Not Gathering

              My first act as the newly called pastor of Spruce Run Lutheran where I serve, was a painful one, to cancel in person worship. I made the video on my just unpacked personal computer in my messy partially packed partially unpacked home office. It looked a bit like a proof of life hostage video—as did many non-televangelist pastor’s early videos. All around the country and the world people were having to make awful choices in their work, school, personal, and church life not to gather, to assemble.

              There is, of course, a case to be made that virtual gathering has advantages. For example, folk who couldn’t come out due to issues driving at night were grateful to participate in Zoom Bible Studies and Livestreamed Vespers. Not to mention that many in the disabled community were overjoyed, and more than a little annoyed, that many aspects of work and play became accessible to them, often for the first time—dispensations they’d asked for and been denied as impractical became VERY practical when their impractical nature became everyone’s problem.

              With all that throat clearing aside, not gathering in person for worship just hurt! What is the assembly if it doesn’t assemble? What does it mean to be the body of Christ if we’re dispersed? For that matter, what does it say about the incarnation of God, God with us in the flesh—what we celebrate every Christmas—if human connection is mediated by screens?

              As with many congregations, the habit of meeting together, once broken, wasn’t easily returned to. Yes, there were some lovely moments, gathered for communion in parking lots, gathered for outdoor worship at park pavilions, tapping out ashes in 100s of bead bags to deliver a distanced Ash Wednesday, all of those things congregations across the country did to make things work despite it all, but it changed us. That old saying about worship is true—the way we worship is what we believe, which is how we live. We now live as folk less connected to one another than we did before the Pandemic. And that’s something to mourning.

              We mourn it still because of how good it is to gather together. It builds trust, relativizes barriers, give space to build one another up, and be the Body of Christ. But we don’t just mourn, we also rebuild, we assess who is in the community now, on the other side of that great shake up, and care for each other, invite, uplift, and keep on being the body of Christ.