“Songs for the Road #14: Unity”
Psalm 133, Ephesians 4: 1 – 6
Brotherly Unity?
Psalm 133 talks about brothers (and sisters!) getting along and enjoying a sense of unity. Well, I grew up as an only child and so I never had brothers and sisters. I don’t know from experience what it’s like. I can think of a story from my family about two of my uncles who didn’t speak for years because of a family conflict. I know of other family conflicts, too, that have kept brothers and sisters apart for years. Of course, most of you know what it’s like to have brothers and sisters. And most of you know, too, that, in the words of our psalm, it’s not always “very good and pleasant.” Brothers and sisters disagree, argue, fight, and sometimes fail to get along. There’s conflict. Whenever there’s more than one person in the room, there’s potential for conflict.
We see the same thing in Scripture. Look at the first two brothers: Cain and Abel. Cain actually killed his brother. He told God that he wasn’t his brother’s keeper—but of course we know he was supposed to be. Look at Jacob and Esau—two brothers who were at odds with one another from birth to adulthood. We see stories in Scripture of brother set against brother. I think of Joseph and his brothers—the only kind of unity we see between them is when the rest of them agree to get rid of Joseph!
So we have our experience and we have what Scripture tells us. Both seem to confirm the same thing: brothers and sisters do not always get along. And more than that, they sometimes seek to harm one another. But of course, thankfully our experience is balanced, quite often, by the opposite experience. There are also times of harmony. Differences are put aside. Jacob and Esau meet again after years of separation and reconcile. After rising to top of the political establishment in Egypt, Joseph has the chance to reveal himself to his brothers and then, as Scripture tells us, “he kissed all his brothers and wept upon them.” And maybe in those moments, when there is a sense of peace and unity, we truly understand why Psalm 133 calls this “very good and pleasant.”
“How very good and pleasant it is”
I don’t know Hebrew, so what I’m about to say is something of a guess. Well, it’s partly a guess. My conclusion is true, but my evidence might not support the conclusion! Notice how Psalm 133:1 says that living together in unity is “very good.” What does that remind you of? It reminds me of the beginning of Genesis when God is creating the world and He finishes by making humanity—and what does He say? “God saw everything that he made, and indeed, it was very good.”
These may or may not be the same Hebrew words that we have in Psalm 133—and if they are, we are being told I think, that dwelling together in unity is how God made us. Dwelling together in unity is God’s intention for us. He made us for one another. Now, whether or not the Hebrew supports my conclusion, I think my conclusion is still valid: God made us to live in unity.
No wonder, then, that it is pleasant to live in unity—what could give greater pleasure than living according to how God made us? Where there is unity amongst God’s people, we are dwelling on the doorsteps of heaven.
“Like the precious oil . . . running down upon the beard”
Our psalm uses two great images to describe what this unity is like, and the first is of pouring oil on your head and letting it run down over your face, and onto your clothes. “Well,” maybe you think, “that just sounds messy!” But we’re not obviously expected to pour oil over each other. The image can be seen perhaps as an image of hospitality—but I dare you to try this on a houseguest, family or not!
The more likely meaning of this image is that of consecration. The oil is the kind used to anoint people for particular forms of service. Kings and priests were anointed—and here it is Aaron the priest that is being anointed. Being anointed means being set apart for the service of God on behalf of the rest of God’s people; it means being consecrated. Being set apart meant that something was made holy and was to be used for God’s purposes. The oil is also a symbol of God’s presence and His Spirit.
So what does this have to do with unity?
In our passage only Aaron is consecrated. Not everyone in Israel was a priest—only the Levites were anointed for this special task. But that is not true in the church. Each of us is consecrated, and when we believed in Christ Jesus as our Lord and Saviour each of us was set apart and filled with God’s Spirit to serve. Peter calls the church “a holy priesthood” and a “royal priesthood.” We are all priests. Every one of us is a priest just like Aaron.
This creates unity because we are all priests to one another. Each of us needs help to walk in the way of Jesus. We serve one another through encouragement, prayer, fellowship, and service. We are called to confess our sins to one another. We are called to reassure one another of Christ’s forgiveness. We are called to represent the truth of the gospel to one another and we can only do this together.
Dietrich Bonhoeffer, in his book Life Together, says “The Christian needs another Christian who speaks God’s Word to him. He needs him again and again when he becomes uncertain and discouraged, for by himself he cannot help himself without belying the truth. He needs his brother man as a bearer and proclaimer of the divine word of salvation. He needs his brother solely because of Jesus Christ. The Christ in his own heart is weaker than the Christ in the word of his brother; his own heart is uncertain, his brother’s is sure.”
So we need one another. We are united in our need for one another. None of us is complete in Christ alone. Being Christ to one another is in part what it means to be priests to one another. And when we do this, when we are priests for one another, helping each other in the way of Jesus, it is, as Psalm 133 tells us, “very good and pleasant.”
“Like the dew of Hermon, which falls on the mountains . . .”
