"Pentecost Power"      Cicero United Methodist Church       June 12,2011

Pentecost Sunday       Text: Acts 2: 1-21       Jack Keating

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            On this Pentecost Sunday, as we begin another emphasis in the church year, it is fitting
that we stop to look at the church of the Pentecost and see how we're doing by comparison.

            I read about a man named John Wimber who was a product of the Jesus movement in the
1960's. He met Christ in a pretty dramatic way, and began reading the New Testament,  beginning with the Gospels and then on to the book of Acts. He was excited about what he was
reading, but when he went to a church he was disillusioned. The polite and tidy service was over
exactly on time. Wimber looked at some of the people around him and said: "When are you gonna do the stuff?" "What stuff?" they wanted to know. He said ... "You know, the stuff!" He had been reading about the conversions, healings, deliverance and other miracles that took place in the early church recorded in the book of Acts. But instead of signs and wonders, he saw no sign of anything that would make him wonder, except the deadness of the ritual he had just sat
through.

            When you read the book of Acts closely, you see that signs and wonders were not the
exceptions; they were the norm of the early church. Healings and supernatural happenings were
expected and occurred regularly. Now some would try to explain this by saying that we are living in a different dispensation and the age of miracles is over. That was for a specific time and place to authenticate the message of the apostles, but we no longer need them today. Really!!!! Does God really divide history up into neat little segments where God acts one way with one
generation and a totally different way with another? If so, then God is not, "the same yesterday
and today and forever" (Hebrews 13: 8). If God does respond differently at different times, then
God is one kind of God at one point in history and an entirely different God at another time.

            I would suggest that the church today needs to discover once again that we have an unchanging God and an unchanging kingdom. We need to discover once again the power of
Pentecost. We need to become a Pentecost church --- and I'm not talking about a denomination
here - I'm talking about an Acts 2 church. We need to be filled with the Spirit. We need to be
operating in the gifts of the Spirit. We need to see people's lives turned around. We need to see
people healed physically, emotionally, relationally, socially and spiritually. We need to experience the unity of the Spirit as the early church did. We need to be living in genuine love
for each another, and when we fail at that we need to seek reconciliation. We need to have the
fire fall and the people of God rise up.

            Author Rick Kirchoff has written, "When God sends forth the Spirit amazing things
happen: barriers are broken ... communities are formed, opposites are reconciled .... unity is
established, disease is cured, addiction is broken, cities are renewed, races are reconciled, hope is
established, people are blessed, and church happens. Today the Spirit of God is present and
we're gonna have church. So be ready, get ready ... God is up to something ... discouraged folks
cheer up, dishonest folks 'fess up, sour folks sweeten up, closed folk, open up, gossipers shut up,
conflicted folks make up, sleeping folks wake up, lukewarm folk fire up, dry bones shake up, and
pew potatoes stand up! But most of all, Christ the Savior of all the world is lifted up."

            If that is going to happen in our Christian church certain conditions will need to be met
and certain perceptions need to be changed. We need a major paradigm shift. First of all,
Pentecostal power comes when you realize: The Christian life is not about keeping rules, but
about knowing Christ. As I was growing up in the church I heard a lot about being nice and how
important it was to be a good person. We were told to be kind and love everyone. If there was
ever an opportunity to come to Christ, or an altar call in the church where I grew up, I am
unaware of it. A few months ago I met the now-adult son of the pastor of our home church. He
is working in the retailing world and he told me that he had never come to know the Lord until his high school chemistry teacher led him to Christ. His father is a very good man, a Christian man, but like his congregation, his faith had become privatized.

            In that church everyone dressed their best and acted their best on Sunday. The service
was predictable and formal. Now don't get me wrong, the Bible was read and the preacher said
all the right things I'm sure. But there was no passion. I'm sure the words of the responsive
readings were meaningful, but they seemed like they came from another place and time. Much of
the service never connected with many of the people, or if it did, they were careful not to show it.
Excitement was not exactly how you would have described the worship service in my home
church. No one ever gave a testimony. Certainly no one ever raised a hand or clapped during the
music. And no one, ever... ever said AMEN. As far as I knew, Christianity was about keeping
the rules and being a good person. If you loved God you did it quietly and never spoke of it. In
fact, the only disruption I can ever remember was the Sunday my brother and I started laughing in the middle of the sopranos solo because she was warbling so badly it sounded like she was in
pain. As I remember it, the twisting of our ears didn't do much to squelch our giggles.

