After 2 remote Easters, church hit hard by COVID looks forward to in-person resurrection service – NJ.com

This Easter, the St. Luke AME Church in Newark will celebrate two resurrections.

The first, of course, is the Resurrection, which refers to Christians’ belief that Jesus rose from the dead on Easter Sunday following the Crucifixion two days earlier, on Good Friday.

But like countless other congregations that have celebrated religious holidays remotely during the coronavirus pandemic, this Sunday, St. Luke will resurrect in-person Easter services for the first time since 2019. It’s a renewal that has congregants and clergy looking forward to a bigger turnout, live music, and more holiday spirit than they’ve rejoiced in for some time.

“It’s the fellowship before and after the service when you can go up and say, ‘Happy Easter!’ ‘Have a good week,’” said longtime St. Luke congregant Deborah Brown, 70, a retired Newark Public Schools teacher. “‘Oh, I missed you,’ ‘Meant to call you.’ Fellowshipping. That love, showing that love.”

This will be the first Easter since Gov. Phil Murphy lifted mask mandates and limits on attendance at indoor gatherings in May 2021. Even after that, houses of worship have required or strongly encouraged continued masking or social distancing that effectively reduced capacity.

St. Luke began holding in-person services last year, but with no choir and every other row of pews closed. And turnout has been low, averaging less than one-third of the 225-seat modified capacity, said the pastor, the Rev. Dr. Joseph A. Hooper.

But on Easter, all of St. Luke’s pews will be open, and the service will include a choir for the first time since the pandemic began, Hooper said.

“Easter Sunday will be full-blown,” the pastor said.

The steps toward normalcy are especially meaningful for St. Luke, an orange brick church on Clinton Avenue, which lost 17 parishioners to COVID-19 from an aging congregation totaling less than 580. The death toll was notable even among churches in Newark, a working-class city with a majority Black population hit hard by the pandemic, especially during its first year, when 15 St. Luke congregants perished.

About 60 people attended the St. Luke service last weekend on Palm Sunday, which celebrates the entry of Jesus into Jerusalem before the Last Supper, which is celebrated on Thursday, followed by the Crucifixion. Hooper said he expects a much larger turnout on Easter Sunday, though he suspected lingering coronavirus concerns could keep some worshipers away.

“Easter has always been, in the Black church, one of those Sundays where you will see a big crowd,” Hooper said. “Now, coming out of COVID, this will be the first time. So we’ll see.”

Other denominations are likewise celebrating the holiday with in-person services.

For example, the Archdiocese of Newark, which includes 1.3 million Catholics in Essex, Bergen, Hudson, and Union counties, announced that Cardinal Joseph W. Tobin would lead an in-person service on Sunday at the Cathedral Basilica of the Sacred Heart in Newark.

Churches are not the only houses of worship to resume in-person services this weekend.

Friday was the first night of Passover, the Jewish holiday ending at sundown on April 23, celebrating the Exodus of the Israelites out of Egypt. At Ahavas Shalom, one of the last active synagogues in Newark, Friday night was its first in-person holiday service since the pandemic’s arrival, said the Broadway congregation’s longtime president, Eric Freedman.

“Our last service live was March 14 of 2020,” said Freedman, adding that all services had been remote until last month. “Three weeks ago, we reconvened for our first service literally in two years.”

Last year Freedman co-founded an interfaith social justice organization, Diversity United, with former Newark City Council President Mildred Crump, Rabbi Capers Funnye of Chicago, nicknamed “Obama’s Rabbi,” and Pastor Steffie Bartley of New Hope Memorial Baptist Church in Elizabeth.

“The underlying message of Passover is freedom, liberation, and justice,” Freedman said. “So it’s an exciting time, an exhilarating time.”

April has also witnessed a more joyous Ramadan, the month-long Islamic holiday when Muslims believe Allah revealed the Quran to the Prophet Muhammad, said Selaedin Maksut, executive director of the Council on American-Islamic Relations of New Jersey.

“We’re back in full swing,” Maksut said of attendance at services and meals after sundown. “It’s definitely a beautiful atmosphere now. We’re happy to be back and seeing people again, sometimes for the first time in quite a while.”

Back at St. Luke’s on Palm Sunday, the service was led by a guest pastor, the Rev. Dr. Kenneth L. Saunders of Mt. Zion AME Church in New Brunswick, whose sermon instructed parishioners “how to prevail when God says no.”

“When I was a little child, I had a three-wheeler bicycle, and I watched my big brothers on a two-wheeler,” he told the congregants. “And I said, ‘Mom, can I have a two-wheeler?’ And my mom said ‘No!’”

“But you know what?” Saunders added. “The reason my mother told me no, she knew that I wasn’t ready to ride a two-wheeler bike. And if she would have told me yes, I would have broke my [he then pauses for comic effect] neck.”

Saunders told congregants that God has a reason for saying no, which is usually because he doesn’t believe the person is ready for what they’re asking. But with that understanding, plus the knowledge that “no” can merely be a delay and not a denial, followed by persistent prayer, Saunders said God would eventually say yes.

“God has the ability to change his mind,” he told the congregation.

Saunders later said the sermon could apply to the delayed celebration of Easter amid the pandemic when the need to hold services remotely may have seemed like a denial but was merely a delay for the congregation’s good until in-person services were less risky.

Saunders and Hooper did not wear masks while they preached. But nearly everyone else inside the church did throughout the 45-minute service. And parishioners said later that masks did not filter out divine inspiration or interfere with their worshipping.

“None at all,” said Betty Risher, 72, a retired NJ Transit bookkeeper. But, Risher added, “I miss the choir singing.”

Hooper said Sunday’s worshipers included family members of some St. Luke congregants who died of COVID-19. Some were still traumatized, he said. To protect his flock, the pastor declined to identify any who had lost loved ones and asked NJ Advance Media not to inquire about the subject during interviews before or after the service.

But one long-time parishioner, Anthony Hammond, 56, raised the issue on his own while explaining that church attendance has not been what it was before the pandemic.

“We lost a lot of individuals that had been here for years,” said Hammond, an emergency radiology technician. “You know it’s hard for individuals, some who lost loved ones, to come back.”

“But we have to be proactive, which we have been doing here at St. Luke,” Hammond added. “We, probably, were one of the first churches to start opening up. So I have to give Pastor Hooper kudos because on his heart, on his watch, he lost a lot.”

Hammond said the return of the church choir alone on Easter Sunday would elevate the passion in the pews to ecstatic levels.

“Music means a lot to the body,” he said. “People put it on in their car before they come into the house of the lord just to give them that sense of spirit.”

“Sunday? Easter?” Hammond added, his pitch rising at the thought. “It’ll be rockin’!”

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Steve Strunsky may be reached at sstrunsky@njadvancemedia.com