These things I remember as I pour out my soul:
how I went with the throng and led them in procession to the house of God
with glad shouts and songs of thanksgiving, a multitude keeping festival.
Psalm 42:4
I have heard it said that crisis is often the best soil for creativity. The crisis that delivers us into places of isolation, dislocation, deprivation and desolation can foster a resourcefulness that helps us to find new ways to fulfill the desires of our hearts. What initially is nothing more than a source for our lament over loss, can actually teach us to sing a new song of hope. This was certainly the case for Israel during its exile in Babylon. In this time when their last memories of Jerusalem were a broken down wall and the burned out rubble of the temple, they sat at first by the waters in Babylon weeping and refusing to sing the songs of Zion (Ps. 137). They were furious; and paralyzed by rage all they could think about was the injustice done to them and how long it would be before they could go back to Jerusalem and reclaim what was rightfully theirs.
Yet 70 years of lamentation was not a sustainable means of managing their grief and rage. Nor was simply waiting to go back to what was. So for whatever reason, they began to allow the light of God into the cracks in their hard shell of bitterness. That light warmed the seeds of hope and creativity lying dormant within them, and the plants that grew from these seeds changed them forever. What was born during this era where they were deprived of their normal ways of worship and fellowship were new ways to gather and new songs to sing. They built “highways to Zion in their hearts” (Ps. 84) and the dry, lifeless world of exile (Ps 42:1-3) became a well-watered and verdant field giving witness to their ongoing covenant relationship with God (Isaiah35:1). Most of the Psalms were written and the institution of the synagogue was born during the exile. In a time where they could not worship as they had, when they were grieving the loss of “leading the throng” into the temple, the Holy Spirit was working overtime, blowing the creative breath of life into the lungs of people who thought they would never sing again.
We’re in a very different kind of crisis these days. Our oppressor does not manifest itself with the concreteness of a conquering army or a voracious, narcissistic emperor. Our captor is silent and unseen. So it is harder to oppose and, at this moment at least, impervious to any rebellion we might mount to overthrow it. So perhaps our despair is even greater than that of the exiles, because it is so unclear as to where we should focus our rage. Yet even so, the songs the exiles wrote and the means of gathering they developed have something to teach us about how we can manage our anger and sorrow. They call us to summon the same spirit of creativity and explore how God might be inviting us to a new thing (Is. 43:18-19).
My biggest frustration these days is that the very act of meeting together indoors, in close proximity to one another for an hour or more is apparently one of the best ways to spread Covid-19. Get us all singing in that space and you create an even more fertile environment for the disease. I’d call that a crisis. And I spend many of my waking hours longing to go back to a time when we did not have to worry about this or spend our waking hours trying to devise ways of maintaining our current means of worship in our sanctuary while avoiding this threat. It will surprise no one to learn that in spite of all my fretting I have yet to come up with the time machine that would take us back to the way we used to be or the work-around that would neutralize the threat of this contagion.
So what can we do? We can focus on what we know we need and work to develop new ways of meeting that need. One of the most important items of business we need to attend to in these days of restriction and isolation is the work of “not neglecting to meet together” in order to “encourage one another”(Heb. 10:25). I believe there are some creative ways we can heed this admonition to meet together while also respecting the limits placed upon us by Covid-19.
We have already settled into one example of this creative adjustment by gathering for our weekly worship service on Zoom. And we will continue to offer this into the foreseeable future, and so accommodate those who will not initially be able to come back into the sanctuary even when we open that up. But there are other ways to use this tool that we have not yet fully explored. Bible studies, prayer groups, lectio divina groups, and fellowship events (aka- happy hours) are all things we can do using a video conference platform. In this time when we cannot just drive to the church and all attend the same service and then chat with one another in the narthex after the service, we can still be talking with one another about our faith. We can be encouraging one another to persevere. If you need some help with making use of the tool that facilitates these discussions, there are folks in the congregation who are making it their mission to help people get set up. Don’t just defer this necessity of meeting together until the time when the church building opens up again. Do it now.
Another thing we can do to attend to this admonition to meet together is to explore outdoor options for gathering in smaller groups. We might not be able to gather 120 people in the sanctuary to sing and celebrate the Lord’s Supper, but we can gather groups of ten to do those things outside. Granted this significantly diminishes the number that we would normally think of when we think of a “throng”, but a circle of 10 spaced at a safe distance from one another more than meets Jesus’ suggested quorum of two or three who come together in his name.
In short, we need to think beyond merely restoring our indoor once a week gathering for all. The initial work of opening things up will not be about getting everybody back into the sanctuary and getting back to the way things were. Instead it might mean multiplying the number of gatherings we have and spreading these out over the week. Will you please join me in praying and dreaming about this? God’s steadfast love has not ceased, Jesus is still Lord and we are his disciples. As St. Paul says in 2 Corinthians “now is the acceptable time, now is the day of salvation.” So let us both accept the unhappy circumstances of the now that we cannot change, and cling to the truth about God in this now that will not change. Let us act in the assurance and confidence that nothing will separate us from God’s love.
Why are you cast down O my soul and why are you disquieted within me,
hope in God, for I shall again praise him, my King and my God.
(Ps. 42:11)
Dave Rohrer
5/22/20202