Sometimes the Body of Christ is a Chocolate Chip Pancake

Madeline Simpson | mms2331@columbia.edu

Jill Brady/Portland Portland Press Herald via Getty Images

Associate Pastor David Gungor opens Trinity Grace Church’s service with worship songs. He plays an acoustic guitar, his wife plays the violin, and three other people sing harmony. They all stand at least six feet apart from each other.

After worship, Pastor Michael Rudzena enters the stage and gives a sermon about the biblical character Lazarus, who Jesus raised from the dead. Rudzena speaks of Jesus’ intellectual depth, his emotional intelligence and his hopeful courage as he learns about and mourns his friend’s death. Rudzena addresses an empty chapel.

The service flows from sermon to Eucharist, the Christian tradition of eating bread and drinking wine to honor Jesus’ body and blood. On a typical Sunday, the congregation would approach the front of the church to receive Eucharist from the pastor or church member.

But I know that today is different. I am not in Good Shepherd Chapel, where Trinity Grace holds service—I’m in my parent’s living room in White Bear Lake, Minnesota, watching Rudzena on a flat-screen TV. Instead of wine and bread, I have coffee and a piece of a chocolate chip pancake.

“Last week we said this is the weirdest Eucharist we’ve ever done,” Rudzena says. “But here we are again. Communion is about our connection to each other. Though we are not in the same room, we are deeply connected, not only by God’s spirit but by our love for each other.”

Trinity Grace is one of thousands of houses of worship in the United States and around the world impacted by the coronavirus. On March 21, the White House issued an ordinance for Americans to avoid gatherings of 10 or more people. Most evangelical church services fall in this category, and churches around the nation scrambled to set up technology that would allow the community to continue to meet.

It is the second Sunday in a row that I am attending “virtual church”—a result of social distancing and the “stay-at-home” orders to protect from the COVID-19 virus. The service is aired live on Trinity Grace’s YouTube channel, with a chat capability where congregants can talk in real-time throughout the sermon. I learn that I am not the only one watching out of town.

“Greetings from Baltimore!”

“Hello from two blocks away in Tribeca!”

“Grace and peace, everybody.”

For my church-going family, spending a Sunday morning at home usually meant a snowstorm had shut roads down. Raised in a conservative evangelical home, I grew up going to church a few times a week, including every Sunday morning. Skipping church was not allowed.

But now, we have no choice. My parents’ local church in Minnesota closed in the same way that the churches in New York did. There is nowhere to go on Sunday mornings except YouTube.

We adjust as the world adjusts.

“Let’s let this table move us towards unity in a time of strife,” Rudzena says, leading the online congregation in the Eucharist liturgy. “Let’s join in prayer, and start with gratitude. The Lord is here. His Spirit is with us… We lift our hearts to the Lord… It is right to give thanks and praise.”

And then, around the country, we eat our chocolate chip pancake, our cracker, our sourdough bread, and drink our wine, our coffee, our juice. We recite, separately but together, “Jesus Christ is holy. Jesus Christ is Lord. To the glory of God the Father. Amen.”