Letter from the Bishop: "Let us not neglect meeting together..."

Dear Friends, 

For some of us—let’s be honest—there is inconvenience, but little suffering associated with this virus. Being forced to stay home with plenty of food, online connections with friends and family, and a nearly infinite supply of streaming entertainment hardly qualifies as “suffering” in the biblical sense. 

But for many of us, the virus has brought great hardship: loss of job or income; loneliness, anxiety or depression; missed weddings, graduations, funerals; even separation from loved ones as they died. 

And at such a time—when we most need the supportive presence of our brothers and sisters in Christ—we are separated from our church family, as well. We are turning to online worship and Bible studies, Zoom small groups and prayer meetings. These are a gift to us, and they appear to be helping us reach more people than have been attending our services.  

But they are not the same as being there with one another.  

We worship an incarnate Lord, God in the flesh, who rose bodily from the dead. We know that bodies matter. Anyone who’s been through an unaccompanied deployment knows that while an internet connection is a blessing, it’s a pale substitute for being home with spouse and children.  

A friend who follows the latest in brain science research told me that parts of the brain that “light up” in face-to-face contact don’t light up in online interactions. There’s something missing that we all need. 

Christian psychiatrist Kurt Thompson has written in a recent article that for related reasons we experience fatigue after a day of work or personal gatherings via Zoom or Skype or FaceTime. He points out that the non-verbal cues that communicate upwards to 85-90% of everything we “say” (such as eye contact, body language and gestures) are diminished in our video calls. As a result, our “thinking” brains have to make up for what our bodies are not communicating. As he puts it, “One of several things that COVID-19 has revealed is that our thinking minds are not able to make up for what our bodies—and our bodies alone—were created for. Our bodies, in fact, are looking for the presence of other bodies, as it were—and they’re not there. But that doesn’t mean that the anticipation mechanism that expects someone to be there in an embodied fashion stops working. Rather, like a cell phone that keeps ‘looking’ for cell service that isn’t there will drain the battery that much quicker, so we are much more tired when our bodies can’t find each other in real time and space.” 

Our bodies matter. We need each other in the flesh. And we long for the return to our being together for worship and fun and study and prayer, and for the nourishment of the tangible sacrament of the Body and Blood of Christ. When we finally end this sheltering-in-place, our online experiences will surely supplement our gatherings, but we mustn’t fall into the trap of believing they can ever replace in-person worship and fellowship with one another. 

The Daily Lectionary reading for yesterday includes verses many of us have taken note of recently: 

“Let us hold fast the confession of our hope without wavering, for he who promised is faithful. And let us consider how to stir up one another to love and good works, not neglecting to meet together, as is the habit of some, but encouraging one another, and all the more as you see the Day drawing near” (Hebrews 10:23–25). 

In this time of enforced separation, let me urge you to connect as deeply as you can with your own church. It is great to check out other churches and to watch more sermons and teaching, but don’t neglect your own fellowship. Worship each week with your own community and let other online Christian resources be a supplement to time spent with your own church family.  

Like many experiences of great stress in our lives, this coronavirus season will make us better Christians or worse ones, but it won’t leave us unaffected. We will either trust the Lord more or we will give fear a greater hold on our hearts. We will either press in to Jesus or we will drift further away. We will come to realize how much we need in-person Christian community or we will conclude we do just fine by tuning in occasionally online.  

In this coronavirus season and long after it is over, may God give us grace more and more to encourage one another in the fellowship of his Church, that together we may hold fast to the hope that is ours in Jesus Christ.  

Faithfully yours in Christ, 

The Rt. Rev. John A. M. Guernsey