Here we are together, apart, caught in the messy middle between the fear & uncertainty of two months ago, and the hoped-for end of a global pandemic. The pandemic seems further away from us individually than it has in a long time, but the end of the pandemic overall seems further away than ever. The novel coronavirus is still spreading in many communities, including metro Tulsa, but it feels like many folks are trying to go back to the way things used to be.
Spoiler alert: things are not going to go back to the way they used to be, not any time soon. Some folks are now working from home for the foreseeable future, while others’ jobs have disappeared entirely. Businesses previously on the brink are being pushed over the edge, and many others are now threatened. Entire industries have been devastated, especially those that depend on gathering large crowds and entertaining them. We hold everyone facing such tragedies in prayer.
In-person worship services are challenged in some very particular ways by the on-going threat of this virus. Covid-19 seems to thrive on people gathered together. And the things we love the most as a community seem almost diabolically targeted by it: hugging, handshakes, group singing, and sharing food and drink. I’m aware of at least a half dozen church functions that became so-called “superspreader” events, each time with deadly consequences. Faraway places like South Korea and Germany, but also much closer: Chicago, rural Arkansas, Houston.
I fully expected a resurgence of the virus here in Oklahoma as restrictions have been lifted dramatically in a short time, but so far my worst fears have apparently not come true. I would love to see more folks wearing masks in public. There’s evidence that if ~80% of folks would wear them around others, the virus would eventually run out of opportunities to spread, just as if we had a safe and effective vaccine, which is many, many months away, if it’s even feasible.
It remains true that too many in our church community are too vulnerable to the still-spreading coronavirus, and so we continue to take a wait-and-see approach before returning to in-person worship, as impatient as ever. I want to see all your faces. Zoom is not enough, though it’s been a literal godsend in this time of apartness.
Here’s my plan for now, with the support of your church council. It’s taking longer than I hoped, but we’re going to get reliable internet into Joy’s sanctuary. From there, I can adjust to leading Zoom worship from the podium you’re used to. After that we can add back Dr. Alice on piano and/organ. And when we feel good about all that, I’m open to a sort of “live studio audience” for Zoom worship. Folks who choose to come out will face a lot of restrictions: wearing masks, households sitting six feet apart, no in-person communion at first, probably, and probably no group singing either. No nursery, no coffee hour, no choirs for the foreseeable future, either..
That sounds like an awful parody of our worship to me, but I know many of you are eager to see each other again. So I’m also working on an outdoor option for sometime this summer, taking into consideration Oklahoma’s unpredictable weather and also being careful not to replicate out-of-doors the same kinds of conditions that have made gathering indoors so risky.
So let’s be clear: this is not about faith versus fear. Noah is often lauded as a model of faithful endurance. Though it rained for “only” forty days and nights, Genesis 7 & 8 tell us that it took much, much longer for the floodwaters to recede, perhaps nearly a year. In the meantime, Noah did not dive off the side of the ark to prove his faith, but rather repeatedly tested whether the time was right to disembark. And it was actually months after the business with ravens and doves that Noah heard a clear word from God that it was time to return to “business as usual.”
Yikes! I have no idea how long this will take, but I know this: God is with us in the messy middle. God is in the midst of the other disasters unfolding around us: economic devastation. Extrajudicial killings of black folks and other instances of overt and systemic racism in the headlines. People swept away in floodwaters, even little kids. A virus we still barely understand that leaves many people unharmed but kills some of the oldest and youngest among us, and plenty in between, and has had particularly devastating effects on minority communities, including ELCA congregations.
You may be seeing a lot of signs of things returning to “normal”--traffic on Yale in front of Joy has certainly picked up--but make no mistake: this pandemic crisis is not over. And yet God is with us, here in the messy middle between the initial waves of fear and an uncertain future.
- Pastor Jon
