Observing Passover and Easter during a time of pandemic

Rabbi Jonathan Sacks, chief rabbi of England, captures it best: We have never been more alone. We have never been less alone.

We have reached out to Jewish and Christian clergy colleagues in San Mateo County to learn how they are approaching Passover and Easter this week, and one thing is clear. Despite changes in the medium, the core faith messages of connection, liberation, hope, love and transformation remain the same. Here is what some of our colleagues are saying and doing this week.

Rabbi Nat Ezray offers these words of encouragement: Even though we cannot observe this holiday of gathering by sitting at the same table, amazing technology will keep us connected. How beautiful that we have the possibility of online Seders, where we can see one another and interact across physical distance. We join together in understanding and empathy as we share the experience of eating the bread of affliction and taste the bitterness of the maror with people around the world. In our shared anguish, we never have been more connected.

Rabbi Laura Rumpf offers her congregation hope and a penetrating question to ponder. The way out of our narrow confinements at present is to keep practicing loving interdependence and to trust in our shared efforts toward liberation, however humble. Like the Passover story, this period will be told as a collective people’s journey from one way of being to another. The question is: What do we want to be able to say about our role in this transformative time?

Like their Jewish colleagues, Christian congregational leaders are drawing meaning from their tradition for our times. According to the Rev. Connie Winter-Eulberg, Easter worship services are usually woven with images of the power and love of God for us. This year, her congregation is focusing on how Jesus took care of others and always gravitated to the most vulnerable. This is the role we are to take during COVID-19.

The Rev. Terri Echelbarger assures her congregation that the message this Easter is an enduring one: The truth of Resurrection is reflected all around us in smaller ways, like the first plant growing out of a new lava flow. Right now it might be hard to embrace Easter, she acknowledges. We might be identifying more with the Good Friday tomb, but we can still celebrate the promise of Easter, that true love never dies.

Monsignor John Talesfore, who has been offering drive-thru confession to his parishioners, offers a way to walk through these days. This year, we are not free to gather at the church and trace the steps in the Church’s ancient ceremonies of Holy Week in an outward way. Yet the constraints and isolation we are experiencing now profoundly open up the more important inward path by which Jesus leads us to freedom and the full exercise of the human free will, surrendering everything to God.

Pastor Marlyn Bussey sees Jesus as the ultimate liberator and as one who identifies with the challenges of those who are disenfranchised and oppressed. With so many struggling to make ends meet in the midst of the current pandemic — losing jobs and medical benefits, unsure how they will provide for their families — her message this Easter is that God will continue to liberate, just as God has in the past.

As spiritual leaders, our best hope is that regardless of the medium, the messages we offer will change us first, and then our communities, so that we will deepen our faith and our connection to one another during this time, and beyond.

The Rev. Dr. Penny Nixon is the co-director of the Peninsula Solidarity Cohort a group of 35 spiritual leaders from diverse traditions working to “leverage moral power for the common good” in San Mateo County. Contributors to this include Rabbi Nat Ezray of Congregation Beth Jacob, Rabbi Laura Rumpf of Peninsula Temple Beth El, the Rev. Connie Winter-Eulberg of St. Andrew’s Lutheran Church, the Rev. Terri Echelbarger of Many Journeys Metropolitan Community Church, Monsignor John Talesfore of St. Matthew Catholic Church, the Rev. Marlyn Bussey of St. James AME Church, and Tovis Page, program coordinator of the Solidarity Cohort.