‘Easter’s not canceled.’ As pandemic threatens sacred week, people of faith find hope
There won’t be choral cantatas and churchwide egg hunts and congregations gathered for sunrise services or sunset prayers.
There won’t be extended family dinners or traditional communion ceremonies.
Two of the most significant religious seasons of the year, Easter and Passover, collide this week with a historic season of illness, anxiety and widespread isolation, as the coronavirus pandemic bears down across the globe.
While traditions and ceremonies have been dampened, the significance and spiritual comfort of the holidays has been heightened. And while churches and synagogues across the nation and here in the Midlands will have their doors closed to most parishioners this week, their messages of hope and meaning will be spoken far and wide.
“I would say, in fact, the meaning has been magnified,” said George Wright, pastor of Shandon Baptist Church in Columbia. “This Easter, everybody is recognizing life is not normal. In that reflective mode, people are asking questions they normally don’t consider. They’re looking for hope and looking for some answers in all of this.”
As the faithful remember freedom from bondage and resurrection in this week that marks the beginning of Passover and the prelude to Easter Sunday, most all are confined to their homes, many experiencing worsening worry over a modern-day plague on society.
They are intentionally splintered — this novel and unnatural practice of social distancing — in a time that’s typically marked by unity.
Rather than coming together in sanctuaries and fellowship halls, many will gather with their households around computers or phone screens or televisions — or watch alone — as priests and preachers and rabbis stand before empty houses of worship delivering messages of hope.
“I’m preaching about the empty tomb to an empty room,” said the Rev. Wes Church, pastor of First Baptist Church in downtown Columbia. “But I know people are still tuned in, and God’s going to bless it.”
What’s most important
Sunrise will come on Easter Sunday, whether the Rev. Kevin Cooley sits in his home or stands in his pulpit.
“Easter’s not canceled,” said the pastor of Mt. Hebron United Methodist Church in West Columbia. “There’s no way. If Satan couldn’t do it, my decision or anyone else’s doesn’t do it at all. … It doesn’t live in the store, it doesn’t live in our suits or our family gatherings or Easter egg hunts.”
This Easter will be a break from the cultural trappings of Easter that can sometimes become a distraction from the real celebration, Cooley said.
It also throws a wrench in many of the comforting spiritual rituals of the season — receiving communion or the Eucharist on Maundy Thursday, or a Seder meal with extended family the first night of Passover; celebrating baptisms; worshiping and praying together at dawn on the morning of Jesus’ resurrection.
But technology has made it possible for many congregations to come together over preaching, praying, singing and even feasting from a distance.
Cooley will deliver Mt. Hebron’s annual sunrise Easter morning service from his home before preaching two services in an empty sanctuary, all of which will be livestreamed on the church’s Facebook page.
The Rev. Angela Marshall will do the same. But this isn’t how she imagined she’d lead her first Holy Week and Easter Sunday as the pastor of St. John’s United Methodist Church in Lugoff, as she’s had to adapt her church’s plans to commemorate the Last Supper on Thursday, the crucifixion on Friday and the resurrection on Sunday. All those services will be streamed online — something St. John’s didn’t even have the ability to do before the coronavirus crisis.
“We still want to do all that we can to facilitate experiences to help everyone feel connected during that beautiful and awkward and uncomfortable and sad and joyous time that is Holy Week,” Marshall said.
The Very Rev. Gary Linsky, rector of the Basilica of St. Peter in downtown Columbia, will observe the holy sacrament of the Eucharist alone from the empty church on Maundy Thursday.
Rabbi Jonathan Case of Beth Shalom Synagogue in Columbia will lead his congregation through a virtual Seder meal Wednesday night, the first night of Passover, when many families will be uncharacteristically separated.
Wright, the pastor of Shandon Baptist Church, invited his congregation to partake in the Lord’s Supper from their own homes during his live online sermon on Palm Sunday.
“We’re being forced to stop. We’re being forced to evaluate what’s most important,” Wright said. “So in one way, that’s a gift, that we’re having to evaluate what really matters most. At the same time, it is a struggle, because we’re not getting to experience the traditions and the fellowship in a way we’re used to.”
‘What does this all mean?’
While the practice of traditions looks different this year, one thing will not:
“The theme has not changed. The theme on Palm Sunday is the cross, and the theme on Easter Sunday is the tomb is empty,” said Church, the First Baptist pastor. “But preaching that or delivering that in the age of COVID-19, you have to adjust to deal with where people are right now. ... The reality is a little bit more serious for folks, considering death and eternity, in light of how everything has been shaken.”
If ever the message of hope has felt so powerful and so needed, it is now, church leaders say.
“The whole message of Easter is hope. It really is hope,” said Wright, the Shandon Baptist pastor. “And if Easter highlights anything, it highlights the incredible gift of God’s love when we really need it most. If there ever is an Easter when we’re all aware of need, it’s right now.”
“Easter is the resurrection, and it’s always a sign of hope because Christ overcame death, and, truthfully, we all know we’re going to overcome this,” Linsky, the St. Peter’s priest, said. “We all have hope. There is always hope in the midst of despair. … We will do so as a people, and we will be better than we are today because we went through this together.”
Pastors will preach the 2,000-year-old message to empty pews but to thousands of people tuning in from their homes; some church leaders say their weekly services are drawing larger online audiences now than they’ve seen attendees in church prior to the coronavirus outbreak.
Case, the Beth Shalom rabbi, delivers daily messages to his community through services online. He’s urging them to seek meaning in this time of widespread suffering.
“What does this all mean to all of us? None of us has experienced this event,” Case said. “This is novel for us all, not just the virus, but the whole idea of not being in community with those we love. Some of us are feeling a hole in our soul, as if a part of us has been shorn away.”
As Passover is a time to reflect on the Israelites’ release from slavery in ancient Egypt, people must remember the suffering that played a part in that salvation, Case said.
“Part of that release from bondage were the 10 plagues,” he said. “Now we’re living through the 11th. And how do we cope with it?”
Many people, religious and nonreligious alike, are seeking answers, hope and assurance in the midst of this uncertain and frightening time, religious leaders acknowledge.
And for those in the Christian church, the message of Easter offers their answer:
“We worship a God who is powerful, more powerful than what we’re facing today or any other day,” said Cooley, the Mt. Hebron pastor. “He overcame every fear, every anxiety by overcoming death. That’s a message that happens every Sunday, but it’s acutely true for us on Easter Sunday. ... Maybe the truth is that we’re going to hear that a little bit more clearly now.”
‘Never far from us’
If everyone, people of faith and otherwise, emerge from this pandemic having learned a few lessons, “then the suffering has redeemed itself,” Case said.
“I hope the lesson is appreciate your family more,” the rabbi said. “I hope the lesson is appreciate your freedom more. I hope the lesson is treat other people with greater respect and kindness.”
Part of religion is community, Case said. But in this time, people are learning that community is “beyond physical presence,” Methodist minister Cooley said.
People are calling one another, writing letters, having more meaningful conversations beyond small talk, praying for one another, the leaders said.
“We used to draw hope from seeing one another and coming together,” said Church, of First Baptist. “And now we have to do so much from a distance, it’s just shifted how we draw hope.”
And as Easter approaches, people are yearning for that hope, Linsky said.
“Maybe this has been a spring that has the potential for hope because we are beginning to see what is more important,” the priest said. “Christ is never far from us; the church is never far from us.”
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This story was originally published April 6, 2020 at 9:16 AM.
