Building Solidarity and Being Neighbors (the Jesus Way)
The call to build solidarity and learn what it means to be neighbors has never felt more urgent in my lifetime than it feels now.
If I could boil down my desire for our churches and communities into one word, I think it would be: solidarity. With a few more words, I would say, The joint task of building solidarity with God and neighbor.
Really, I wish I could simply say "being neighbors," but unfortunately for us the word "neighbor" has lost a lot of its meaning. For many of us, being a neighbor is a happy accident, and doesn't necessarily mean any relationship at all. We can easily go in and out of our garages and never meet. And increasingly, even the friendships that we do have only happen by convenience.
Certainly, when we think of "being a neighbor" we don't have in mind the teachings of Jesus, like the Good Samaritan. We usually don't mean loving someone like we would love ourselves. We don't mean getting down in the ditch with a wounded person and risking ourselves in an unsafe, vulnerable place. We don't mean dressing their wounds and putting them on our own donkey, and paying for their care out of our own expenses. We also don't think about the fact that if we don't forgive others, our Father won't forgive us, or that what we do to the least of these, we've done to him. And we definitely don't think of this neighbor love in terms of people like Samaritans (or if we're Christians today, maybe Muslims).
But when Jesus talks about being a neighbor, this is the solidarity he means. Solidarity doesn't mean that I have the same exact burdens you do (that wouldn’t be possible anyway). It also doesn't mean that I always have the ability to fix your problem. But it means that I'm willing to bear your burden with you, and so fulfill the law of Christ (Gal. 6:2). And of course, if I have it in my power to help you like I would want to be helped, I will.
But even if I can't fix it, I will still be in solidarity. I will continue to weep with the one who weeps until I can ease their pain, or until God intervenes. I will represent your cause and advocate where I can, so that you know you’re not alone. And when we see his liberation, we will rejoice together.
But the point is I’m not leaving. I’m not leaving because I can’t fix it—because the situation really touches on my own vulnerability and need to have control and power, because I don’t like to feel helpless. I can’t make your burden my own completely, but I can share it with you. I can love you, even as I love myself. I can do for you what I wish others would do for me.
And above all, I can do for you what Jesus has done for us. He did not count equality with God a thing to be controlled or held onto. Instead, he humbled himself and took the form of a servant. He came to be in solidarity with humankind in the most radical of ways—by becoming a child of humankind himself, and carrying everything that we carry. He even became the brokenness of the world, so that in him, we could become the wholeness and righteousness of God.
Jesus also didn’t wait for anyone to join up with his movement in order for them to experience his solidarity. For some reason, a lot of Christians still try to say that when Jesus said “the least of these” he really only meant other Christians, even though the parable of the Good Samaritan completely blows that out of the water, and even though “while we were still enemies, Jesus died for us (Rom. 5:6-10).”
The Samaritans of Jesus day were considered somewhat connected, but still essentially people of another faith, much like Christians might think of Muslims today. Like Jews and Samaritans, we share some scriptures (but not all) and have a common belief in one God, many of the same prophets, etc. But Jesus doesn’t even tell his fellow Jews that they need to love the outsider. He goes way further—Jesus chooses a religious outsider as the example of what it means to be a neighbor.
And yet many of us struggle to have solidarity with the people we sit in church with because we differ on politics! Most of us don’t even experience solidarity within our own community. We don’t know who will carry our burdens with us. We don’t know who can hold space, who is willing to cry with us. We too feel nervous and vulnerable about the things we can’t fix, and even more vulnerable about inviting someone else into it. But God wants to meet us in our ditches and our wounds too. And often, he comes to us in unexpected ways, in the form of a stranger, or even a would-be enemy.
We can start with building solidarity where we’re at, and asking how we can have better solidarity within our community through things like the four principles. But even if we have a long way to go on that part, we don’t have to wait on building it with outsiders either. In fact, sometimes God teaches us how to build solidarity with one another, when we follow his call for solidarity with the Other—the wounded, oppressed, marginalized, widow, orphan, and even enemy.
In the end, as we embark on a spiritual journey of solidarity with neighbor, we will also find deeper solidarity with God, too, because we’re joining him in the work he’s already about, and agreeing to meet him where he’s at. We are becoming like Jesus, and moving toward the fulfillment of his promise that we would be one, even as he and the Father are one (John 17:22).
