In the middle of a global pandemic, closed restaurants, social distancing and a shelter-in-place order, the Rev. Philip Hanner, rector of Anglican Church of the Redeemer, made the walk between his Brainerd church and the parking lot dozens of times to provide some semblance of normalcy.
In the hours after his church live-streamed its Easter morning service, Hanner hand-delivered communion wafers to people’s cars as they passed through the parking lot. The rector, wearing a mask and gloves, put a brown bag carrying a wafer in each person’s trunk before blessing them on the holiest day on the Christian calendar.
Easter in Chattanooga in 2020 was unlike any previous celebration in most residents’ lifetime. Fears about the spread of COVID-19 have the city and state under lockdown, including houses of worship. Many churches have migrated to an online, live-streamed presence on Sunday mornings, but that cannot replace the value of face-to-face interactions among church members, something that has not happened for weeks, Hanner said.
“It’s hard because most of us want to talk,” he said. “A lot of us are feeling the pangs of [social] withdrawal.”