Next week is the 24th anniversary of my ordination. In case you're wondering, I was 28, so yes, very young! I was settled in Harrington Harbour, a pastoral charge of three villages on the north shore of the Gulf of St Lawrence. There were no roads, people traveled by boat in the summer, skidoo in the winter and helicopter during freeze up and break up. Harrington and Chevery, the “big villages,” each had around 280 people, Aylmer Sound, the little village, had around 50.
I want to tell you about my first week there, because I see a strong connection between it and the story of Pentecost.
New ministers traditionally begin on July 1, and I was keen, so I booked my plane ticket for Tuesday, July 1. Harrington was a shared United Anglican charge, a little different from the usual in that it had ministers from both denominations, even though there was only one church building in each village. The ministers shared Harrington and Chevery, Aylmer Sound was only United and Kegaska, another village further up coast, was only Anglican.
I had been told that generally the ministers made sure Harrington and Chevery each had a service every Sunday and worked out schedule so the other two villages had worship twice a month. I assumed that on my first Sunday, I would lead worship either in Harrington where both ministers actually lived, or in Chevery. Maybe I could even lead both if the Anglican minister went to Kegaska.
I had felt called to ministry since I was ten, so I had already spent hours, days, years, planning that first service.
Well, on Wednesday when I met with the Anglican minister, who was an older man nearly twice my age, he had other ideas. He said there was no need to have services in both Chevery and Harrington, he would lead a service in Harrington and I could assist him. I was not amused. Assist? For my first Sunday as a minister? Seriously?
I went to the chair of Session, Amy, to see if I could get to Chevery for Sunday. Travel was a challenge as I didn't have my own boat, so I was dependent on other people to get to the other villages.
Amy said, “Well maid, I think you'll be going in the other direction, Harris Mitchell down to the Sound is dying of cancer and I think his family will want you there by tomorrow. I'm going to see if Don Anderson can take you down with the groceries when he goes.”
So the next afternoon, Thursday, I found myself at the wharf, staring down at a 20ft open motor boat, piled high with groceries, wondering where I was supposed to sit and what I had gotten myself into. The wind was rising, the waves were splashing and Don was not too keen to take me.
I assured him I could handle rough water and climbed down into the boat. Amy tossed a pillow after me. I asked what it was for, “Your butt!” she said. Looking at hard wooden bench and then out at the big waves, I accepted it gratefully.
After a rough 20 minute boat ride, we arrived in Aylmer Sound and I was taken directly to meet Harris and his extended family. As a strong United Church man, he was grateful to meet me. I spent the next two days praying and talking with him and his family. I couldn't go back to Harrington because the weather was uncertain, which made travel difficult, so I stayed with Janey, the matriarch of the church.
On Friday I asked Janey if I should plan to have church in Aylmer Sound on Sunday. She just shook her head, “oh maid, I think you'll be planning a funeral on Sunday. That'll be enough work for you and enough church for us.”
She was right. Harris passed away on Saturday and his funeral was planned for Monday, when it looked like the tides and weather would cooperate for people to come. So I spent my first Sunday as a minister planning my first funeral. I had only led one funeral before that, as student, and I didn't have any of my resources, they were still in transit from Montreal. I did as I had been doing all week, prayed hard and let the Spirit lead.
The funeral went well, the family were pleased and I met many people from all 3 villages. It wasn't what I had planned for my first week as a minister, but it connected me to the community in a profound way that might have taken months otherwise.
I don't know what the first disciples were like, but I imagine there were planners among them, people like me who like to look ahead, figure out potential problems well ahead of time, discern the best path forward.
The book of Acts tells us that on the day of Pentecost, which was a Jewish festival, the followers of Jesus were gathered in a house. Jesus had told them they were to go out and proclaim his message, but then he left, ascended to God, and they were alone again. Given the violence of the crucifixion, we can imagine that his followers were still very nervous about going out and talking about Jesus.
If they had a plan, it was probably to take things slow, talk to a few people about Jesus, see how it went, avoid being noticed by the authorities, avoid being noticed in general.
But the Spirit had other ideas. From heaven came a sound like the rush of the wind, it filled the house, blew them into the streets, tongues of fire on their heads, speaking a multitude of other languages. Everyone noticed. And somehow the disciples lost their fear, and started doing what Jesus had told them to do, they started talking about him.
What they learned and what I learned in Harrington – and am continually relearning, is to set our sails for the Spirit. Let me try to explain what I mean.
My Dad used to own a sailboat, a little lazer, he took it out on the lake where we had a cabin. He said there were some days he would get out and the wind would seem to drop completely, so he would paddle around trying to find a breeze, not get anywhere, just sweaty and tired.
But sometimes would put his sail up one last time. And often he would discover that there was a slight breeze that would blow him where needed go. All he had to do was quit trying to direct boat himself and put up his sail.
Isn't that a great image? Let go of trying to direct the boat yourself, set your sail for the Spirit.
How often are we like I was in Harrington, full of plans, so determined to make things go according to our schedule that we block out other possibilities. But if we quit all that crazy paddling and put our sail up to let God have a chance to help, we'll most likely discover that the breeze we need has been waiting there all along.
The Spirit of God may not blow us where want to go, but it will definitely blow us where we need to be. When we try to make it on our own power not only is it way more work, but we rarely end up where we really need to be.
This is not to say that God controls our lives in any way, rather that the Spirit is moving in our lives and in our world, and it's our choice whether or not to let it blow in our souls. One of things I like about this image is that it works with all the various ways we understand God. If you are someone who understands God as a loving parent, very involved in your life, then it's easy to imagine God filling your sail, blowing you where need to go. If you are someone who sees God in a non-interventionist way, more like a loving presence and power in our lives and in our world, then again, it's easy to imagine setting your sails to receive the power of that presence in your life.
These Covid times challenge us to set our sail for the Spirit. I know this congregation and I know you like to make plans: travel plans, garden plans, family plans, church plans, you name it, someone has a plan for it. And now, we can't plan anything, can we? You can book a ticket for a trip, but you can't be sure you will be able to go. We can talk about opening the church, but we don't know when we'll be able to do it, or what it will look like.
So we have a choice, we can be like my Dad when he paddled around, trying to find a breeze on his own, we can try to make plans, we can use up energy and get frustrated because really, we have no control ~ or we can sit back, accept that we have no control and put up our sail for the Spirit, see how God moves in our lives and in the world around us.
We don't have to be experts at praying to let the Spirit fill our sails. All we need to do is simply open our hearts and say okay God, here I am, please be with me.
How do we hear and feel the guidance God gives us once we set our sails for the Spirit? Well, it comes to us in many ways, depending on the person. It comes through the feelings and thoughts we experience when we pray, but it also comes through the wise words of friends and family, through music, reading, and movies, through chance encounters at the grocery store and walks by the ocean, through time in the garden or a walk in the woods. God's voice, God's presence, isn't limited to any one way of reaching us.
The important part is being open to hearing it, wherever and however it may speak to us. And that might just be the gift of Covid, it has added stress to our lives in many ways, but it has taken away distractions in other ways.
Most likely there are only a few months of restrictions left, maybe three, maybe six, and we have a choice about how we spend them. We can be impatient and cranky, enduring the time till we can get out more, or we can try to use these last quieter months to be more intentional about setting our sail for the Spirit, whatever that might look like for each of us.
It doesn't mean we won't still get cranky, we're human, of course we will! But it does mean we make just a little more room for the Spirit in our lives and in our hearts, letting God lead the way, just as the disciples did all those years ago