Solidarity

From Helen 

Recently Ian and I went to one of our favourite places – Liverpool. We don’t like it just because of the football, although that helps. Regardless of your sports allegiance or otherwise you will not fail to have picked up on the decision of unlawful killing in the Hillsborough inquest this week. 

96 people went to see a football match in the Hillsborough stadium on 15thApril 1989 and died, now 27 years later the families of those who lost loved ones have been able to hear the words that it was an unlawful killing. 

There has been a lot of news coverage but the one thing that has stood out for me was a comment on Sky News that the people of Liverpool were experiencing solidarity with the families of the 96. 

Solidarity is an interesting emotion and action, it is about standing together and it is about what makes us united. 

There was once a group of well meaning tourists who went to Morocco and wanted to buy some pots. As soon as they stepped into the marketplace they were bombarded by people trying to sell them pots. The merchants were acting in their normal way and coming up close to people to try and bargain with them. The tourists, understandably perhaps, found this incredibly rude and so left in a hurry and got back on their tour bus, apart from one woman who was the last one to try to get to the bus, she had a new pot. As she went towards the bus there were angry merchants shouting at the tourists for not even trying to work out a price with them, and they were blocking the way for this woman to get to the bus. One merchant shouted out, ‘leave her be, she is one of us.’ By this the merchant meant that the woman had played the game correctly, she had bargained with the merchants, she had been respectful and as a result she had bought a new pot. 

These merchants felt a solidarity with the woman because she had been like one of the locals, she knew what to do.

In our readings this morning we heard about solidarity, we heard about people trying to understand one another. In the reading from the book of Acts (16:9-15) we heard of the first believers stepping out from all they knew to share the good news with others.

An angel appeared to Paul in a dream sending him to somewhere completely different to what he knew. 

Paul going to Macedonia and other places on the way would have been thrust into a different culture, a different language, different ways of believing perhaps. He went and all he knew was that he was going to spread the good news of Jesus and as he did this he would be offering solidarity to the fellow believers out there. 

Phoebe whom he met in Phillipi offered solidarity, the solidarity of faith as she and her household were baptised. It was through baptism and acceptance of Jesus that she gained solidarity with Paul. Her background was not important the obvious differences with Paul, as he was an outsider, didn’t matter as they shared something. That something was faith, Phoebe’s confession of belief and her baptism made her part of the family of God.

In the gospel reading (John 14:23-29) we heard of Jesus offering the disciples peace and the promise of the Holy Spirit and this was solidarity as well. The disciples had walked with Jesus, they had seen amazing things and now they were being given the Holy Spirit, the comforter who would help them after Jesus ascended. They had unity, they had solidarity. 

We have solidarity and unity with people across the world.  Whenever I conduct a baptism I remind people that the child to be baptised will be joining the family of God throughout the world. As baptised Christians we are part of the worldwide Church, we are part of the family of God. This means that we have solidarity with Christians in the U.S., in Australia, in Jerusalem, in Baghdad, in Syria, in Afghanistan and lots of other places. We have solidarity with the Christians who can easily profess their faith and we have solidarity with those who are being persecuted for their faith.

Solidarity as part of a family means being there for each other and to be honest it is hard to envisage what this means for those who are being persecuted, but we are to be there for them. How do we do this? Well, we can support charities that work with persecuted Christians, we can pray for our brothers and sisters throughout the world. We can stand up for the rights of all those treated harshly,and as we approach elections quickly we can look at the candidates and see how they are involved in helping others. 

We have a huge responsibility and in the same way that Paul was called to leave everything that he knew and step out into the unknown, so we are called to think of those less fortunate than ourselves, to think of and pray for those who suffer. 

The way we can best have solidarity is to remember our own promises to Jesus, to seek to be more like Him and to remember that we are part of a huge family, and that family needs us all to help and to love. AMEN