Earlier today, in light of the breaking news, Fr Kenneth Tanner lamented the fact that our laws and law enforcers failed to bring about justice for Breonna Taylor and her family, a failure which he rightly identified as “an indictment of our society.” He concluded his brief post with these words, which I think strike to the heart of the matter: “We are all guilty. And our guilt remains until we insist this state of affairs is unacceptable.” Unsurprisingly, not everyone agreed with Fr Kenneth’s comments. Also, unsurprisingly, some responses to his post were astonishingly rude, even vile. But what actually captured my attention was a particular challenge to the very notion of “vicarious responsibility.”
Of course, we all know that many American Christians have a difficult time imagining—much less admitting—the possibility of collective guilt and mutual answerability before God. The question is, how can we recover the biblical and theological framework necessary for making sense of such realities? What does the gospel teach us about “vicarious responsibility”? And what, if anything, does that mean for our response to Breonna Taylor’s tragic death and other such miscarriages of justice?
I’m convinced, first and foremost, that our understanding of “vicarious responsibility” must be rooted in what we believe about who Christ is and what he has accomplished in his mediation. As Miroslav Volf has said, Christ’s substitution is inclusive, not exclusive. And, as Fr John Behr explained in class today, this is what John’s Gospel means when it says that all things come to pass in Jesus (Jn 1: 30-4). Bonhoeffer, reflecting on Pilate’s presentation of Jesus (Jn 19:5), makes the point with characteristic sharpness and force:
Ecco homo—behold God become human, the unfathomable mystery of the love of God for the world. Jesus is not a human being but the human being. What happens to him happens to human beings. It happens to all and therefore to us. The name of Jesus embraces in itself the whole of humanity and the whole of God... In Jesus Christ, the one who became human was crucified and is risen; humanity has become new. What happened to Christ has happened for all, for he was the human being. The new human being has been created.
This truth is at the very heart of the gospel: what happens to Christ happens to all. And the reverse is also true: he takes personally whatever happens to us. That is why what we do or fail to do to and for the least of these, we do or fail to do to and for him. This is the truth that knocks Paul to the ground on the road to Damascus.
The good news is that in assuming vicarious responsibility for others, we not only acknowledge what Christ has done for us and who he is to us, we also participate in him and his work. And we do this in order to free others to be themselves, loving them just as we have been loved. In other words, we do not act in their place but on their behalf. Thus, taking responsibility for others does not mean we take away their personal responsibility before God to others. Just the opposite, in fact: it means we recognize and accept our calling to help them fulfill their calling, supporting them as they learn how to rise up into the full flourishing of their freedom as persons made in the image of God revealed in the face of Jesus Christ. As St Paul teaches the Galatians, we can bear our own loads only if we help others bear their burdens (Gal. 6:2, 5). Or, as he instructs the Corinthians, “We are convinced that one has died for all; therefore all have died" (2 Cor. 5:14). Knowing this, we find ourselves borne along by his love, pressed by his Spirit, so that we cannot not give our lives for others in the same way he gave and gives his life for us. Again, in the apostle’s words, “Christ died for all, so that those who live might live no longer for themselves, but for him who died and was raised for them” (2 Cor. 5:15).
Given that what I have just said is true, then “vicarious responsibility” names the only way in which it is possible for us to do justice while loving mercy and walking humbly before our God. As John Zizioulas warns us, if and when we forget that in Christ we are answerable to and for everyone, then we inevitably fall into acting like “individuals” instead of living as “persons.” The prophets call Israel back, again and again, to the vicarious responsibilities imposed on them by the terms of the covenant. And it is this covenantal reciprocity, this intercessory and cooperative form of life, that the apostles call “love.” Pilate, the individual, washes his hands of responsibility for others. Jesus, the truly human person, the one in whom we find ourselves, washes the feet of those who betray him.
Breonna Taylor, 26, was killed in her home by Louisville police officers in the early morning hours of March 13, 2020. In the same city, almost exactly 62 years before, the middle-aged Thomas Merton had his life-altering epiphany:
In Louisville, at the corner of Fourth and Walnut, in the center of the shopping district, I was suddenly overwhelmed with the realization that I loved all those people, that they were mine and I theirs, that we could not be alien to one another even though we were total strangers. It was like waking from a dream of separateness, of spurious self-isolation in a special world, the world of renunciation and supposed holiness…
“They were mine and I theirs…” We all have to have this same awakening. We have to die to what Merton called “the heresy of individualism.” We have to come alive to our bound-together-ness, which was accomplished for us in Christ and realized in us as we are immersed in him and commune with him. To put it bluntly, the gospel insists we acknowledge that what happened to Breonna happened to Jesus. Her death is taken up in his; therefore, we cannot hope to share his life if we do not care about her death and care for all those affected by it—in the same way that he does. After all, the only love we have to give is the love we have received.
In his New Seeds of Contemplation, written only a few years after his experience in downtown Louisville, Merton concludes: “in order to find myself I must go out of myself, and in order to live I have to die.” Tonight, the going out required of us is an identification with Breonna in her death, an entry into the righteous grief and anger of those who loved her, a readiness to accept that we do in fact answer for what has happened to her and what will happen in the wake of this tragedy. As Fr Kenneth said, our guilt remains until we refuse to accept this state of affairs. And the good news is we do not have to accept it, because, in spite of everything, nothing is impossible for our God.
Thank you for this amazing perspective!
Posted by: Kathy Swope Beebe | October 04, 2020 at 09:44 AM
Tears as I read...
Posted by: Reba Rambo | September 26, 2020 at 07:48 AM