Peace is the Fruit of Solidarity

Amos 6:1a, 4-7; Psalm 146

1 Timothy 6:6-19; Luke 16:19-31

Solidarity is more than an idealistic principle; it is a basic moral value demonstrated in the incarnation and shown through the teaching and ministry of Jesus. Solidarity in practice are means that we love and serve of neighbor as ourselves.

In 1945, after millions of men and women had been killed in World War II, forty-five war-weary nations met in San Francisco in order to bring a more lasting peace. They gathered to enshrine in treaty and law the organization of the United Nations, successor to the failed League of Nations. At the meeting, Great Britain’s representative, Sir Anthony Eden, gave the introduction, offering this shattering conclusion, “This may be the world’s last chance.”

In 1961, sixteen years after the founding of the United Nations, during what would be labelled the Cuban Missile Crisis, as nuclear war was threatening, President John Fitzgerald Kennedy addressed the General Assembly of the same United Nations. He made this plea: “Together we shall save our planet, or together we shall perish in its flames.”

In 1981, thirty-six years after its founding, the United Nations would establish the International Day of Peace to be honored on the September 21, the opening day of the UN General Assembly and the date of the autumnal equinox. In its declaration, the United Nations held that “Peace Day should be devoted to commemorating and strengthening the ideals of peace both within and among all nations.” At the same time, the International Day of Peace would be a day of ceasefire, a day for making peace in both personal relationships and the larger conflicts of our time.

Peace is the fruit of Solidarity

John Paul II, bishop of Rome, once commented, “Peace is the fruit of Solidarity” (Sollicitudo Rei Socialis, # 568).

People are, I think, essential social beings. Regardless of faith or religious practice, there seems an instinctive bond between human beings – a bond that surpasses kilt and kin, religion and nation, extending to the whole human family. This is what is meant by solidarity. It is a bond that is more than a vague compassion or shallow distress for others; rather, it is a deep commitment to the common good – the good of all because we are responsible for all. The author of the letter to the Ephesians speaks of solidarity when he indicates that we are “members one of anther. that we are all “members one of another” (Ephesians 4:25). The opposites of solidarity are the things that cause disruption in the common good: inequality, discrimination, exploitation, oppression, and selfishness.

Solidarity is a value that requires the Church to defend human rights, demand peace, and seek justice. Solidarity demands that all people have a fundamental right to safety and security, food and water, self-determination in governance and religion, and independence from tyranny and oppression.

Solidarity spans generations and eras, running through time to link us to our past and our future. It is the principle that makes us care about 18th slavery and its remnant racial injustices. It’s the principle that makes us care about the impact of floods on the people of Pakistan in 2010, northern Europe in 2014, and Louisiana in 2016. It’s the principle that makes us care about the impact of climate change on our children and grandchildren.

Peace is the fruit of Solidarity

The current bishop of Rome, Francis, has echoed John Paul II when he says that we must abandon our “globalization of indifference.” In His message on the World Day of Peace, “We are related to all our brothers and sisters, for whom we are responsible and with whom we act in solidarity. Lacking this relationship, we would be less than human. We see, then, how indifference represents a menace to the human family.”

Francis says something that we perhaps can welcome more readily at Christmastime or Lent than during this Ordinary Time after Pentecost as we await the coming of Autumn.

It was, after all, at Christmas that the “Word became flesh, and dwelt among us.” For Christians, the heart of solidarity is the life of Jesus. Our Christian story is one of God’s ultimate solidarity with us. Through the incarnation, God demonstrated solidarity with humanity by becoming one of us. This is the historical reality of our faith. But Jesus solidarity didn’t end with the incarnation. No, Jesus solidarity brought him all the way to Calvary and the cross where he demonstrated the utmost love for his human family by dying. Then, he was raised from the dead and in that we have solidarity with God. Solidarity is thus lifted beyond the mundane, beyond merely fellowship to something altogether mystical and eternal.

Moreover, we know that we, all of us, made in the image and likeness of God, loving our neighbor becomes both an act of solidarity with our neighbor as well as an act of solidarity with God. Every act of solidarity, understood in this light, becomes an act of communion with God; an action in which we transmit and reflect the love with which God loves both the person who is object of the action and with which we love God. This ability to recognize God in every person and to recognize every person in God is necessary for authentic human development. Our belief in this and our faith as Christians draws us ever more strongly into a state of unity with each other and with God.

