I think we can all agree that unity is good and pleasant.
I think we can also agree that it is rare!
If you come from a big family, you may well think that the words 'brothers' and 'unity' don’t belong in the same sentence. Brothers fight. Sisters fight. Sibling rivalry is alive and well in most families. Take a look at the first Biblical account of two brothers living together – Cain and Abel - and you soon discover that it ends in murder.
And much of world history shows that we keep repeating the same mistakes we made in Eden. We struggle with our brothers, we make war on our brothers, we exploit our brothers. Again and again and again.
But fortunately, there is one bastion of hope in all of this. The Church. You never get any disputes or fall outs in the church! In the church, the peace of Christ reigns and people live in perpetual harmony.
Aye right.
There’s a story about a woman who went to visit an institution for the criminally insane and she was shocked to see that there were only 3 guards supervising 100 dangerous inmates.
“Don’t you worry that these guys will band together and overpower you?” she asked one of the guards.
“Don’t worry about that,” the guard smiled. “Lunatics never unite.”
If you know much about Church History, you might conclude that the Church is full of Lunatics. You don’t need to be an Historian to see that the church also has a hard time with unity. The sheer range of denominations and schismatic groups in our part of the world is a vivid testimony to that.
And even within our own little sub-groups, many Christians still fail to get along. In congregations all across the World, people are quarrelling and quibbling. It seems almost impossible for Church folk to learn to live together in unity.
And our only saving grace is that it has ever been thus. We tend to look at the early church through rose coloured lenses and imagine it to have been some kind of utopian community.
But when you actually read the New Testament letters, you discover that nearly every one of them was written in response to difficulties and disputes within the church. There were factions, there were scandals, there were power-struggles. Read the book of Acts and you discover that even the luminaries of the early church, St Paul and St Peter, fell out at times.
Whether inside the church or outside the church, it’s a given that people will often struggle to get on with one another. Charles Schultz put it brilliantly in the words of his Peanuts character Linus:
“I Love Mankind. It’s People I Can’t Stand”.
And the problem with churches is that they’re full of people! People who think differently, want to worship differently, are socially or culturally different. It’s easy to say we love mankind in general. It’s very hard to love people in particular, especially when we differ with them.
But that’s what we’re called to. For the sake of the world, and the Kingdom of God, the church is called to pursue unity.
The difference between the world and the church isn’t that the world has fights and struggles and the church doesn’t, The difference is in how we deal with the fights and struggles when they come along. In the midst of our disputes, we in the church are called to pursue unity. It’s difficult! But how good and pleasant it is, the Psalmist says, when we achieve some measure of it.
Today’s Psalm gives us two word-pictures to show what Unity is like. Verse 2 says
"It is like precious oil poured on the head, running down on the beard, running down on Aaron’s beard, down upon the collar of his robes".
That image is a snapshot of the day when Aaron – Moses brother - was first anointed as High Priest over the new nation of Israel. The oil that was poured over his head would have contained several strong spices: myrrh, cinnamon, calamus, and cassia, all blended together in a base of Olive Oil.
Now I don’t know when you last had your head doused in oil, but put yourself in Aaron’s shoes for a moment. How would he have felt, apart from wet and sticky?
He’s being blessed, isn’t he? Treated with dignity and respect. Something precious and expensive is being poured out on him, not just for his sake, but so the whole community can be ministered to through him. He’s never known anything like this – it’s profoundly moving. His body will carry the aroma from this experience for days if not weeks; his clothes will carry it for longer.
And there’s something delightfully wrong about what’s happening to him! You don’t pour a pint of aromatic oil over someone’s head, and you certainly don’t do it while they’re fully clothed. Think of the dry cleaning issues!
Performing the ceremony in that way says something. It says that grace is profligate; it’s unmerited; it’s determined to bless, and won’t be deterred by convention.
That, says the Psalmist, is a picture of the unity that should mark out the people of God.
How would it be, if in the middle of our disputes, we resolved not to go the way of the world, and instead decided to treat one another with dignity and respect? To pour out the precious, expensive commodities of our time, our listening and our patience on the other, even if we feel them to be undeserving of them.
