Complicity--July 18, 2016

Complicity—July 18, 2016

“Therefore, just as sin came into the world through one man, and death came through sin, and so death spread to all because all have sinned…. But the free gift is not like the trespass. For if the many died through the one man’s trespass, much more surely have the grace of God and the free gift in the grace of the one man, Jesus Christ, abounded for the many.  And the free gift is not like the effect of the one man’s sin. For the judgment following one trespass brought condemnation, but the free gift following many trespasses brings justification. If, because of the one man’s trespass, death exercised dominion through that one, much more surely will those who receive the abundance of grace and the free gift of righteousness exercise dominion in life through the one man, Jesus Christ.  Therefore, just as one man’s trespass led to condemnation for all, so one man’s act of righteousness leads to justification and life for all.” [Romans 5:12, 15-18]

The bad news is that we all have blood on our hands. If you didn’t know that uncomfortable truth from the Bible already, you might already know it because of RICO.

You watch enough crime or mafia movies, and you’ll eventually become familiar with RICO.  The RICO Act, or the Racketeering and Corrupt Organizations Act, is a brilliant piece of legislation passed by Congress in 1970 (back in a magical distant time when Congress passed things) that allowed prosecutors and police to go after the bosses of organized crime for the crimes that they ordered their underlings to commit.  Prior to that, there was a loophole in the law, and if some grubby henchman was the one who actually pulled the trigger, or beat up the local business owner, or took the money for the illegal gambling or drugs, only the ACTUAL person with the gun or the bat could be prosecuted. 

Well, any truthful consideration of things would see that the henchmen are not really the source of the problem.  The nameless goons might do the actual deeds with the horse-head, but Don Corleone back behind his desk was the one calling the shots and ordering the crimes to be committed.  The individual drug dealers in a city certainly bear responsibility for their own actions, but so do their bosses who order them to sell, who get the supply, and who enforce their turf with lethal force. In other words, it’s obvious when it comes to the mob or drug cartels that everybody in the whole organization is guilty—they are all part of “the problem,” even if it’s only a few who physically pull triggers or sell on street corners.  They are all, in a word, complicit, in the situation.

The New Testament makes the uncomfortable claim that we are all part of one big corrupt organization, too—the human race.  We are all complicit in the brokenness for which the shorthand is “sin.”  You hear that?  ALL.

And we are all doubly complicit—in the sense that, as Paul says, “all have sinned,” and also in the sense that we are all bound to a sinful system like we are all part of a great big infected family tree that is sick with blight.  Paul takes it back to the storytelling from Genesis and says that just as the “one man” sinned, so now we are all complicit in his sin, and you can see it to be true, Paul says, because we each keep killing each other, cheating each other, stealing from one another, and hating each other.    And pushing that further, Paul says here in Romans, even if each of us hasn’t physically committed all of those acts on the checklist, we are all complicit like a RICO case in all of it.  We are all mired in the brokenness of the world, and we are also all guilty for that brokenness. If you think of Sin in Martin Luther’s terms as being “bent in on oneself,” then we all have the same family resemblance of the same bent souls, like you might see a crooked nose, sunken eyes, or sturdy chin throughout the generations of your own family photos.

Now, as squirmy as that truth might make us in the abstract, it gets even tougher to deal with when we get real and practical.  Paul’s point means that even if I am not directly responsible for the death of hungry children half a world away, in a very real sense I DO bear guilt for living in a wasteful culture and turning a blind eye to my hungry neighbor.  I am complicit in their hunger—I am a part of the problem that lets their bellies go unfilled while I order another serving of French fries.  And it means that even if I never physically gave anybody else cancer, but I’ve been dumping paint and chemicals down the drain, or if I’ve built my fortune selling asbestos-laced products, I am complicit in the spread of sickness if someone else gets sick indirectly from my actions.  I am part of the problem.

Want to go further?  Every time I ignore the ways other people are mistreated, or deny even THAT they are mistreated, every time I am the priest or the Levite rather than the one who stops by the side of the road, I confirm, just as Paul said, that I am complicit in the brokenness of the whole system.  And every time I protest, “But I didn’t do that bad thing directly…” I should get the creepy chill down my back of realizing I am using the same bad defense as a mob boss or drug lord.  I am complicit—at the very least as a willing recipient of benefits from the dirty work that other people did—in a whole host of ills through history, yes, even including events that happened before my life, but which I stay quiet about now.

It includes slavery and segregation, as well as their modern heirs. It includes greed and exploitation of past generations of coal miners who did their jobs loyally for decades with little provision for their families if they got sick or killed in the mines, because customers didn’t want to pay a little bit more to ensure they had benefits.  It includes the kids working in sweatshops under awful conditions because I have been taught to believe that I have the right to cheap t-shirts and electronics.  Sure, I have never directly met any of those people, but I am complicit in the brokenness because I gladly accept the benefits of those arrangements like a mob boss raking in the bucks from his underlings’ exploits.  I am complicit.  We are complicit.  We are all part of the problem.

Now as bad as all of that news is, the flip side of that truth is deeply good news.  Because even as we are all bound up in the sins of one another, and even as I cause ripple effect harm to others from my actions and choices, that also means that Jesus’ free gift of life can be given to me as well, even though I have not earned it. Jesus’ grace, and the freedom and forgiveness he offers, are possible because of the same dynamic—that we are all bound up together in this thing called humanity.  And because Jesus, the human—in fact the Truly Human One—offers me all of his goodness, it is mine… and yours… and in fact all of ours.  “Therefore, just as one man’s trespass led to condemnation for all, so one man’s act of righteousness leads to justification and life for all.” 

There it is—we are all complicit. That is the truth.  But we are also all graced.  That is part of the same truth.  How will you and I face this day differently acknowledging both?

Lord Jesus, make us honest about the ways we are complicit in the hurts and brokenness of the world—and make us able to believe, too, that your righteousness is ours by the same interconnectedness.