            In churches all across the United States the gospel of being good is being preached. In
some places it is translated as becoming politically active for social causes, or at least becoming
concerned. In still other places, the measure of a person's Christianity is in how tolerant or
inclusive there are in their acceptance of other people and ideas. But, I would suggest that until
we renew our commitment to preaching that Jesus is the way, the truth and the life, and that no
one comes to the Father except through him, we will not experience the anointing of the Holy
Spirit or know the zeal of the early church. Until the people who call themselves the people of
God renew their commitment to knowing Christ on a daily basis and living faithfully for him, we
will not experience the power of Pentecost. Until we live by repentance and faith we will always
be going through the motions of religion without knowing the person of Jesus Christ.

            As long as we think Christianity is something that WE do, we are missing the point. It is
not about what we do, but about what God does in us. Being a Christian is not doing the right
thing or believing the right church doctrines, it is about knowing the right person. It is not about
being a member of the church or reciting creeds. It is not about baptism or communion, although
those are important parts of our life together. It is about surrendering my life, my body, my
mind, and my heart to Jesus Christ and asking him to take up residence in me. It is about
confessing my sin and turning from it. It is about banking everything I have and am on God and
loving him with my whole heart.

            The Christian faith is not a feeling. It is a reality. It is a real relationship with a real person --- Jesus Christ. Christianity is about the most powerful and wonderful person in the
universe.... who desires to know us intimately. This experience is not tame, it is wild and
powerful. In Philippians, Paul wrote, "I want to know Christ and the power of his resurrection."
(Philippians 3: 10)

            The second point I would like to make is that true Pentecost power comes when you
realize: The Christian life is not just about salvation, but transformation. There are many
churches which are very different than the one in which I grew up. They faithfully preach about
salvation and the necessity of new birth. In fact, that is what you hear almost every Sunday. The
scripture changes, but the message is basically the same: "You need to be born again." And that
is good as far as it goes. It is a necessary first step. But if our faith only consists of a single event
where we repented of our sin and came to Christ, then it is an incomplete faith. What if a child
was born and we all celebrated the wonderful gift of new life, but the baby never took
nourishment, was never nurtured, never grew, and never developed. As wonderful as its birth
was, it would not survive. And today pediatricians call it "failure to thrive."

            If you think that the Christian life is only about being born again, think again. It is not
just about salvation, it is about transformation. To hear some people talk you would think that
once we come to Christ we just wait around to go to heaven. We are just putting in our time until
Jesus comes. If that is the way we think, we will never experience the power of Pentecost. We will never understand that Jesus Christ has come to establish his kingdom, "on earth, as it is in
heaven," and we are his agents through whom he works to make that happen. We are to grow in
holiness, and be salt and light in a tasteless and dark world. We are to become transformed on a
daily basis, through the spiritual disciplines, and then become agents for the transformation in the
world.

            It is sort of like this. You can take ten gallons of gasoline and release a tremendous
amount of power and energy by just dropping a lighted match into it. It makes a dramatic one
time impact. But there is another way to release that same energy in that gasoline. Place it in the
fuel tank of a new hybrid engine designed to get 40 miles to the gallon. That high tech engine
will use that ten gallons of gasoline to take a person 400 miles or more. Explosions may be
spectacular, but the sustained, controlled burn has staying power. You don't want to be a flash in
the pan, you want to make a difference in this world over time. You want to last for the long
haul. You don't want the Holy Spirit to just save you for heaven, you want the Spirit to use his
power to transform your life. You want the Spirit to use you in this world for kingdom purposes.
The kingdom is not far away in time and space, it is here and now. And to be a member of this
kingdom, you need the power of the Holy Spirit operating in your life every day. The apostle
John, in the Book of Revelation, talks about the things we have to go through in this world and
says, "This calls for patient endurance on the part of the saints who obey God's commandments
and remain faithful to Jesus." (Revelation 14: 12)

            The third point I'd like to make is that true Pentecost power comes when you overcome
apathy with zeal. As I talked about just a few weeks ago, you can try to be good and think you're
a Christian. You cannot just point to some past experience of being "born again" and say that
you're a Christian. You have to grow. You have to be transformed into the image of Christ and
want to be made like him. You can't be apathetic toward the things of God and his kingdom and
experience Pentecost power. A true transformation results in a transformation of the heart that
loves God and desires to know him better every day. When we are delivered from the bondage of
sin and ushered into the kingdom of God where there is freedom, we delight in the things of God.

