We’re Missing Something

Scripture: Acts 2:1-13 

When the day of Pentecost had come, they were all together in one place. And suddenly from heaven there came a sound like the rush of a violent wind, and it filled the entire house where they were sitting. Divided tongues, as of fire, appeared among them, and a tongue rested on each of them. All of them were filled with the Holy Spirit and began to speak in other languages, as the Spirit gave them ability. Now there were devout Jews from every people under heaven living in Jerusalem. And at this sound the crowd gathered and was bewildered, because each one heard them speaking in the native language of each. Amazed and astonished, they asked, “Are not all these who are speaking Galileans? And how is it that we hear, each of us, in our own native language? Parthians, Medes, Elamites, and residents of Mesopotamia, Judea and Cappadocia, Pontus and Asia, Phrygia and Pamphylia, Egypt and the parts of Libya belonging to Cyrene, and visitors from Rome, both Jews and proselytes, Cretans and Arabs—in our own languages we hear them speaking about God’s deeds of power.” All were amazed and perplexed, saying to one another, “What does this mean?” But others sneered and said, “They are filled with new wine.” 

We’re Missing Something 

Family, I have learned that confession is good for the soul, but bad for the reputation. I start off by telling you, I am a foodie, but I’m not your average foodie. I’m not the type of foodie that simply loves to try new restaurants with diverse menu options. I personally enjoy food experiences. I try food at restaurants with the intended purpose of providing a comparable experience to others. I may not be able to match the atmosphere that I experience at the restaurant, but what I can ensure is that the flavor palette will almost be the same. And whatever flavor palette I provide will be complemented with whatever atmosphere I can provide. Because those who truly know me know that I’m typically paired with good food and a good time. The thing about being a good cook is that even if I don’t have the recipe, I can taste the ingredients needed to accomplish a specific flavor. I make mental notes of the different flavors that I taste and try to ensure that the experience I had is given to others. But the truth of the matter is, I can’t guarantee that without the help of somebody else. As you can imagine, the person who is typically stuck trying all of the different ideas and activities that I’m doing is my wife.  

I should tell you from the onset of this message that my wife is the pickiest eater I’ve ever met in my life. I mean, she can make your neighborhood three-year-old look like they have the flavor palette of Gordon Ramsay. I’m trying to tell y’all, it’s bad. Whether or not she likes what I’m presenting to her, she can be honest about how she feels about the flavor profile. I can trust her to be honest with me, completely honest. And I’m not offended by her honesty. It provides the safety of knowing that if there’s something to tweak, I could tweak it with her in private. But family, there are three dreaded words that I hate to hear when she has tried something that I’ve cooked. With a perplexed look upon her face and with her finger over her mouth, she’ll look at me and utter these three words. It’s missing something. Family, the problem with this is that she rarely knows, nor do I know, what is exactly missing. But we both know that something is missing, and thus the experiment of figuring it out begins. And at times, I have worked through so many ideas that my entire palate is blown, and I find myself frustrated trying to figure out the meal. While this thought for some of us might be funny or even frustrating because we’ve experienced it, I just want to be honest that sometimes this is how we live out our faith.  

We can find ourselves frustrated, overwhelmed, and tired amidst the turbulent seasons of our lives, only to look back and realize we were missing something. Some of us have closed the doors on chapters of our lives because we’re missing something. Some of us have changed the courses of our careers all the while missing something. Some of us have said goodbye to the wrong people thinking it was right in that moment because we were missing something. Truthfully, at some point in our lives, even today, we might be missing something. It was Soren Kierkegaard who once argued that life can only be understood backwards but must be lived forwards, suggesting that part of our lives will not make sense while we’re living them, but they will make sense when we look back over our lives. I imagine that this is the very place the disciples found themselves in Acts chapter 2. But for us to fully unpack what’s happening in Acts chapter 2, we have to look back at chapter 1. 

 When Jesus brings us to chapter 1, last week we wrestled with this, he tells us that they have to wait in Jerusalem for the promise of the Father. And what Jesus is literally telling us in Acts 1 is that they’re missing something. We’re missing the thing that makes our lives better. We’re missing the thing that causes us to live out our destiny. We’re missing the power that emboldens us to speak truth to power. Y’all, we’re missing the very nature of who God is calling us to be. We’re missing the Holy Spirit. But Jesus had a plan for how we could get the very thing that we’re missing. Jesus told them to wait in Jerusalem until they received the promise of the Father. And our text begins with telling us that the day of Pentecost had fully come. And they were all together in one place. I don’t want us to move too fast and miss the significance of what’s happening in the text, because it told us that the day of Pentecost had fully come.  

Pentecost was a feast day in Jewish culture to give thanks for the first fruit of the wheat harvest and later became the anniversary of the feast of giving the law or the establishment of the covenant at Sinai. This day already meant something in Jewish culture. And now they’re receiving something on that very same day. In essence, the entire understanding of Pentecost changed for the Judeo-Christian experience because of what happened on that day of Pentecost. Because of that, we recognize Pentecost as one of the most important days of the liturgical calendar. To be honest, it’s my favorite day of the year. So, in essence, we acknowledge Pentecost for the purpose of God being manifested on the earth twice. We acknowledge Pentecost in history because God came down and gave the law to Moses. But we also acknowledge Pentecost and how it affects us in the current because God sent down the Holy Spirit to live in, breathe through and shift the church.  

