The Annual Meeting
Pentecost Sunday - Year B
May 31, 2009
Pentecost Sunday - Year B
May 31, 2009
Let us pray: O God, you invite us to dream dreams and see visions. May these words be a response to that invitation. Amen.
It was announced several weeks ahead of time that the annual meeting would occur on the last Sunday month. As the day approached, there was great anticipation - not because of the annual meeting, but because the weather reports suggested it was going to be the first good weekend of the spring season.
Most of the congregation members weren’t worried about the scheduling conflict at all. A slow thaw had made them antsy to get their camping gear out and ready, or had given them time to prepare their list of staples for the re-stocking of their cabin kitchens. They weren’t worried about missing the annual meeting in favour of the peace and quiet of the lake and the idyllic cottage life that they so enjoyed in the summer months. After all, it had been an unusually harsh winter and you had to take advantage of every opportunity that came along.
There were a few other church folks - most of them being non-cottage owners - who decided to attend the meeting out of a sense of obligation. There were other things to do, but a short meeting and the promise of lunch was enough to convince them to stay.
The remaining members of the church community were anticipating the meeting with some interest. They loved their church, but they always hoped that such events as annual meetings could be a breakthrough to something even better. They thought that, although they were also realistic - knowing that it took more than a good meeting to breathe new life into their community.
So, as the weekend approached, the scene was set for a rather typical series of events. Some people who wanted to be there could not make it. Some people who didn’t want to be there would end up staying, and the church would carry on in fits and starts - sometimes verging on greatness, perhaps even inspiration and sometimes lurching from week to week and event to event with only a hint of what was possible.
The predictability of Sunday’s meeting started to unravel on Friday morning. The promise of a lovely weekend was altered. Oh yes, it was going to start out as a lovely warm weekend - but that was precisely the problem. The forecasters were casting their analytical eyes over the weather charts and isotherms and concern furrowed their brows and clouded their weather reports. The warm air mass was on a collision course with another colder trough of air, and it looked like it might come to some kind of cataclysmic conclusion sometime on Saturday afternoon.
The wisest cottage owners reluctantly revised their plans. They hadn’t planned to be here for the weekend anyway, so they hunkered down in their city cocoons, and promised to ride out the anticipated storm - hoping on one hand that it happened as predicted so they wouldn’t regret staying at home, but also wondering how they would feel if it passed over the area and ruined their plans for a weekend at the lake for no reason.
For once the weather people were right - well, not exactly right - cataclysm might have been too mild a word to describe what happened. Saturday morning was hot and sunny, but early in the afternoon the cool air started rolling in from the north and the roiling thunderheads started heading for the stratosphere - great towering anvil shaped masses of cloud. Lightning began crackling the air and the rain came down in buckets, alternating with hailstones that could leave welts on an unsuspecting, cowering pedestrian. The rain was huge, so huge that it began overwhelming the storm sewers and pretty soon a good portion of the downtown area was wallowing in knee deep water. Basements flooded, stores flooded, people were stranded in swamped vehicles.
The emergency measures people managed to get hold of the minister asking if the church could be used as an emergency shelter. It was on some high ground and there were people who needed a dry place. The minister phoned the chair of the board and pretty soon a hasty plan was devised to turn the basement into a dormitory, the kitchen into an emergency feeding station and the church hall into a social area - complete with card tables, a couple of televisions and a supply of VCR tapes and puzzle books. The place swarmed with dazed adults and excited children.
Congregation members who lived on the drier side of town - not that there was a dry side, but some places had escaped the complete force of the storm and flood, were asked to come down to lend a hand, as long as it was safe to do so. Cabin dwellers with their vehicles packed with those staples they had made ready to take to their summer residence were diverted to the church kitchen.
It was a frenetic, chaotic, noisy and busy change of plans. It’s hard to sleep in a crowded cot farm at the best of times, but for people worried about their belongings, and wondering what their insurance policy said, and wondering if they had renewed their insurance, and wondering why they hadn’t bought insurance it was just too much to expect them to get any shut-eye - although some finally did due to sheer exhaustion. Likewise the congregation members were pretty much unable to find a place to sleep - the people made homeless were first on the list for a bed, and there was food to prepare and serve and there were many other needs to be addressed.
Sunday morning arrived and things were not typical at all. The sanctuary was dotted with people who thought that a hard wooden pew in the relative quiet would be more comfortable than a mattressed cot in the midst of a snoring and sobbing multitude.
What to do?
A quick huddle was arranged with the minister, members of the church board that had come out to help and some other congregation members. Not only was today Sunday - the regular day of worship, but this was annual meeting day!
Someone in the meeting spoke up. What are we worried about - we’ve never had this many people here on a Sunday. We’ve done a good job - we’ve answered the call to help - but we should keep on doing what we do best. We should have a worship service anyway. It’s who we are, and people can come if they want to - we won’t force them - but it might be one of the best things we can do. I can think of things to be thankful for. I can think of things to pray about. We need help beyond what we’ve mustered here, and many of these people need help and who do we call on when we face these kinds of things - why God of course!
And so, they worshipped. It was Pentecost and the passage that talked about the people gathered from all over was not lost on these people - curious community members who had come to worship because it was something to do, and congregation members alike. This was their own kind of Pentecost - not exactly wind and fire - although the wind in the worst of the storm had been massive, but water and wind. Even the language thing had meaning for them - there was more than English being spoken among the people crowded into the church hall. Other congregation members heard the passage from Ezekiel - the one about the valley of bones and wondered if this unexpected call to service on this the weekend of the great storm was God’s breath of life over this community.
They postponed the annual meeting - but there were many there who felt that really they had had their annual meeting. The reports - exciting as some of them were - were pale in comparison to the events they had experienced this weekend. In fact many thought and a few spoke about it amongst themselves that the storm had done more than damage property and disrupt lives. It had washed over this congregation - clearing out some of the old and worn ways of being and showing them who they were as God’s people. In a strange way the people of this church had been given a glimpse of who and what they could be. New relationships were forged between the people they served and between congregation members who had only barely known each other before. There was new respect for gifts and abilities that had never surfaced before. Who knew that the fellowship committee chair was such a good short-order cook and who would have guessed that the women’s group treasurer - a single woman all her life - was so good at entertaining children?
When it was all over and their guests had gone home to put their lives back together, and the cots had been disassembled and the kitchen cleaned up, the congregation members gathered for a short service of thanksgiving and encouragement. The minister read again the story of Pentecost that they had heard on Sunday morning. They heard these words: "I will pour out my Spirit on every kind of people: Your sons will prophesy, also your daughters; Your young men will see visions, your old men dream dreams. When the time comes, I'll pour out my Spirit on those who serve me, men and women both.” and many felt that Pentecost had happened or was happening again. Amen.