Francis continued his message on Peace Day by asking, “Today the question has to be asked: Who is responsible for the blood of these brothers and sisters of ours? Nobody! That is our answer: It isn’t me; I don’t have anything to do with it; it must be someone else, but certainly not me. Yet God is asking each of us: ‘Where is the blood of your brother which cries out to me?’”

And we respond, far to often, “Am I my brother’s keeper?” No one feels responsible. We have lost a sense of responsibility for our brothers and sisters, falling into the hypocrisy of priest and Levite as walked by on the other side of the road. Perhaps we say to ourselves: ‘Poor soul…!,’ But then we go on our way. It’s not our responsibility. We feel reassured and assuaged by our nuanced intentions. I think that this is perhaps the result of our culture of comfort, which has made us lazy and selfish, insensitive to the cries of the poor. We might get on a soap box every once in a while but that is fleeting and insubstantial and an empty illusion which results in yet more indifference.

And in our globalized world, our personal indifference has become a globalized indifference. We have become used to the suffering of others. But have we wept? Have we grieved for the death of our brothers and sisters? Have we wept for the persons on the boat that capsized in the Mediterranean? Have we wept for the victims of the bombing in Aleppo (which is in Syria, by the way)? Have we wept young mothers carrying their babies across the hot Sonoran dessert? ….for the men looking for a means of supporting their families?

Have we forgotten how to weep? Have we forgotten how Jesus suffered with us and how there is no greater love than to lay down your live for another? Let us ask the Lord for the grace to weep, to weep over the cruelty of our world and the indifference of our own hearts.”

Woe to Zion

“Woe to the complacent in Zion, those who feel secure … lying upon beds of ivory!,” Amos said to the people of Israel.

Perhaps these are harsh words but they were harsh times with a harsh people. The prophet Amos speaks to a people who have forgotten the covenant – who have forgotten their duty to live in solidarity with God and with each other, including the poor and outcast. These words were spoken by Amos to a people 2700 years ago yet they warn us today about the dangers that we face. Amos warns us about our complacency, about relying on our own comfort, and about what lies in our hearts.

This is the same message as Jesus shares in the gospel today. The rich man was clothed in purple clothes. No cloth was more expensive than that dyed purple. Purple dye was only affordable by the very rich or by Roman officials and patricians. The rich man dined sumptuously. Lazarus lay at the entrance to the rich man’s house. He was covered in sores; sores that even the dogs wouldn’t lick. Did he have leprosy, the most feared disease of the ancient world? Dogs love to lick scratches and wounds, but not these. Like the Lebanese woman in another incident, he wanted to “gather up the crumbs under the table.” The rich man swept past this grotesque “scum of the earth” until one day Lazarus was gone; he was dead.

There is something about the rich man that strikes me as odd. He has no name. The poor man is named but the rich man in the Gospel has no name, he is simply ‘a rich man.’ This might be because his possessions, material things became his identity. Those “things” are his face; he has nothing else. Indeed, whenever material things, money, worldliness, become the center of our lives, they take hold of us, they possess us; we lose our very identity as human beings.

But how does something like this happen? How do some people, perhaps ourselves included, become self-absorbed, finding security in material things that ultimately they rob us of our identity, rob us of our human face? This is, first of all, what happens when we no longer remember God and the image of God in our brothers and sisters. If we don’t think about God, everything ends up being about “me.” Life, the world, other people, all of these become unreal, and they no longer matter. When we no longer remember God and the divine image, we become unreal, ourselves, becoming empty like the rich man in the Gospel, no longer with an identity!

The solution to this, then, is to remember God and God’s image, rediscovering who we really are and who others are. Jesus wants us to overcome our apathy toward others, our indifference, our neglect, our lack of responsibility. Jesus wants us to love like he loves. He is never indifferent to us. He never forgets us. He forsook his throne to come down to show us the way because each of us is infinitely valuable to him. He wants to help us to learn how to love others in this same way.

There has been a story trending on Facebook and elsewhere in the news of Alex, a six-year old boy from New York, who wrote a letter to President Obama to ask te president to bring Omran Daqneesh to his house. Daqneesh is a five-year old Syrian boy who was shown covered in blood and dust in the back of an ambulance, an image of which went viral after an airstrike on Aleppo this summer. Alex, the boy from New York, wrote the letter to President Obama in August, telling the president to please go get Daqneesh and bring him to his house. Alex said that he would be waiting with flags, flowers, and balloons. “We will give him a family,” wrote Alex, “and he will be our brother.”

Will we respond like Cain, “Am I my brother’s keeper?” Or will we respond in solidarity like Alex, “He will be our brother!”

Peace is the fruit of Solidarity. Amen.