Pentecost has changed our identity. Pentecost has awakened the fullness of what it means to be living in The Way. When the day of Pentecost had fully come, they were all together in one space on one accord. This is significant because this is a gathering of people who did not want to be in Jerusalem in Chapter One. So much so, that the text reminds us that Jesus had to force them to stay. Now, when the holy day had come, they were all in one space and on one accord. We could try to argue about what was happening into the house prior to the day of Pentecost, but it would all be speculation. What we can say is that when the day of Pentecost had fully come, they were on one accord in that space. I don’t know if they prayed to get on one accord. I don’t know if they fasted to get on one accord. I don’t know if they voted to get on one accord. I don’t know if someone imposed a thought to get them on one accord. But what I can assure you is that when the day had fully come, they were on one accord.  

This is important, because being on one accord is no easy feat. Pastors have gone to heaven before they could change church carpets the members could not get on one accord. Families have had issues dating back for years because they could not get each other on one accord. There would be no such thing as sibling rivalries if we could get families to be on one accord. And the fact that my teeth will bite my tongue proves that I can’t keep myself on one accord. Because being on one accord is not an easy feat. Being on one accord suggests a level of unity. It suggests an ability and a willingness to walk in lockstep as if carrying the burden of a yoke with someone else. There’s a need to walk together and walk at the same pace with the same intention for us to reach an intended goal. It’s a level of harmony that we have chosen to do this together. I think that sometimes the modern church has forgotten and no longer has the desire to reach the same goal. But Pentecost calls us to have harmony and it models it to us through this text.  

In response to the harmony that was happening in that space on that day of Pentecost, the Spirit came in like a mighty, violent, rushing wind and it filled the house. The spirit was not something they could see coming in. The spirit was not something that they had previously invited. The spirit came in and found them on one accord. And it began to cause me to think, cause me to wonder what would happen if the church would just get on one accord again. This day of Pentecost has fully come and we are all gathered in this house of worship together. What would happen if all of us were on one accord? Some of us are thinking about what we’re going to eat for dinner. Some of us are thinking about what we’re going to do this weekend. But the question of the text is, what would happen to us if we all were on one accord? This text suggests to us that the spirit would fill us.  

The part of the text that has sat with me is that the spirit filled the house. It raised questions for me about whether or not the house was actually empty. But what I realized is the house doesn’t have to be empty before it needs to be filled. Fillings suggest that there is some emptiness, not that we were empty at all. And the fact that we are living without the Spirit suggests that we carried some sense of emptiness or simply that we’re missing something. We can’t do all that God is calling for us to do while missing something.  

When we operate without the spirit, we as the church are missing something. Maybe the church was missing love. Maybe the church was missing joy. Maybe the church was missing peace. Maybe the church was missing patience. Maybe the church was missing kindness. Maybe the church was missing goodness. Maybe the church was missing faithfulness. Maybe it was gentleness. Maybe the church was missing self-control. Quite frankly, I think we, the church itself, has been missing sometimes. We were missing our identity and missing our spark, but our text says the Spirit came in violently, throwing us off of our course and filled us where we were empty. Based on the example in our text, now that we have been filled, we ought to speak differently. Divided tongues of fire, the text says, fell on everyone in the house. And when they were filled with the Holy Spirit, they began speaking in other languages.  

They were speaking languages that were not common to the people from where they were from. They had not studied these languages, and it was proof of what had happened in Acts 1:8, that they could be the witnesses of the gospel far and wide where Jesus had told them to go to the ends of the earth. They spoke the languages of all the different people who were gathered around them, and the text says they spoke about God’s deeds of power. Some of us need to recognize that the languages we need to speak in the common day to make sure that the gospel can be heard is not simply the language of the Parthians, not simply the language of the Medes or the Elamites and the residents of Mesopotamia or the others that were listed in the text. Rather, the languages that the Spirit is calling us to speak are exactly what I mentioned the church might have been missing earlier. The people of Jerusalem, Judea, Samaria, and the ends of the world need to hear the people speak the languages of love, speak the languages of joy, peace, patience, kindness, goodness, faithfulness, gentleness, and self-control. We need people, dare I say disciples, who are willing to speak and live in a culture where the fruit of the spirit is normal. 

I can tell you that speaking a language differently than what the norm is around you was so uncommon in that day that the people were amazed and were perplexed based off of verse 12. And if it had simply stopped there, we could just continue to praise God and praise all the things that God had called them to do. But somehow, someway, whenever good things seem to happen, there’s always a verse 13, amid what God has called us to do. Now that they are no longer missing anything at all in the text, they find themselves being ridiculed because they have been filled. The argument is not whether they have been filled, rather about what they have been filled with. There is a suspicion that they are filled with new wine because nothing else could explain the current behavior. I want to be honest, the wine doesn’t explain it for me either. I have never seen someone drink wine and suddenly speak a new language that they have never spoken before. This is why we have to remember why we were filled and what we were filled with. Because what we were filled with gives us results and evidence for us to live out and practice in our actions.  

When we are filled with something, there are drops of overflow and residue that fall on those who are around us. And if we don’t make a difference in our world, it’ll still look like we’re missing something. If we don’t change the future of this world for our children, it’ll still look like we’re missing something. The gift of the Pentecost is that what we were missing is no longer missing after all. This is the promise of the Father. So, let us live like we’re not missing something. Let’s live with the confidence I get when my wife thinks the recipe is just right. Let us approach the world with the boldness as witnesses and fill the world with what is inside of us. Because while we’re not missing something anymore, the world is. Because the world is actually missing something; a church (and a people) filled with the Spirit.