On Easter Sunday, the high point of the year for those in the Christian faith, most church doors are locked and their congregations safe in their homes due to the COVID-19 outbreak.
Think of the virus as the Grinch Who Stole Easter.
The day also happens to be the start of the week many medical experts say could be the most consequential one yet in terms of the virus. They expect, in many cities, for the number of new cases to peak, stretching hospitals, their employees and medical equipment to their maximum.
“This is going to be our Pearl Harbor moment, our 9/11 moment,” said U.S. Surgeon General Dr. Jerome Adams. “Only it’s not going to be localized, it going to be happening all over the country.”
Dr. Anthony Fauci, director of the National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases at National Institutes of Health, said last weekend on CBS’s “Face The Nation” that this week, or slightly later, the country should begin to see a flattening of the curve of cases of the virus.
“So on the one hand,” he said, “things are going to get bad, and we need to be prepared for that. It is going to be shocking to some. It certainly is – is really disturbing to see that. But that’s what’s going to happen before it turns around.”
Churches and other religious organizations have been shuttered for several weeks by local executive orders in many cities, including Chattanooga. Thirty years ago, that would have been the end of it. The church staff might have reached out by mail or telephone but had few if any alternatives.
Sunday, many services will take place at their appointed time, with appropriate music and with the message of hope and renewal that Easter always brings.
That’s possible because technology allows services to be streamed live through the internet. The only components that will be missing are the filled pews, the overflowing offering plates and the smell of Easter lilies.
Churches and other religious organizations also have been filling the void of meeting together through other methods from online daily devotionals and small groups meeting through Zoom video conference – just as have many businesses have been doing – to streamed children’s activities.
We especially liked the Holy Week Bedtime Stories we saw the children’s director at one church offering through Facebook, preparing the children she can’t see in person for the Easter they’ll have in their homes.
The church, throughout its history, has found a way.
Many of the first churches in the Middle East met in homes because Christianity wasn’t legal and because it was felt smaller, more intimate meetings offered a richness in fellowship not found in larger groups.
More recently, many can remember hearing in the Cold War era about the dangers that were taken by individuals to smuggle Bibles into the then-USSR (Union of Soviet Socialist Republics) and to hold services with small knots of believers.
Even today in China, where religion was banned under communist rule under Mao Zedong until 1976 and where the Communist Party today is intolerant of any churches not under party control, Christianity has grown and estimates of its size range up to 67 million people.
So what’s the COVID-19 virus to a group of the faithful who worship a man who on the last week of his life had religious rulers plot against him, one of his faithful betray him, local leaders try him, officials beat him and Roman soldiers crucify him?
The coronavirus is only a season, a season that keeps believers apart temporarily but apart for the accepted good of the whole. It is a season in which it is perfectly acceptable to lament our circumstances – Christ, himself, frequently lamented during the last week of his life – but to understand that God is with us and that our service to others does not have to stop.
Can we check on a neighbor? Can we volunteer to pick up something at the grocery store for someone who might be compromised getting out? Can we keep up our pledges to churches, charitable and civic organizations that need our help more than ever? Can we be Easter people throughout our social distancing and beyond?
We can because, just as in the cartoon based on the original Dr. Seuss tale, “How the Grinch Stole Christmas,” the Grinch of a virus can’t take what is in individual hearts. So, as in the cartoon, when the Grinch sticks its head out of the dark place where viruses live Sunday, instead of silence it will hear Christians throughout the world sing “Christ the Lord Is Risen Today.”
To paraphrase narrator Boris Karloff, from the original animated television special, “Every Who in Gig City, the tall and the small, was singing without any present at all. The virus hadn’t stopped Easter from coming. It came. Somehow or other, it came just the same. … Welcome, Easter, while we stand. Heart to heart but not yet hand to hand.”