The word conspiracy comes from the Latin, conspirare, literally "to breathe together.”
This word has captured my imagination as a way to reflect upon what it means to be Church in these dangerous times. In modern parlance, conspiracy has taken on negative connotations. We speak of conspiracy theories and people who conspire together are often making secret plans to break the law. We speak of co-conspirators of a crime.
But the early followers of Jesus conspired together for good. In the midst of Roman occupied Palestine, they imagined a world of peace with justice that Jesus called the Basilea (Kingdom) of God. The Scriptures themselves, both Old and New Testaments, bear witness to communities that breathe together and that is especially true in the Book of Acts, where the Holy Spirit takes center stage.
Too often, the institutional Church has taken on a life of its own, separate and apart from its vocation to serve God and the world as the Body of Christ. But throughout Church History we have seen glimpses of communities that conspire in love. One such community was in Le Chambon-sur-Lyon in 1940s Nazi-occupied France. Many years ago, when I was still a young campus minister, I came across the extraordinary documentary by Pierre Sauvage, entitled Weapons of the Spirit. I believe that a new edition is currently in process and it could not be more timely, some thirty years later. But take a moment to watch this clip and you’ll get at least a taste for right now: https://vimeo.com/964775998?fl=pl&fe=sh
It is from their experience of being faithful in dangerous times that I first encountered the phrase, “a conspiracy of goodness." I remember being in Amsterdam and walking through the Anne Frank House and asking myself: would I have had the courage to make my house a sanctuary to such a family? If I were the pastor of a congregation in Le Chambon-sur-Lignon in the 1940s, would I have had the courage to risk preaching a sermon which might lead a parishioner to walk out because I had gotten too "political?" Even more scary, what if they were walking out not only with their pledge but to report me to the authorities?
These questions seem more timely today than ever before in my ministry, in my own context. They have been real questions throughout the twentieth-century in places like Central America and South Africa and Uganda. And they have been real questions much closer to home for people less privileged than I have been. But we have come to a time, I think, when we need all hands on deck.
In 2015, I attended the Jonathan Daniels Pilgrimage in Hayneville, Alabama, fifty years after Jonathan’s martyrdom. It was a powerful experience that I will never forget. During that time, I sat at a table at St. Paul’s Church in Selma, eating lunch with a man who was a member of the vestry who conspired with Jonathan Daniels and others to integrate that church at a time when 11 a.m on Sunday morning was the most segregated hour in America. He kept bringing it up at vestry meetings and it was voted down but he kept at it, month after month, until (like the persistent widow in Jesus' parable) he wore that vestry down and they finally voted yes.
I can't remember how many months it took, but I found myself wondering as I heard this story about if I had been the rector at that time, in that place. Would I have persisted with this vestry member, or tried to "keep the peace" with those who counseled, "these things take time?" Would I have had the stamina as each month passed, and my spouse politely asked, "how was work?" to not lose heart when the honest answer would have been, "well, we had the same vestry meeting, again, but we're still nowhere!" Or after it did finally pass and then the biggest pledger walked out, taking his pledge with him and creating a budget deficit: what then? These things happen as anyone who has ever led a congregation, ordained or lay, know all too well. Doing the right thing rarely leads to everyone cheering us on for having.
We do not start from scratch. We need to begin (again) to claim that great cloud of witnesses: those who resisted in Nazi Germany and those who resisted in the Jim Crowe south and those who resisted apartheid and those who resisted in Nicaragua and El Salvador and Uganda, often with their lives. It seems to me that we have some un-learning to do in many of our congregations in order to re-learn what it means to be part of a conspiracy of goodness.
Focusing in on those questions as we, once again, walk the way of the cross, is perhaps the most important invitation in the three holy days that now enfold us. To become an Easter people is to become witnesses to a conspiracy of goodness. The foot-washing and the last supper and the events that lead to death on a cross and the empty tomb all require that we become more than passive bystanders, but active witnesses who conspire with God and with one another to become an Easter people. Ultimately we will again be in that Upper Room when the risen Christ comes to be among a frightened group of disciples, to breathe new life into them.
Breathe on us, Breath of God! Fill us with life anew. Breathe on us and show us how to conspire together for good and for love of this world that you so love.
