will bring us through to new life.
And the reality of that situation now is that we are dealing with circumstances that most of us have never seen before. To gather for Easter right now, as beautiful as it would be, would endanger everyone there. Now it is true that Christians have a long history—and in other parts of the world still a present reality—of risking their safety to worship. But what is different about this virus is that if we were to gather, we would not only endanger ourselves, but everyone else we meet when we unknowingly pass on the virus to others at the store, at the bank, picking up food, and so many of our other “essential” daily occupations. It should not be lost on Christians in this country that South Korea’s COVID-19 outbreak started from a large church.
To endanger our fellow citizens denies everything that Easter is about. Easter is supposed to be Good News; people reading about Christians defying the C.D.C. and meeting to possibly expose them is most certainly bad news. Easter is supposed to be about new life. Meeting for Easter would only bring more death. Most of all, Easter and Christianity are supposed to be about loving our neighbors. Right now, the most loving thing we can do is practice those “waiting” skills that Christians since the New Testament have always emphasized. Waiting before acting rashly, waiting to allow hospitals to manage the number of patients, waiting for scientists to develop better treatments and a vaccine.
So we’re not going to meet at Trinity Church or at St. John’s Lutheran Church on Easter. And despite some of the cases you may have heard of renegade pastors in Florida or elsewhere around the country, most pastors and churches I know have made the same decision.
But that does not deny Easter. Indeed, what I am seeing when I look around the church and society is Easter in the truest form it’s been practiced in a long time. I see the Good News spreading as people, who are not able to attend church on Sundays, are participating more than ever in online bible studies; I see the new life of actual change: people in my congregations, some of whom are well over 80, watching videos and zooming in for “virtual prayer breakfasts” to stay connected with their fellow Christians; I see the love of people who are social-distanced, paradoxically being brought closer together with a renewed sense of togetherness, making real sacrifices of filling those “essential” work roles or others doing the “essential work” of staying home.
Eventually the time will come when we as a community, as a church, as a country, as the world get through this. And when that centuries-old bell finally does once again ring at Trinity Church to welcome people back to worship, it will be the greatest Easter of all-time because together we will be a people formed by the message of Good News, new life, and love.
James E. Smith is a pastor serving at Trinity Episcopal and St. John’s Lutheran Churches. For comments, questions, or rebuttals, fire off an e-mail at [email protected]. Prosit!
