{When I started this series of Lenten writings, I wondered if I’d have forty “sanctuary” stories in me, or at least in my collection of personal photos. I rarely plan ahead, but recently made a list of potential entries. Turns out, I have more than enough to write about for the next half of this journey toward Easter. So, here we go again…this time, something more personal.}

Pictured here is our “virtual” church. We do belong to a “real” church family, and look forward to gathering with those folks sometime after Easter, when the pandemic has slowed enough to allow a safe return. Until then, we let YouTube transport us to this church in western Pennsylvania, First Presbyterian Church in Greensburg.

[We do watch our own church’s service on Sunday too, I hasten to add.]

I took this photo as we prepared for my son’s wedding rehearsal in this sanctuary. He teaches at a nearby college and chose this congregation as his church home, partially because of the choir. (Choirs of his previous churches in other locations were like magnets drawing Jim into membership.) Turns out, the minister is a good guy too, with sermons and worship leadership reflecting a warm-hearted and well-grounded theologian, teacher, and pastor.

With son Jim taking on leadership roles in that church, we were naturally curious about what we’d find when the pandemic moved us to TV/recliner worship on Sunday mornings. So after viewing our own service, we switched to FPC Greensburg and found our second church home. Part of the attraction there is that Jim and his wife sing in the vocal ensemble in that choir loft under the stained glass window. When we feel so isolated from loved ones these days, especially those miles and hours away, it’s downright comforting to see and hear Jim and Shannan each week. Masks and distancing provide some protection, while not hindering the beauty of the music. The ensemble is made up of the younger and less vulnerable members of the full chancel choir, and having sung together over the past year, no one has contracted the virus. Thank God for that.

Aside from the personal interest in those two particular choir members, there is that pipe organ. The instrument’s pipes are not visible in this photo, but the sound is, as one might expect in a sanctuary this size, magnificent. Powerful. Pure delight to the organist whose recliner is next to mine. The musician who plays the instrument also directs the ensemble, and to our ears the music he selects each week is perfect. That’s high praise coming as it does from Joan and me (who remind me of Statler and Waldorf…you know: the two cranky critics in the Muppet balcony) as we watch TV church. We admit to being church folk “of a particular age,” so the classical organ pieces and majestic choral settings feed us spiritually, with the Word profoundly proclaimed in music echoing through gothic halls.

A word here about those words: real and virtual. We know what reality is, right? But that word so prominent these days, virtual — as in virtual church, virtual Communion, virtual this and everything. My dictionary says it’s something existing or resulting in effect or essence, though not in actual fact or form. When we say something like, “Virtually everyone in the town was there,” we know that it only seemed that the whole population showed up. I called FPC Greensburg our virtual church, not our “actual” or “real” church. Yet, what happens in that sanctuary, the message and music, the prayers and liturgies — it’s “real” to us, though transmitted digitally into our home. When churches offer “virtual” versions of Holy Communion (as our Presbyterian denomination has OK’d), though the pastor has said the Words of Institution and broken the bread and poured the cup in some distant place, as we partake the symbolic meal is real, the whole act is spiritually fulfilling as if we were two pews in front of the sanctuary table. Yes, it does seem odd. But no more odd I suppose than drinking grape juice and calling it wine, or pretending a precisely cubed piece of white bread is somehow “the body of Christ.” Even in face-to-face worship, then, isn’t that bread the “virtual” body of Christ? Even for Roman Catholics for whom it is “real?”

My, how confusing our language is. That’s why there’s music! There’s nothing virtual about the power of music to inspire, to touch the heart, or to impart feelings of lament or praise. Even if that music comes from a record’s groove or magnetic particles of recording tape or those mysterious digits on my MP3 player. Something vibrates from an instrument or vocal chord and those vibrations are reproduced from my tweeter/woofer/or earbuds. The inspiration is transmitted from the heart/mind of the composer to us, maybe centuries distant, but “real.” Good vibrations, for sure.

So, worshipping at a distance with the Greensburg congregation, experiencing Jim and Shannan in the choir loft, hearing Martin preach (and quote the same theological minds I would have quoted!) and having that pipe organ rattle through my sub-woofer — well, there is more than essence, more than virtuality; it’s authentic worship to our hungry souls. Good vibrations!