MANNA (Many Angels Needed Now and Always) is a leadership organization working with people who do not have homes. Read more about MANNA in my book  Five Loaves, Two Fish, Twelve Volunteers. I recently attended their Monday worship at The Cathedral Church of St. Paul in Boston.

The quiet of MANNA's Monday Lunch provided respite for many after a night of protests for Black Lives Matter in Boston. Jennifer McCracken, the priest for this congregation, checked in with me frequently during lunch, but didn't have a minute to spare as one person after another wanted to share their stories with her. She knew, she understood, she was there. She looked tired as worship began.

We sat in a large circle, each chair six feet from the next, a couple chairs in the center, also appropriately distanced, and in front of the altar, two more chairs. The hand painted altar cloth was a little lopsided, and all the animals from Noah's ark had been carefully placed, along with Terry Dactyl, the plastic dinosaur, sitting on one arm of the cross. This is a time of pandemic; the Eucharistic elements were missing.

As worship progressed our group of six grew to ten or twelve, some sitting in the far corners of the sanctuary. Each person had a backpack or bag at their feet, the hosts at the back entrance offered hot lunch to the latecomers, along with hand sanitizer and masks. Outside the Cathedral's glass doors two more volunteers continued to offer bag lunches to people who didn't want to come inside.

Inside was a hushed. People talked, quietly, to others or themselves. The slouched shoulders expressed a sense of rest. The meal had been quiet, but tense, now we began to let out that tension, to share our unrest with God, to let go. The service is familiar and yet specific to the day.

“I love this Psalm,” Jennifer hands out a paper. “It's a lament. Today we are going to cry out with all of the pain of the racism, the violence, the pain of last night, and of our lives." Together we read the words of Psalm 13.”

“How long, Lord? Will you forget me forever? How long will you hide your face from me?
How long must I wrestle with my thoughts and day after day have sorrow in my heart?”

We sit a moment in the pain. Jennifer invites a parishioner to create a Gospel Alleluia and he does, mournfully, quietly, it fills the room. His head drops as he finishes.

Members of the congregation read the gospel, first in Spanish, then in English. Jennifer calls up a parishioner to preach. He is tall, dark, and devastated. He speaks in spurts, as if God fills him up, he pours it out, and then the next message arrives and gushes onto us. Struggling to hold his body in the chair, clenching his hands in frustration, wiping tears from his face, he preaches confidence God wants something different. As his message dies down Jennifer mentions the scripture we have read and he starts again, more words of God piling on us. Some us look away, I look away, it is so much pain, so much trust, so much power.

There is silence. There is peace that passes all understanding. We shuffle in our seats. We wait for the words to flow through us. We wait some more.

At lunch one of the volunteers told me to stay for worship. "They do a blessing that is amazing." I had no idea.

Jennifer begins by turning to her right, to the preacher, sitting there, and blesses him for his words. She encourages him to bless the woman to his right, and her to bless the man behind her. One by one, the priest naming each person in turn, we each bless the next. Everyone has some little contribution. Everyone is blesses; everyone is blessed. Over the physical distance required by the virus, we pull together in blessing. Over the spiritual distance required by our nation's racial divide, we pull together in blessing. Over the social distance separating people with homes from those without we pull together in blessing.

This is church.

Ashburnham, Massachusetts is a rural town, full of lakes, summer camps, families. Main Street features two pizza shops, a hairdresser, sushi, town hall, a bank, a local grocer, a store selling crafts and art, a place for bagels, hardware, liquor. The tavern entrance and barbershop are on Central. The steeple of Ashburnham Community Church is lit at night, a beacon on the edge of our two-block downtown.

​This small congregation has struggled to keep its footing. Those coming to worship are aging but not old, a few children, a tiny choir, the attendance dropping slowly, the income not enough to pay the bills. I started here as pastor right after beloved Pastor Chuck died suddenly. We have much in common—a love of small town life, an informal style, a quick laugh at meetings. We have much work to do, figuring how, and if, we can make it as twenty-first century church.

This church’s ministry is food: a community meal six times a year, delivering dinner to a Fitchburg shelter monthly, and a food pantry where we share food and conversation with 24 local families. My ministry is food. I accepted a part-time call to finish writing Five Loaves, Two Fish, Twelve Volunteers: Growing a Relational Food Ministry (Upper Room Books) and to promote it. We’ve learned to work well together, this church and me, figuring out how to have hard conversations, imagining how to do church differently, getting out into our community, making connections with our town.

Then: pandemic.

Like churches everywhere, our first response to COVID-19 was to clean everything really well, wash our hands, elbow our greetings, and to laugh nervously about staying away. Once it was time to move online our first worship had 8 people, then 10, then most weeks 14; pretty good for 30 people with little or no technological expertise. But church is not meant to be about us; church is who we are in our community. To be a light in the darkness we need to ask “what about our neighbors?”

When the sheep and goats of Matthew 25:31-46 ask the question “when did we see you hungry?” both are surprised to discover that they did, or did not, feed Jesus. With no small amount of discussion, Ashburnham Community Church decided that now is the time we are called to see Jesus in those who are hungry, and to respond with food. This is how we will brighten our neighborhood. With everything else in the building shut down, we decided the food pantry would remain open.

Brenda, our pantry director, called all of the families on our list, making sure they knew that we are open, asking that they keep six-foot distances, come in one at a time, let others know that food is available. It was only a few days later that calls started coming in from people who had been laid off. Brenda packed an emergency bag of groceries for one family; the next day there were two more requests. Then the senior center closed, suspending their weekday lunch. A couple people called to ask if they could donate food, money, or time to the pantry.

In online meetings, in kitchens, over the phone, churches grapple with how to be safe with food ministries. Pastors of street churches report enough programs have closed that people without homes are hungry and afraid. I listen through the phone as a woman explains she was laid off; she starts to cry as she asks for food for her granddaughter. A neighbor calls asking for a way to get food to the man next door, alone. I hear of a meal switching to sandwiches to-go, and a pantry moving their distribution outdoors.

Volunteers are afraid of getting sick, and of infecting others. People in need are also cautious of illness, while more immediately anxious about hunger. The message “do not be afraid” appears 21 times in the New Testament. Brenda, our food pantry director, is not interested in theological analysis. “We just have to figure out how to do this as safely as possible,” she tells me. “That’s what we do at this church, we take care of our neighbors.”

So the pantry is now open three mornings a week. Ashburnham and Ashby residents are welcome without eligibility tests. We’ve moved the distribution table to the front door, right under the steeple. We wear gloves and masks, and set the food bags on the table so people can pick-up without touching another person. People wait their turn in cars, or stand on the front lawn, six feet apart. Many wear masks. Volunteers work alone, stacking cans and bags of rice on cupboard shelves. Another fills bags with non-perishable foods. Another accesses the church voicemail remotely so we don’t miss anyone.

It’s hard to say what will happen to the light from Ashburnham Community Church. We’ve lost income from renters, and we worship online. But we haven’t lost our faith that Jesus is there in the people of our town. For now, we live out the good news that the light shines in the darkness, and the darkness does not overcome it.