How would it feel to bless someone in that way? Or to receive that blessing, when all you were expecting was more confrontation or criticism? It would surprise you. It might even change you.
“Aye, but they’re not living that way, God!"
“So what?” says God. "That’s their story, not yours. I’m talking to you right now. Maybe you’re the one I want to lead the way, and take the first step. Maybe it’s your example that will make all the difference."
Paul Negrut, the President of the Romanian Evangelical Alliance tells of a man who spent 17 years in prison under the Communist Regime for being a Christian.
Paul went to visit him one evening and arrived just as the secret police were leaving, and the man’s face was bloody and bruised from the beating they’d just dished out. Paul was furious, but his friend said “We’re not here to complain, Paul. We’re here to praise God. Let’s pray together.” So they knelt and prayed, and though Paul was so angry he was tongue-tied, his friend made up for it.
He prayed for the secret police, for the Communist Party, for those who had beaten him up. He asked God’s forgiveness for them, God’s blessing on them and God’s love to be poured out on their families.” Paul said he had never heard anyone pray for his enemies with such love.
After they’d prayed, his friend told him that the secret police came twice a week to torture him, and every time they came he looked into the eyes of the man who was beating him up and said “Sir, if we see each other before the throne of judgment, and if you are eternally lost, I want you to know that it is not because I hate you. It will be because you have rejected Jesus’ love and my love”.
Some time later, that policeman came back to the house on his own, but this time it wasn’t to dish out a beating. It was to say that he had become a Christian. He’d been diagnosed with a terminal illness, and after reflecting long and hard on his life he knew he had to make good the wrongs he’d done and seek forgiveness from those whom he’d hurt. He’d come to pray with the man he’d tortured.
A story where costly grace, poured out at great expense, brought unity.
But what of this second image of Unity the Psalmist offers us in verse 3?
"It is as if the dew of Hermon were falling on Mount Zion".
Mt. Hermon is an impressive landmark that stands out against the dry plains north of Galilee. It’s the tallest mountain in Palestine at about 9000 feet, and its summit is usually covered in snow all year round. The moisture in the air around Mount Hermon makes it a fertile place and the snow melt feeds the Jordan river which waters the central valley that runs through the heart of the country.
The clergyman and explorer Henry Baker Tristram travelled widely in Palestine and wrote this of his visit to Mt Hermon in 1867:
"The vapour, coming in contact with the snowy sides of the mountain, is precipitated in the evening in the form of a dew, the most copious we ever experienced. It penetrated everywhere, and saturated everything. The floor of our tent was soaked, our bed was covered with it, our guns were dripping, and dewdrops hung about everywhere. No wonder that the foot of Hermon is clad with orchards and gardens of such marvellous fertility in this land of droughts."
Now in some of the commentaries I’ve read, they try to make out that the conditions around Mount Hermon sometimes prevail upon Mount Zion in Jerusalem. But having got out a map and ruler, I’m not inclined to buy that story because they’re 125 miles apart!
But wouldn’t it be great if it could! If some of that moist goodness of Northerly Hermon could come to bless the dry slopes of Mount Zion?
The point the Psalmist is making is that when brothers manage to live together in unity, it’s as wonderful and unexpected as snow or heavy rainfall on Mount Zion. With that precious outpouring, new things grow; and arid places become green with life.
It’s the same idea that God expresses through the prophet Isaiah when he says
“The desert and the parched land will be glad;
the wilderness will rejoice and blossom
Like the crocus, it will burst into bloom.”
Can God really make the desert places between us bloom?
Can he turn our instinct to blame into a resolve to bless?
This Pslam promises that He can, if we are willing to let him.
Just hours before he would be arrested, Jesus made this request of all those who would believe in Him. He prayed, "Father, may they be brought to complete unity to let the world know that you sent me and have loved them even as you have loved me.” John 17:23
If the world looks at us and sees nothing but dischord – it will not see Christ. We may as well go home.
But if it looks at us, and sees folk whose love for God makes them resolve to love people, in all their particularity and difference, then maybe we're starting to get somewhere. Because that's the ideal this Psalm, this church, and this table point to: unity in the family of God.
(Some excerpts drawn from a sermon by K Edward Skidmore)
No comments:
Post a Comment