Pentecost Sunday/Youth Confirmation Sunday

“Holy Spirit: Change Agent”

Acts 2:1-21

Margaret I. Manning

Imagine with me, for a minute, what it must have been like on the day of Pentecost. The followers of Jesus gathered together, just like we are, to study the Scriptures in order to gain insight into the life, death, resurrection and now ascension of Jesus. Perhaps they had sung a psalm, shared a common meal, prayed or heard the Scripture read – perhaps, as they wondered over Jesus’ final words to them before his ascension - that they would be baptized and receive power from the Holy Spirit - they heard these words read from the prophet Joel: “in the last days, I will pour out my Spirit…your sons and daughters will prophesy…upon my followers, men and women I will in those days pour forth my Spirit.” Imagine with me that just as that last word hung in the air, a sudden noise, and a mighty wind began to swirl and blow with powerful, gale force. Tongues, as of flame began to dance on their heads…languages spoken that were unlearned or unknown by simple Galileans. Can you picture it? Imagine now, if Pentecost happened in our church. How it might sound? How it might feel? What if you turned and looked at your neighbor and saw what looked to be a flaming fire on his or her head? You’d want to run and call the “First Responders”, only before you turned to go, your neighbor sees the same flame on your head…oh my, and yet, neither one of you is consumed by flame, but by the Holy Spirit! Can you imagine it?

If these phenomena weren’t enough, can you imagine if suddenly your neighbor began to speak to you about God in a different language – the language of your ancestry – and you understood it? No wonder the Jewish crowds thought the followers of Jesus were drunk! Now I know cocktail hour begins early here in the Village, but 9:00 in the morning, that’s just too darn early! Crowds began to gather around that place because of all the commotion…and if it happened here, I would think the Texaco station employees and the P.O.A. and maybe even the folks from More than Mail and the Plaza restaurant would rush over to see the hullabaloo at the Community Church! Can you imagine it?

While the signs and wonders of the Spirit are fascinating and spectacular, for our purposes today, on this Pentecost Day more than 2,000 years after a few followers of Jesus turned the world upside down, I’m more interested in the sign and the wonder of lives transformed by the coming of the Holy Spirit as the change agent. Think about the transformation of Jesus’ followers. Before the Spirit blew in like a hurricane on that day, the disciples were still a bumbling bunch who really didn’t get it, and still didn’t understand what Jesus was all about. These common, ordinary fishermen – largely uneducated, uniformed, and certainly cowardly when it came to standing up for Jesus – rarely understood what Jesus taught them; they fell asleep in the Garden of Gethsemane in his most crucial hour of need; they betrayed and denied Jesus; and as he was led away to crucifixion, they all left him and fled. (Mark 14:50) Now, just prior to Pentecost, their last question to Jesus, demonstrates that they still haven’t been transformed. “Lord, is it at this time you are restoring the kingdom to Israel?” (Acts 1:6) They’re question belies their desire for an earthly kingdom and earthly power. Jesus’ answer points ahead to our passage where the Spirit brings transformation power to the disciples to advance and witness to a kingdom that would begin by that Spirit. “You will receive power,’ Jesus tells them, ‘when the Holy Spirit has come upon you; and you will be my witnesses…to the remotest part of the earth.” (Acts 1:8)

So now, as they sit in that room studying about the Spirit through the message of the prophet Joel, these same ordinary, uneducated, cowardly disciples are overcome by the Holy Spirit, change agent. And look at what happens to them – they are transformed. Peter, for example, the one who denied his Lord three times in the face of a harmless, young girl – Peter, who was tempestuous, impulsive, and prone to outbursts of anger – remember how he cut off the ear of the high priest’s slave – now, empowered by the Holy Spirit this new Peter stood up in front of a growing crowd of Jewish pilgrims – gathered in Jerusalem to celebrate the Harvest festival of Pentecost- and this Peter who denied his Lord, emerges with new power, truth and love from the Holy Spirit. Now Peter speaks with boldness and confidence from that Spirit, as he gives his first sermon proclaiming the good news of Jesus Christ. So powerful was his sermon that approximately 3,000 people believed his message that Jesus Christ is the Messiah. Wow! A life transformed by the Holy Spirit, the change agent. Peter was an ordinary guy, now doing extraordinary things through the power of the Holy Spirit. He would never be the same again!

