Years ago, I attended a retreat to prepare for an extended overseas mission trip. As we walked into the retreat center, we were greeted with a large, hand-written sign that read: “Change is our friend who brings us closer to Jesus.” The mission coordinator wisely knew that our venture would bring language differences, culture shock, reverse culture shock, loneliness, and confusion. As with any challenges, we could choose to view them as curses or opportunities.

I am reminded of this catchphrase now in this challenging season of global pandemic and physical distancing. I am reminded of it day in and day out because I am fortunate to be an M.Div. student at Pittsburgh Theological Seminary. PTS is a place where this season of change is bringing us closer to Jesus.

It would be impossible to capture all the ways that this community has embraced change and experienced God’s grace in the midst of the global crisis.

As I survey my own gratitude, I think these three aspects are worth celebrating:

Swift, Clear, and Compassionate Leadership

As soon as it became clear that we needed to brace for a global pandemic, PTS President Dr. David Esterline began to clearly and frequently communicate with the student body about the school’s response. There was never confusion about whether classes would be in-person or online, whether campus would be open or closed. I was comforted not merely by the clarity and frequency of the communication, but also its content. The Seminary’s Coronavirus Response Team has taken this crisis very seriously and implemented wise measures to keep us safe. One of these decisions was to move all classes this semester to pass/fail; this signaled to me that our leaders care not only about our physical health or academic metrics, but indeed about our holistic well-being.

Generous and Adaptable Faculty

Under regular circumstances, our seminary so values the classroom experience that it does not offer classes online. I think this is a strength in normal times, but it must have been a liability when it was time to abruptly shift all classes to online environments! Yet the professors (and IT department) worked extremely hard to move our classes online. There has been no “one-size-fits-all” solution. Some classes meet synchronously on Zoom, while others utilize discussion forums. Others are hybrids of e-mails, online lectures, forums, and video calls! While I can’t speak to every PTS faculty member’s response, my professors have been patient, hard-working, and gracious as we explore new methods of teaching and learning.

Amazing Students Learning Online

The students of PTS are incredible. Even before the campus was closed, a student had organized a Facebook group to help coordinate needs and services within the Seminary community. There is also a daily video challenge; every day, a different student makes a short video about themselves so that the rest of the students can get to know them better. Our student government has scheduled a weekly video lunch hangout and a weekly video game night. Of course these online interactions are a somewhat sad substitute for spending time together in person. The students miss each other! This speaks to the strong bonds of trust, respect, and affection among the students here.

How long will the pandemic last? What will change in our health care system, government, and economy? As seminarians, we might have more specific questions about classes, teaching formats, campus closures, and student life. The frustrating thing about a season like this one is that we don’t have any of the answers. It’s a bit like preparing for an overseas trip.

But when gifted administrators and faculty exhibit wisdom and grace, and when students band together in encouragement and love, one thing is certain: these changes will continue to bring us closer to Jesus.

Jon Mathieu is a Master of Divinity student at Pittsburgh Theological Seminary. While his background is in mathematics, he has been engaged in ministry in Pittsburgh for more than a decade. Most recently he has served as a writer and program director at an evangelical church. Sensing God was leading him into new ways of thinking, believing, and loving, he became a fellow at the Newbigin House of Studies and a student at PTS. His writing has appeared on RelevantMagazine.com.

This is not how I imagined we would observe Easter. You either—I suspect. But in a recent conversation, a friend and I realized that this Easter was a lot like the first one—Jesus’ friends, holed up in a room for fear of death, grieving deep loss and not knowing the way ahead.

I’ve been drawn these days to John’s resurrection narrative, particularly Mary’s story. The others have run away, with nothing to report but the fact that their friend is gone; they registered the fact of the missing body and then hustled home in their confusion.

The Gardener

Mary stayed. Grieving. So lost in the loss that she didn’t even recognize the “gardener.”

Two things strike me in this passage. First, that Jesus should appear to her as a gardener. This hits home. What has kept me anchored these days of the COVID-19 stay-at-home order? Starting my seedlings—a long-view, low-key act of resistance. My lanky green buddies keep me aligned with the rhythms and timing demanded by nature, the need to let things unfold as they must. If we are patient and honor these rhythms, deep roots can grow and body and spirit can be nourished.

I have in my hands the capacity to support a narrative of life over one of suffering and death—if I am patient and “above all, trust in the slow work of God,” as Teilhard de Chardin reminds us.

The Grief

This is important for me to remember as I abide by the (often challenging!) need to shelter in place and attend to the oscillation of emotions and thoughts my family and I cycle through on a daily basis. It is important for all of us to remember as we reconsider future planning with the uncertainty and opportunity of what may be ahead.

Second, Mary is fully present to her grief. She doesn’t run away from the gaping darkness of the open cave. She stays, and she weeps, and she’s honest about it; “They have taken him away, and I don’t know where he is” (John 20:13b). She names her grief. And it is then—and only then—that the Risen One reveals himself to her.

