On the evening of that day, the first day of the week, the doors being locked where the disciples were for fear of the Jews, Jesus came and stood among them and said to them, “Peace be with you.” ~ John 20:19

 

IT WAS THE BIGGEST DAY

at our church, attendance-wise each year, as between two to three thousand souls came together on Easter to celebrate the resurrection of Jesus Christ. But wasn’t always that way.

 

On my first Easter as pastor at Valley Christian Center in Dublin, California, the deacons agreed to the idea of two services in the little chapel that was our church home. It was 1972. I had been the pastor for all of five months. We didn’t have enough people in the congregation, including children, to fill one service let alone two. It was crazy.

 

I asked as many as would come to the early service to please do so, and most of the faithful did. Then I waited nervously near the door to see if anyone would come to the regular church hour. I breathed a sigh of relief when, miracle of miracles, the first car turned into the driveway. Then another, and another until the second service was about two-thirds filled, mostly with strangers I did not know. As far as I was concerned, “Jesus came and stood among us” that day.

 

FORTY-EIGHT YEARS LATER

I am once again a newbie, having lived for a year now among the more than five hundred residents of Timber Ridge, a Cougar Mountain retirement community, in Issaquah, Washington. This Easter, we were all pretty much present and accounted for. A ”Stay at Home” mandate was keeping both church doors and our doors “locked for fear of an invisible enemy, coronavirus.”

 

Of course pastors everywhere were staying connected with their congregations through television and the Internet. If I were still active in the pulpit, it’s what I would have done. But GAGE the wonder dog and I live alone. And Easter week was very quiet. On Good Friday, I took communion by myself.

 

AN EASTER LIKE NO OTHER

Joyce is a mostly Lutheran church organist who lives on the north wing of the same 4th floor as I. On Good Friday, we happened to meet near an elevator. She asked what I thought of her apartment door being left open to her neighbors on Easter morning as she played hymns on her grand piano? And I asked, what would you think if by using the Zoom app we sent these songs to other residents who might also like to listen?

 

And so she prepared a mini-list of Easter hymns. And I gathered the stories behind the writing of these songs. We placed my iPad on a music stand in her apartment so she could be seen and heard. It was connected by Zoom to my computer where from my apartment, I read the stories between each hymn.

 

My neighbor, Ed, a mostly Methodist retired Navy Officer and our acting floor representative, used his iPad to connect the songs and their stories with his email list of 4th floor residents. Mickey, our mostly Roman Catholic 4th floor representative, living temporarily with her children in eastern Washington state, lent her enthusiastic support, and by using a Zoom connection many miles away from her 4th floor home, could occasionally be heard singing along with the piano melodies coming from Joyce’s apartment.

 

Dolly, whom I forgot to ask what her “mostly church” background is, stood at the converging point of both 4th floor hallways and read aloud from the same prepared hymnal stories script to those who opened their apartment doors, or who do not have computers (yes, friends, it’s hard to believe) or the Zoom app (less hard to believe), as well as for those standing or sitting in the hallways (yes, at least six feet apart and many with masks).

 

It was a wild and crazy, hastily put together Easter Sunday morning, all at once very professional and very amateurish and very connecting for some who were meeting a neighbor for the first time. It was a group of seniors who gave each other the feeling of engagement, of celebration, of doing something important for and with one another. As Mr. Rogers might have said were he here, it was a “wonderful day in the neighborhood.”

 

And the doors being locked on 4th floor North where the disciples were for fear of the coronavirus, Jesus came and stood among them and said to them, “Peace be with you.”