            The more you know God, the more you will love God and the more excited you will be
about the kingdom. The more you love God, the more you will want others to know God. The
more you experience God's presence and power, the more of it you will want. This is the way to
live. We have been forgiven. We have inherited eternal life. We have experienced eternal love.
We are not holding anything back because we have discovered life. We have found the pearl of
great price, and it is worth more than everything else we have ever seen or possessed. Because of
this we are excited about life and we are excited about the wonderful God we serve. We are
willing to do whatever it takes to have more of God.

            Columnist Jonathan Rauch believes that America has made "a major civilization
advance" in recent years. Rauch, a longtime atheist, is thrilled about the phenomenon he calls
"apatheism." It's not that people don't believe in God anymore --- the majority will say that they
believe. But on the whole the people Rauch describes haven't been putting much thought or
effort into their faith. They're looking for comfort and reassurance, not for a God who asks
anything of them. Hence the rise of apatheism, which Rauch describes as "A disinclination to
care all that much about one's own religion, and an even stronger disinclination to care about
other people's."

            Writer David Brook agreed and wrote about a trend a few years ago that he called
"flexidoxy." (or flexible beliefs). And flexidoxy describes the form of religion practiced by many
educated young Americans and is the opposite of orthodoxy. Basically it means people have
become flexible in their belief system and look at religion as a giant smorgasbord from which
they can pick and choose the beliefs that most suit them. They become the center of their own
faith and adapt it to what they see as important.

            Many of us have heard or read about 27 year-old Aron Ralston, who had his right arm
pinned by an 800 pound boulder in a climbing accident. He had gone hiking in a canyon, adjacent to Utah's Canyonland National Park. He was an experienced climber, as he had already
climbed some 49 other peaks in Colorado alone that were over 14,000 feet. He thought about
what it would be like to die on the mountain and have his family find his body, or maybe never
know his fate. Ralston, a former engineer for Intel and an avid outdoorsman, thought about his
options. After five days of being pinned, and having run out of food and water, he decided to
apply a tourniquet and amputate his arm below the elbow using his pocket knife. He then rigged
anchors and rappelled to the canyon floor with his one good arm. He walked downstream until he was spotted by a Utah Public Safety helicopter. But what the news did not say much about was that this Phi Beta Kappa graduate of Carnegie Mellon University credits his faith in God for the ability to do what he had to do. He is a deeply committed Christian who often plays the piano in his United Methodist Church near Denver, Colorado. Because Aron wanted to live, he was
willing to cut away everything that was holding him back. It is that kind of commitment and zeal
that will enable us to experience Pentecost power. When you are willing to cut away everything
that is holding you back and walk out of the canyon of bondage, then the Holy Spirit will come to you in new ways and you will know a life that you did not know was possible. The Bible says,
"Therefore, since we are surrounded by such a huge crowd of witnesses to the life of faith, let us
strip off every weight that slows us down, especially the sin that so easily hinders our progress.
And let us run with endurance the race that God has set before us" (Hebrews 12: 1, New Living
Bible). The apostle Paul did this, for he wrote to the church in Philippi, "Brothers, I do not
consider myself yet to have taken hold of it. But one thing I do: Forgetting what is behind and
straining toward what is ahead I press on toward the goal to win the prize for which God has
called me heavenward in Christ Jesus." (Philippians 3: 13-14)

            I think this morning, for the church, and for you to have any hope at all of experiencing
the Pentecost power, we will each need to be ready to cut away that which is holding us back.
And you know, I think, what those things in your life are. So this morning, in this quiet moment
right now, close your eyes and let the Holy Spirit show you how you, too, can experience that

power and make this, truly an Acts 2 church.....a church that is prepared to take the good news

of Jesus Christ to the world. Amen.