Church in the Park

I went to church on Sunday afternoon in a park. I think now we should do this once in a while, after we go back to meeting with walls around us.

It was the Sunday after Easter, which I discover is called “low Sunday,” in some churches, because it is always attended by a small fraction of the people who come on Easter.

I was myself a little sleepy and low on energy. I had already participated in an online service; that is, I had seen it on my computer and listened. Then the person I expected to take me to the park was suddenly incapacitated, so I had to bother someone else. I needed a ride and a lawn chair (the park has no pews). But after these were easily arranged, my motive was at least stronger than my lethargy. I wanted to be with people in church, even if they were strangers.

The park was quiet and clean. Tall trees spread their long arms over the little flock of masked people, unfolding their chairs wherever, without rows or order of any kind, but facing a small gazebo, in front of which the pastor was setting up a microphone and a table for the elements of communion. Pine needles shimmered in the sun. Small, pale leaves promised shade by summer, while at our feet wildflowers created little explosions of yellow and purple in the grass.

While I wasn’t watching, the pastor had donned a simple white robe. He began to read to us. We listened to scriptures and prayers, words heard over and over for centuries. We recited brave prayers together. We declared in unison what we believe.

A boisterous wind joined us, tousling our hair, snatching away someone’s program leaflet, flipping the pages of the pastor’s Bible, as though choosing a different passage. He apologized that he had skipped the seminary class on how to conduct eucharist in the wind. He mentioned the absence of the young woman who usually played the guitar and helped the congregants to sing, but if anyone else could provide music anytime in the future, he said, that would be appreciated.

The sermon was brief and friendly, about the way Jesus brought peace into a room that was locked because of fear and his patience and graciousness with Thomas’ doubts, what it all meant to us, trying to be together in the pandemic, needing evidence to support our faith. I listened to every word.

When I saw the symbolic bread lifted over the makeshift altar and heard again the words, “Christ our Passover is sacrificed for us, therefore let us keep the feast,” a memory flashed through my head. I was in Lebanon, responsible for the creation of Christian literature in the Arabic language. I had gone to the office of my colleague Pete Dunn, director of a radio ministry, and found him with tears on his face. In explanation he passed to me a letter he had just read from a man in a country where churches were illegal. This stranger had heard, he said, about “the Lord’s supper” and he so longed. . . was it possible to send someone to eat this meal with him?

While I remembered, the pastor was passing the bread, walking from person to person where we sat, waiting silently with our hands cupped. On the right edge of my vision, someone got up, a big man in a brown jacket, and crossed the expanse of grass to the microphone, paused to listen, as though to be sure of something in his head, and began to sing, “I see skies of blue, clouds of white, the bright blessed day, the dark sacred night. . .” His voice was husky and mellow, at once competent and shy. From memory he sang, slowly, more verses than I ever knew, turning this song you never hear in church into an offering, a hymn.  “And I thinks to myself,” he sang, “What a wonderful world.”

Captivated, I was surprised when the pastor put the wafer into my hand. At that moment, too, I discovered a pretty little ladybug, crawling on my hand, her body so light that I could not feel her tiny feet. I sat very still and watched until she lifted her painted wings and flew in a small arc, disappearing in the air while the bread of life dissolved in my mouth.

That’s some of what happened on “low Sunday” at church.

I heard that same day that when the National Cathedral announced a curbside eucharist on Easter, a man and his wife drove 500 miles to receive this blessing, this little wafer, through the window of their car. I believe it.

It’s Thursday already; I’m still humming, “It’s a wonderful world” and thinking. . . about the little surprises of church in the park, the hungry who come and are fed, that lonely Christian in Arabia and the merely absent who have no idea what they miss.