Resistance Is Not Futile
Genesis 11:1-9; Psalm 104:24-34, 35b; Acts 2:1-21; John 14:8-17, 25-27
“Peace I leave with you,” said Jesus to his disciples, “my peace I give you. I do not give you as the world gives. Do not let your hearts be troubled, and do not let them be afraid.”
Do we have any Star Trek fans here in the house this morning? I have a lot of favorite Star Trek moments, but probably my all-time favorite comes in the Next Generation series when the Enterprise encounters the Borg. The Borg is a giant box that travels through space with beings from many different planets, but all of their minds are controlled by a central computer. The Borg tells the Enterprise: Resistance is futile, you will be assimilated. At one point a Borg meets Lieutenant Worf, who is a Klingon, a fierce and hot-headed warrior people. The Borg looks him up and down. “Klingon, a primitive species. You too will be assimilated.” Worf draws himself up and says, “Klingons will never surrender.” “But why do you resist? We only want to improve the quality of life for all species.” And Worf replies: “I like my species the way it is.”
I like my species the way it is. What a great line! Because I also, despite everything, like my species the way it is. Yes, we members of the human species can be complicated and difficult to get along with. Perhaps if we had a central computer that controlled all of our minds we’d have no conflict and we could accomplish more, but I don’t think any of us would actually want that. All of the things that make human beings unique are what make life so interesting – sometimes frustrating, but sometimes profoundly rewarding.
We are all different – we grow up speaking different languages, different customs, different foods, different ways of seeing the world, different ways of processing our experiences. That’s part of marriage – the way we did it in my family is of course the right way, I don’t know where you got the idea that your family’s way makes any sense. And no matter how long you’re married, there are things about your spouse and the way they see things that you continue to discover and be surprised by. That dance of each of us having our own perspectives and identity, having to adjust to the fact that other people have their own perspectives and identities, and learning to live together in love while still allowing each one to be themselves – this is the human species the way God made it to be. This is the humanity that God took on in Jesus.
But the Borg temptation – to do away with the individuality of each person and even each species, to impose uniformity by force – resistance is futile, you will be assimilated – this temptation has always been part of human history. The people of biblical times knew a lot about the Borg. They had been slaves in Egypt, where they were forced to do the will of a foreign king and could not live their own lives and truth. And they had been conquered by the Babylonians, who by their superior military power destroyed their temple and exiled them from their land, who tried to take away their religion and their law and their customs and their identity. Resistance is futile, you will be assimilated. The people of ancient Israel knew all about it.
And so they told a story about why God made many nations and languages and peoples and tongues. Once upon a time, all humanity spoke one language and had the same words, and they lived in the plain of Shimar – that’s where Babylon is. And they thought, Let’s make some bricks and build a tower that reaches all the way to heaven. Remember what was the job of the Hebrew slaves in Egypt – to make bricks for Pharoah’s pyramids and other building projects. They knew who was going to get stuck making bricks and who was going to get to climb to heaven. But, the story goes, God said, Nope. I’m not going to let you all get away with this. And so God created human diversity – many languages, many nations, many experiences – precisely so that no human empire, not the Egyptians, not the Babylonians, not the Romans, not the Russians or for that matter the Americans – no one human group gets to be the Borg. And whenever one person or group gets powerful enough to presume to tell another, Resistance is futile, you will be assimilated, it’s for your own good – God steps in and says no. Resistance to the Borg is God’s work.
The miracle of Pentecost – the miracle of the many languages – stands in contrast to the Tower of Babel. When the disciples of Jesus receive the Holy Spirit and begin to announce publicly the good news of Easter, the good news of resurrection, the good news of the beginning of God’s new creation within humanity – people from all over the world each hear the good news in their own language. They do not need to learn anybody else’s language to hear and receive the good news. They do not have to become somebody else, they do not have to get assimilated into somebody else’s project, in order to participate in the community being brought together by Spirit of God. The community of Pentecost could not be more different from the community of Babel – it is a community where each person who participates in the community does not give up their uniqueness and their identity and personality in order to be assimilated into the whole, but each person by participation in the community becomes more and more themselves.
My peace I give you, Jesus said, but I do not give peace the way the world gives peace. The world gives the peace of Babel – the peace of an order imposed by force, resistance is futile, you will be assimilated. The Spirit of Jesus gives the peace of Pentecost – humanity fully realized when each person holds onto and grows deeper into the uniqueness of their own perspective and language and experience.
That’s the theory, at least. But of course even within the church we are never free from the temptation of Babel, the temptation of the Borg. How often has the church tried to mandate that there is one way to pray, one kind of marriage that is acceptable, one way to think about God, one type of person who can be a pastor, one way to organize the church, one set of human rules that everyone has to conform to if they want to belong to God’s people. And every time someone tries to turn the church of God into a tower of Babel, every time we try to build something so we can grab heaven on our terms instead of trusting the God who came down from heaven and took on our messy humanity for our sake, every time we expect outsiders to learn our language and ways as a condition of belonging to Christ – every single time the Holy Spirit raises up people to say No. That’s not the gospel.
Even today, right here at Epiphany, we say that we want to be a diverse and inclusive church, and I think we really believe it. But – you know the saying, if the learner didn’t learn, the teacher didn’t teach? Well, if the outsider doesn’t feel welcomed, it doesn’t matter how welcoming we think we are. It’s the guest who gets to decide whether they’ve heard us speaking their language or not. And we can’t be surprised when the Holy Spirit brings people across our path who challenge us, who draw us out of our comfort zone, in order to fully embrace and welcome them as they are, in their beautiful and messy and unique humanity.
The Holy Spirit is already challenging us as a denomination. You probably saw the article in yesterday’s Washington Post. It’s a long and complicated story, and if you want to know more we can chat during the fellowship hour, but there’s a situation in California where a bishop has really mistreated a mostly Mexican immigrant congregation that, as a result, has been worshipping in a parking lot for the last six months. The bishop keeps throwing gasoline on the fire, the churchwide leadership has hesitated to get involved, and many people are seriously questioning whether our policies and structures as a denomination are driving away people who don’t fit the classic Midwest Lutheran profile. This isn’t the first incident like this, but this one has gotten enough national attention that I think some real institutional soul-searching is ahead of us. It may not be comfortable but I believe it is an invitation from God to let the Holy Spirit lead us to a better place.
But the most important thing is that we know that the Holy Spirit is promised to us in our baptism. The Holy Spirit that enables you and me to hear the good news of Easter in our own language, bringing your full self, whatever that may mean for you, knowing that the person God loves is you the way you are, that you don’t have to become somebody else to be worthy of God’s love. And with that confidence, we can extend that same grace to others, and together experience the kind of communion and peace that only God can give.
“Peace I leave with you,” said Jesus to his disciples, “my peace I give you. I do not give you as the world gives. Do not let your hearts be troubled, and do not let them be afraid.”