The biggest winners

It is a thousand times easier to transform a room with a new coat of paint, new curtains and furniture than it is to transform our bodies like those in Biggest Losers, and if you’re a Biggest Loser’s follower, they do use language like transforming their lives. And I agree that making physical changes can indeed assist in transforming our lives. There are improvements to relationships, self-image and general wellbeing.

But there are also other experiences that can equally be life-changing, life transforming: falling in love marriage, having children, losing parents, acquiring disability through emotional or physical trauma, serendipitous luck, separation and divorce, disease. Mention should be made of the thrill of skydiving and base jumping.  But then I need to include religious conversion. I write here not of the conversion to or from Catholicism, Buddhism or any religious persuasion. The conversion I write of is the conversion in which the experience is so dramatic and extraordinary that it is impossible to refuse to assent to the changes to which you are impelled.

Such is the experience of the first disciples on the Jewish feast of Pentecost in the city of Jerusalem. As they hide in trepidation in their room, while the outside world was gathering from its four corners to celebrate the gift of the Law on Sinai, the sound of a great wind, followed by what appear to be tongues of fire appear. The disciples are impelled by an overwhelming drive to leave their haven and to proclaim the Gospel of Jesus, to proclaim the new Law, the commandment of love. Their enthusiasm is so infectious that not only do the assembled hear in their own language but over 3,000 are baptized. We attribute this life transforming event to the gift of the Holy Spirit, the Advocate.

But how can we put our finger on this gift, and how does it bring about change? The writer of Acts doesn’t tell us with any clarity. But the fear and anxiety that was present is lifted like a theatre curtain. Whatever it was that raised that ‘curtain’ will remain a mystery (that is, something beyond our understanding), yet you and I are invited to share in the journey of those first disciples, to be a part of the fiery energy that drove them to the streets. This is true transformation –  everything I say and do, the way I look at the world and my relationships is now viewed through this incredible change that has overtaken me. It begins when I am fully open and available to the God who loves me, when at last the curtain of my uncertainty, my doubt, my humanity is lifted once and for all, and when once and for all I say yes to his invitation.