Opinion

One Easter in lockdown was big news, a second was unimaginable

Rite & Reason: ‘We will be sustained by how we care and connect’

A lone worshipper in the Church of St Therese, Mount Merrion – the church is remaining open for private prayer for individuals. Photograph: Bryan O Brien

Gillian Wharton
Tue Apr 6 2021 - 01:21

If we had thought last year that we might have a second Easter in lockdown, with our churches closed, apart from online worship, we would have thrown up our hands in horror and shaken our head, and said that it just could not happen.

We thought that by “battening down the hatches” for a few weeks, we would suppress coronavirus and life would go back to normal. One Easter in lockdown was big news, but a second Easter in lockdown was unimaginable. This Easter, we are weary – weary from worrying about others and ourselves, weary from restrictions, and from our lives being impacted so much by Covid-19. Our sphere of encounter is smaller, physically, but it has grown virtually, (although I think we might be feeling a bit zoomed-out at this stage!). Our voice may feel smaller and unheard.

We have had to look at who we are and to explore how we engage in being community

Since March 15th, 2020, we have been able to have Sunday worship with congregations in church on 14 Sundays plus Christmas Day. Clergy of all denominations and worship leaders in all faiths have had to find different ways of providing worship, and spiritual nurture and nourishment.

Many of us who did not have a webcam or any online presence before the pandemic have gone from brief attempts, via YouTube or social media, which we thought we would be doing as a kind of stop-gap, to more sophisticated efforts, as worship and gathering online using a webcam and/or Zoom became the norm.

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What quickly became apparent was that the community, and the interaction, and relating to one another, and the gathering of the community, was the most important part of worship, more important than the content of the worship.

The content can be “delivered” online or on a service sheet, and for some, the benefit of that is that they can “tune in” whenever suits them; but for a significant number, such is the need for that sense of togetherness, that they watch the online service “live” knowing others are doing so at the same time, and through that there is a feeling of being together.

Frustrated

While worship can happen online and via the service sheet, the ambience, the interaction, the togetherness cannot, hence many are frustrated that congregations are not allowed in church. But being in church is about community and even if we were able to gather in church, it is at a distance without the opportunity to connect uninhibited.

Church and community is about being alongside people – not at a remove or with different rules, and therefore, there is an integrity about the churches experiencing the same frustrations and restrictions as other areas of life.

We have had to look at who we are and to explore how we engage in being community. The buildings may point to and facilitate a community, worshipping together feeds and nurtures that community but the essence of the community is how it relates, connects, communicates, cares. And that is not just the prerogative of the church, but of all society. We are social beings, even the most insular of us, and we need community.

We need to feel connected, acknowledged, valued. Technology has enabled us to do that whether online, or by telephone, but it is also being done by knocking on a door and standing back 2m for a conversation on a doorstep or via a window. And those ways of connecting, relating, acknowledging and valuing has been, and is being done, and can be done, by every person.

Those with the know-how and the devices are connecting via WhatsApp, Zoom, social media, etc, but others who do not use technology are writing or phoning – a postcard or a note making someone’s day; a phonecall and a friendly chat brightening someone’s day; knocking on doors to say hello at a 2m distance or through a window.

People are concerned as to what the churches and church communities will be like post-Covid-19 – will they go back to 'normal'?

Cards and pictures are being made by children and sent to those who are in nursing homes or confined to home; baking is being left on doorsteps; a treat that someone likes but that they wouldn’t put on a shopping list for a neighbour to get when doing their shopping, is left on a doorstep; packets of seeds, compost and a window-box left at someone’s doorstep – all little ways in which people can make others feel valued.

I think of someone who, due to a physical condition is confined to their home, but who decided they would make a list of people they could phone, and each day they make a difference by phoning at least two people from that list. We will be sustained by how we care and connect.

People are concerned as to what the churches and church communities will be like post-Covid-19 – will they go back to “normal”? We can’t go back. We cannot undo the experience of Covid-19 or the impact it has had on us, we can only move forward. What we have embraced over the past year, shapes who we will be.

Things will be different and some things will not be part of who we are going forward. I can imagine that at this stage, almost 2,000 years ago, the disciples yearned to undo the last week of Jesus’s life, to go back, and if that had been possible, the story of Jesus would have faded and disappeared. Weary from lockdown and restriction, we cling to the promise and hope of the Easter message, of new life.

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