An example[1] from the natural world will help illuminate the Spirit’s role as change agent. When the Holy Spirit changes a life, it is a gradual process to be sure – a process that takes patience, time and seasons of growth. But, even though transformation is a process, it’s not just a re-shaping of the same old stuff we were, but a total metamorphosis of one way of being to another. You see, the Holy Spirit works in our lives to create something totally different and new, like the way a caterpillar becomes a butterfly. When the caterpillar enters the chrysalis, it has wound itself around a bundle of formless cellular protoplasm. That protoplasm is neither a caterpillar sprouting wings nor a husk soon to drop away revealing a butterfly. All that the caterpillar was and all that the butterfly will be are contained in the chrysalis, but one form must relinquish itself that another might emerge. This kind of change is full of surprise and wonder, isn’t it? No one, for example would have expected faithless Peter to become a faithful preacher - this kind of change is revolutionary. But, through the power of the Spirit, Peter yielded what he was, so that something new would emerge - and 3,000 people became followers of Jesus Christ that day. Can you imagine it?

Now for all of us here, on this Pentecost Sunday, the same power for change is available to us through the Holy Spirit. Metamorphosis is happening in the lives of God’s people right here in Tellico Village. And as I have the privilege and opportunity to hear your stories, I get a glimpse of the signs and wonders of Pentecost all over again in the ordinary lives of our church family. One friend, I have come to know, experienced the metamorphosis power of Pentecost in his life. People who knew him years ago would not recognize him as the same man today. To know him now, you would never believe that he was once an angry man full of explosive and violent rage. As a young military recruit for the Viet Nam war, the CIA observed his violent rage and used it to shape him into a government assassin. After time in this special unit, he ran drugs, got in fights at every turn and used his rage to intimidate and threaten others. But then, just like Peter and the disciples before him, something miraculous happened. This angry man was overcome by the Holy Spirit. He entered the chrysalis of metamorphosis and relinquished who he was to the Holy Spirit, so that the Spirit could create something new. He came to a point in his life where he said ‘no’ to his former way of life and said ‘yes’, to change, and ‘yes’ to the Change Agent. And that yes, unleashed the power, love and truth of the Holy Spirit in his life. No longer bound by rage, he is free to love, free to serve and free to surrender his old life, so that a whole new life can emerge.

I know there are many of you here this morning that are like my friend. You have felt the Holy Spirit’s wind blow through you – and while you’re story of Pentecost may not be as dramatic, you can look back over your life and hardly recognize the person you were because of change produced by the Holy Spirit. Through the Holy Spirit, not even a terminal cancer diagnosis can block your new life. Through the work of the Holy Spirit many of you who were ‘great’ in this life go out and serve the ‘least of these among us’ without reward or fanfare; through the Holy Spirit, you teach, you encourage, you serve in ways that can only be attributed to the change-agent Spirit within you. Growth in new life comes from the Spirit as we surrender our lives to God, just as the disciples did; just as Peter did, just as many of you have done. God will do extraordinary things through us, as we enter into Pentecost again and again, by personal surrender to the Holy Spirit, change agent. What new thing does the Holy Spirit want to do in and through you? Can you imagine it?

Today, at 10:30 we’ll see this new life begin as we confirm nine of our young people in the Christian faith. Confirmation opens the door to the Spirit’s power as students choose for themselves to follow Jesus – to say ‘yes’ to God and ‘yes’ to God’s Spirit, and to surrender their former way of life. Confirmation, of course, is only the beginning of the transformation work of the Holy Spirit. Growth and transformation take time, and we all need patience, prayer and hard work as we yield to the Spirit. Confirmation serves to remind all of us that as God’s people, we must all affirm the Christian faith, for ourselves, and then as God’s people, living out that personal commitment of faith corporately as the church in the world. (Insert on growth) As we affirm the faith, affirm our commitment to follow Jesus, and affirm our belonging to the community of faith, the Holy Spirit is unleashed as the change agent – producer of growth and transformation; able to take the ordinary, the cowardly, the retired, the young, the successful, the broken, and even the seminary educated – all kinds of people – and change the world – just like those original followers of Jesus on that first Pentecost. When the Change Agent is unleashed in our lives, what we were doesn’t matter anymore – God will do a whole new thing in us and through us as the Spirit makes a home in our hearts.

Do you feel the wind of the Spirit this morning? Can you see the glory of God as tongues of flame on your neighbor’s head? Have you experienced the Holy Spirit, change agent in your life? Can you imagine all the possibilities for new life the Spirit wants to create in you? On this Pentecost and Confirmation Sunday, I pray you’ll experience the Holy Spirit as God’s change agent in your life. I pray that as God’s people, our church and our community will bear the signs and wonders of Pentecost as we surrender our lives afresh and anew to the Holy Spirit – change agent. Change our hearts, Holy Spirit, change our lives, Holy Spirit; change our world. Amen.

[1] The following illustration is taken from Howard Friend, in his article entitled: “Leading from the Bottom Up: Bureaucracy and Adhocracy,” Congregations: Spring 2005, p. 7.