The one who gardens is the one whose victory is over death itself! And knowing him requires Mary—and us—to be fully present to the empty tomb and the emotions that come with that. Loss, yes—and it is only through the loss that the kept promise can be really, truly, joyously known.

What are you grieving? Call it by name. That’s where the Risen Christ will meet you.

Since 2013, Dr. Helen Blier has served as the Seminary’s director of Continuing Education. She is the former director of student information and organizational evaluation at the Association for Theological Schools (ATS). There she oversaw the administration and use of data-gathering instruments used by the member seminaries as well as consulted with schools to construct assessment protocols for institutional, student learning, and degree program outcomes. Her publications and presentations have generally focused on theological education and youth ministry.

Because my wife is a Lutheran pastor, over the last two weeks I have seen many blog posts and Facebook discussions about what to do about communion now that churches can no longer gather physically. Should a pastor maybe say a Eucharistic prayer over the Internet, with all her flock watching from home and commune bread and wine at the appropriate moment? Should lay members be authorized to celebrate the sacrament within their own families, the way some traditions allow for emergency baptism? What do we do now that Jesus no longer comes to us in Word and sacrament?

Especially for those among us for whom the sacrament is a means of grace, this is a real question.

Denominations Weigh in on Online Communion

The denominations with which Pittsburgh Theological Seminary partners are giving different guidelines. The Episcopal bishop of Pittsburgh has come out against virtual communion services, and so have Lutheran bishops. The Stated Clerk of the Presbyterian Church (U.S.A.) advised last week that for pastoral reasons Sessions can authorize online communion, thereby reversing advice from just a few weeks earlier. And it is understandable why churches come down differently, because there are so many difficult theological and liturgical questions that would need to be thought through here.

Rather than trying to answer all those questions, I want to suggest a different approach to the whole issue.

As a society, in the course of a few weeks or maybe even a few days we lost everything we thought that was firm and certain – economically, socially, personally. We suddenly discovered how little grip we have on life. We are trying to survive – in some ways, literally – not knowing what life will look like at the other side of this disaster.

Dealing with the Unknown

As churches, we are sharing in the challenges and anxieties. At the same time, we have a little bit more experience in living while not knowing what the future looks like. What society is experiencing in the course of just a few weeks, we have been living for a number of years. As mainline churches, we have been losing everything that was firm and certain. We have been discovering how little grip we have on things. We have been trying to survive without knowing what new forms life will take on the other side.

When, in the context of all that, we have been think about faithful, missional leadership, we often talk about the need for discernment rather than quick, technical fixes. We have been learning not to try to control things by rearranging the deck chairs and trying to continue with all the things we know and hold dear but rather to live into the place where God is leading us and to ask, “How is Christ present even here? How is Christ at work? And how can we follow him where he goes?”

Right now, Christ is present among us in some ways, but not in others. We know and trust that Christ rules all things, including sickness and death. We know and trust that Christ comes to us as we sing and pray. We know and trust that Christ comes to us when we gather together virtually and hear his word read and proclaimed. But Christ does not come to us through the gifts of bread and wine. And I wonder if, rather than quickly trying to fix that, it wouldn’t be better to embrace it. To engage in a Eucharistic fast.

Eucharist Fasting

Eucharistic fasting is not easy. After all, we are people of flesh and blood, and we do not just want to hear about the goodness of the Lord, but we want to taste and see it. Nonetheless, it is Eucharistic fasting, and not feasting, that Christ seems to give us at this point. And if so, we shouldn’t try to avoid it, but live into it.

Years ago Joseph Ratzinger (the later Pope Benedict XVI) wrote a meditation in which he suggested episodic Eucharistic fasting as living in solidarity with those who, for all kinds if reasons, cannot come with us to the Lord’s Table.[1] And at this moment, there are many of those. The families who cannot not afford computers or Internet connections to check into our virtual services. The elderly who have never mastered these technologies. The sick who are in the isolation of the ICU. The coronavirus patients who are dying without the presence of family, of a pastor, or the consolation of the sacrament.

We are living in Lent. It is the season when we give up on things to prepare ourselves better for the amazing, surprising, transforming presence of the resurrection Lord. Maybe part of this is indeed to give up the Eucharist.

Lent will take longer than normal this year. In many parts of the country and the world it will not be Easter again till June, July, or August. Nonetheless, Easter is coming – when we can physically gather together again, sing together, pray together, wish each other the peace of Christ, and once again receive his bread and wine.

[1] Joseph Ratzinger, Behold the Pierced One: An Approach to Spiritual Christology (Ignatius Press, 1986), 97/8.

The Rev. Dr. Edwin Chr. van Driel occupies the Directors’ Bicentennial Chair in Theology at Pittsburgh Theological Seminary. He teaches mainly in Christology, ecclesiology, and the interaction between Biblical studies and theology. Van Driel is deeply invested in helping the church think about its existence and calling as it moves into an increasingly post-Christian world. Van Driel is the author of Incarnation Anyway: Arguments for Supralapsarian Christology (Oxford University Press, 2008) and is working on “Rethinking Paul: Protestant Theology and Contemporary Exegesis” (forthcoming from Cambridge University Press).