The second image Psalm 133 is in verse 3: “It is like the dew of Hermon, which falls on the mountains of Zion.” Mount Hermon, located in the north some 200km from Jerusalem, was known for its abundant dew. If you were to find yourself spending the night on Mount Hermon, you would wake and find yourself drenched with dew in the morning. Dew comes every morning. It’s a sign of a new day. Every day brings with it new beginnings and fresh starts. A new day brings with hopes and expectations about what God is going to do. A new morning dew is a sign of renewal.
We read this is Lamentations 3:22, 23: “The steadfast love of the Lord never ceases, his mercies never come to an end; they are new every morning.” I like how the Message puts this passage from Lamentations: “God’s loyal love couldn’t have run out, his merciful love couldn’t have dried up. They’re created new every morning.” It really draws out the image of a morning dew. Just like the dew arrives fresh and abundant each day on Mount Hermon, God’s mercies arrive fresh every day.
Isaiah’s prayer in 33:2: “O Lord, be gracious to us; we wait for you. Be our arm every morning.” We wait for the morning and for the dew which covers the ground as God’s mercy which covers us. Isaiah 26:19 says: “Your dew is like the dew of the morning.” Another translation says: “For your dew is a radiant dew.”
This is an image of unity because just as each day is a fresh start and sign of God’s abundant, life-giving mercy, so too we can have a fresh start with one another. Joseph knew that morning dew when he finally revealed himself to his brothers and they wept together. For Jacob it came when he was finally reconciled with Esau and he finally turned an enemy and opponent into a brother. Such a morning is something we all wait for—for such a morning is really a waiting for the Lord himself to arrive and be present amongst us, in our fellowship, in our worship, in our community.
It’s also an image of unity because we never know what God is going to do the next day—each day fresh dew is on the mountain. Each day God is going to do something new with you and with me, and with our brothers and sisters. As brothers and sisters in Christ, we’re called to live in expectation about what God is going to do with us. We live in hope. We wake each day knowing that God has a purpose and a plan for all of us. Have you ever begun a day wondering how God is going to be at work in a fellow Christian, excited at the possibilities?
Eugene Peterson puts it this way: “Important in any community of faith is an ever-renewed sense of expectation in what God is doing with our brothers and sisters in the faith. A community of faith flourishes when we view each other with this expectancy, wondering what God will do today in this one, in that one. When we are in a community with those Christ loves and redeems, we are constantly finding out new things about them. They are new persons each morning, endless in their possibilities.”
How good is it when brothers and sisters live together in unity? It is like the dew on Mount Hermon, fresh with hope and alive with possibility each morning. And if we allow ourselves to be aware of the newness of God’s mercies and to expect that God is always at work among us doing new things, then we will truly experience a sense of unity.
“For there the Lord ordained his blessing, life forevermore.”
And when we experience this sense of unity, we also know something of what the blessedness of eternal life will really be like. When we taste unity amongst ourselves, we also get a little taste of heaven. In part this is what Psalm 133 means when it closes with the words: “For there the Lord ordained his blessing, life forevermore.” Where relationships are defined by mercy and forgiveness, love and grace, hope and expectation, it is there that the “Lord ordained his blessing, life forevermore.”
This is what our unity is like. This is what the experience of unity at its best is about. It’s a unity based on our one God. His oneness—which hear in Deut. 6:4: “Hear O Israel: The Lord our God, the Lord is one”—should be reflected in our oneness. This is why Paul says what he does in Ephesians 4:1 – 6. In a confession much like the one in Deuteronomy, Paul says “There is one body and one Spirit, just as you were called to the one hope of your calling, one Lord, one faith, one baptism, one God and Father of all, who is above all and through all and in all.”
For this reason Paul says that the Ephesians should be “making every effort to maintain the unity of the Spirit in the bond of peace.” And how do we do this? To turn to Paul again, “with all humility and gentleness, with patience, bearing with one another in love.” God has called us to be priests to one another; we are each called to be holy and are set apart to serve one another. We are called to be expectant and hopeful about what God is going to do with each fresh morning—how will He renew us once again by His mercy? How can I show love and kindness to my brother or sister in Christ? How can I help them to walk in the ways of Jesus?
When we started, we looked at the words “very good,” and how it is “very good and pleasant” when brothers and sisters in Christ live in unity. This is how God made us; this has been His purpose for us from before the foundations of the earth. In Ephesians 1:4 says that God “chose us in Christ before the foundation of the world to be holy and blameless before him in love.” God has had this purpose for us before there was even a world in which we would love. It’s God’s purpose for us as we make our way in this world; and it’s also the hope that we share knowing that “there the Lord ordained his blessing, life forevermore.” How “very good and pleasant” it will be when we enter that life forevermore—and how very good and pleasant it is when we can know something of that life even today when, because of our one Lord, we can through one Spirit “live together in unity.” So, like Paul says, let us make every effort to do just that.
