Christ and La Cosa Nostra

Christ and La Cosa Nostra--May 2, 2019

"Do you not know that all of us who have been baptized into Christ Jesus were baptized into his death? Therefore we have been buried with him by baptism into death, so that, just as Christ was raised from the dead by the glory of the Father, so we too might walk in newness of life. For if we have been united with him in a death like his, we shall certainly be united with him in a resurrection like his. We know that our old self was crucified with him so that the body of sin might be destroyed, and we might no longer be enslaved to sin. For whoever has died is freed from sin. But if we have died with Christ, we believe that we will also live with him. We know that Christ, being raised from the dead, will never die again; death no longer has dominion over him. The death he died, he died to sin, once for all; but the life he lives, he lives to God. So you also must consider yourselves dead to sin and alive to God in Christ Jesus." [Romans 6:3-11]

Let's talk about organized crime for a moment.  (You know, like you do when you are thinking godly thoughts on an ordinary Thursday...)

In organized crime syndicates like the Mafia, drug cartels, racketeering rings, and other criminal enterprises, you usually have someone at the top of the crime family calling the shots, some enforcers underneath them, and then lower down on the criminal flow chart, the rank-and-file perps actually committing crimes.  The mob boss orders a murder, for example, but someone else pulls the trigger.  The kingpin issues an order for the drug money to be laundered, but it's some crooked accountant who actually cooks the books.  That sort of thing.

Now, for a long time that meant that there was a loophole in the law that allowed the Godfather-type figures at the top to escape prosecution by law enforcement.  The legal argument was went like this: "I didn't actually pull the trigger, so I can't be guilty of murder.  I didn't extort money myself, so I can't be charged." And as you can imagine, this was an unacceptable situation for police and the FBI.  So in 1970, Congress passed the Racketeer Influenced and Corrupt Organizations Act, or RICO, which said that anyone involved in a criminal enterprise could be charged for their participation, whether or not they were actually the ones carrying out the crimes.  The upshot of RICO was that the fate of the boss was at long last connected with the fate of the rest of the underlings in the crime family.

I know that may have seemed like a strange rabbit trail to go down, but that idea is worth holding onto.  If you were trying to bring down El Chapo, the notorious drug kingpin, it would be vital to know that you could use the connection between the boss and the street-level henchmen and dealers to bring down the head of the whole enterprise, like cutting the head off of the snake.  But what if the same idea worked in the other direction, too?  What if the head of the organization brought all of his fellow conspirators along with him?  What if the fate of the boss also took the underlings along?

I pose that question because it's not that far off the mark from how the apostle Paul sees things between us and Christ.  Jesus is the head of a vast divine conspiracy (we just usually call it "the Kingdom of God"), and he has drawn us into that conspiracy as his people.  And in baptism, we are tethered to him so that wherever he goes, we go.  He is the kingpin, so to speak, so that in his death, we all die... and in his resurrection, we all have "newness of life."  

Paul sees that as the assurance of our resurrection--we have been implicated with Jesus.  We share in his divine conspiracy in baptism.  And so just as sure as we can feel the water dripping from your forehead, you and I have been connected with Jesus' death and with his rising, too.  His death means our death, and his new life means resurrection for us as well.  And it means we don't have to live in the old patterns anymore.  We don't have to stay stuck ruled by fear, trapped in envy and avarice, haunted by old hatreds any longer.  We have been killed and raised because Jesus has gone through both, and now, almost like a Reverse RICO case, so that Jesus' resurrection really is good news for us, too, and not just for Jesus.

That not only gives us a grounds for hope in life beyond the grip of death for us, but it also reframes how we deal with living out this day right now, too.  We don't have to stay wallowing in the same old patterns and habits where we have been stuck before--what we usually call "sin." We don't have to stay in the old ruts of fear and hatred, of the tired "Me and My Group First" thinking that is slowly killing us.  We don't have to stay there at all--in fact, Paul says, we are already free from it except that we don't dare believe it is true.  We are joined to Christ, and we have been marked as conspirators in his operation.  We're his, after all, so whatever happens to him happens to us as well.

Today, how might it change your day to see yourself, not as a customer or consumer of religion, but as a conspirator with Jesus, joined in his enterprise to overturn the old powers and rulers of the day?  How might it change things for us to know that what Jesus has gone through, we are promised as well--taken from death to life and into new creation?

Lord Jesus, you have marked us as part of your movement in the waters of our baptism.  Let us live like we really are swept up into your Kingdom conspiracy for the sake of the world.