JACKSON, Wyo. (AP) - The “God is Love” sign that weighed “like, I don’t know - 400 pounds” was pulled from the Rev. Jimmy Bartz’s garage early Sunday morning.
“Our garage is like Jesus’ resurrection workshop,” said Bartz, the rector at St. John’s Episcopal Church.
He wasn’t quite sure how he was going to get the decoration from his home on Moose Street to the end of his driveway, where parishioners were to drive by as part of an Easter “Love Hunt” hosted by the church. The scavenger hunt had churchgoers driving around Jackson to see, as Bartz put it in his Sunday sermon, a dozen “expressions of love.”
But it was no easy feat getting the expression to the street.
“I don’t know how it’s going to get out to the front of my house,” Bartz said in an interview on Maundy Thursday. “But it’s going to get there. Even if I have to find a team of llamas to pull it down my driveway.”
The event was one of a few creative takes on Easter and Passover 2020, a year when traditional gatherings in churches and synagogues weren’t possible. But though connection is more difficult, it’s also a time that spiritual leaders are driven to reach out to their congregations even more, be it through a car-bound scavenger hunt or a Seder dinner over Zoom.
“We’re kind of like a Passover radio station,” said Judd Grossman to over 100 people who logged on for a virtual Passover Seder on April 8. “You can tune in and out.”
It was quickly apparent no one was interested in tuning out the Jackson Hole Jewish Community’s virtual ceremony. The video feed of participants showed attendees smiling and singing along with an opening song by Grossman, who was soon joined by Josh Kleyman, Jackson Hole Jewish Community lay rabbi and Bet Sefer teacher.
“There is a lot of need for healing in our world and our community,” Kleyman told attendees, offering a healing prayer.
The sentiment is one shared across the spiritual community - that though congregations must be physically apart in these times, spiritual connection is as important now, maybe more so, than it ever has been. The message is one Tribe JH Lead Pastor Brian Hunter aimed to deliver at his church’s take on Easter: a drive-in service in the parking lot of the former Kmart.
Rows and rows of cars parked facing north, looking to two power lifts prepped to send Hunter, his wife and worship leader Lissa Hunter, and a masked and bundled Amanda Lack into the sky above the cars. Their service, broadcast on KJAX 93.5 FM, was also streamed on the church’s Facebook page.
“They can hear it now,” Lissa Hunter said, strumming on her guitar as the station started sending the sound into the airwaves. From behind windshields, churchgoers waved, filmed on their phones and honked their horns.
A sign near the makeshift stage read, “Text or call in prayer requests.”
“When we met March 8 we had no idea that that would be the last Sunday that we could be able to meet corporately for the foreseeable future,” Hunter told the Jackson Hole News&Guide. “During these times the care providers of people’s spirits are having to get really creative to continue to care for people in their congregation.”
Up until the drive-in service - an event put on with the support of the Jackson Police Department, which helped park the packed lot and reminded parishioners to stay in their vehicles with windows rolled up - the congregation had been exploring virtual services, a popular go-to for spiritual leaders in Jackson Hole.
As local churches have sent out their messages on YouTube and Facebook, they’re seeing people tune in from across the country - some of whom they know, others with new faces - and around the world.
“I feel like our sanctuary has turned into a studio,” said the Rev. Ben Pascal, senior pastor at Presbyterian Church of Jackson Hole. “I kind of joke around that I never thought I’d become a televangelist, but here I am.”
The Presbyterian Church has been posting its sermons, which have been garnering hundreds of views, on its YouTube channel.
“On a normal Sunday before COVID-19, we would maybe get 15,” Pascal said.
The platform, though awkward to use initially, has become a way for his congregation and anyone else who wants to tune in to hear a message and connect with others.
“People check in on the YouTube station and let us know they’re there,” he said. “They send in prayer requests. People say hi to each other in the comments section. It’s actually been way more interactive than I thought it was going to be going into it a month ago.”
The connections, though not a replacement for physical gathering, have helped many stay linked during COVID-19, Bartz said.
“At the heart of every single thing we do as a church, as a religious community, is this idea of connection to God, connection to neighbor - or both those things,” Bartz said. “Now we are forced to connect with each other virtually. It’s my hope that that’s temporary, because while I appreciate the technology and the ability to connect over Zoom or Skype or Facebook or FaceTime, nothing takes the place of sitting across the breakfast table and having a waffle while you talk about what scares you or what excites you.”
Carl Levenson, a former lay rabbi and philosophy professor at the University of Idaho, joined the Jackson Hole Jewish Community’s evening Seder on April 8 to take attendees through the historical and philosophical context of the night’s Haggadah. He drew parallels between the plight of the Israelites and the Egyptians in the Torah to the present-day threats of the spread of COVID-19.
“Tonight, on the first night of Passover, the whole world can identify with Egypt, enduring plagues,” Levenson said. “And the whole world can identify with Israel, longing to be free from what confines us so absurdly.”
But despite a few reminders the Passover Seder was markedly free from discussion of the crisis at hand. Leaders and participants instead focused on honoring dearly held traditions, holding up maror (bitter herbs), matzah and cups of wine when prompted (though Shari Brownfield had little luck at the supermarket when it came to maror, and instead ate dried parsley).
Before the second cup of wine, children from Kleyman’s Bet Sefer class were called to recite the four questions, a tradition that prompts the retelling of the Passover story. One by one kids from around the valley stood in front of their Seder table and sang the traditional Hebrew words.
Before taking a break for dinner, Kleyman announced they would be hiding the afikomen (a piece of matzah that is traditionally searched for by the children after the holiday meal) somewhere in his dining room. After the meal he displayed his cabinets on his webcam while the youngest attendees guessed where it was hiding. Spoiler: It was behind a picture frame.
Although the interactions between community members were filtered through grainy webcams and tinny-sounding microphones, the connection between the members in the room was strong, something Jackson Hole Jewish Community Executive Director Mary Grossman attributed to nearly 40 years of gathering, with Levenson leading the Passover dinner for the past 20.
And it was something that was needed, especially in these times.
“People who were alone, single parents, grandmas, they needed it the most,” she said.
Even in troubled times the long-standing connections are difficult to break, especially as community members have made an effort to stay in touch with one another and their spiritual leaders.
“There is still, absolutely, a longing to be together in person,” said the Rev. Inger B. Hanson, pastor of Shepherd of the Mountains Lutheran Church.
But, she said, “I don’t think we’re necessarily tied to physicality. We’re tied to love. Love does, I think, conquer distance.”
Her Easter sermon, which was streamed on Facebook Live, carried a message of “resurrection isn’t rewind, resurrection isn’t return to normal,” she said.
“In the Easter message Christ is risen, but he has holes in his hands,” she said.
Her message to parishioners was to try to accept this new and changed world.
“It’s something new; it’s new relationships,” she said. “It’s new life that doesn’t erase this memory or what we learned or how this changes us.”
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