Dwelling Together in Unity: A Meditation on Psalm 133 and John 17, for the 7th Sunday of Easter

Behold, how good and how pleasant it is

for brethren to dwell together in unity!

It is like the precious ointment upon the head,

that ran down upon the beard, even Aaron's beard:

that went down to the skirts of his garments;

As the dew of Hermon, and as the dew

that descended upon the mountains of Zion:

for there the Lord commanded the blessing,

even life for evermore.

 

I think most people know intuitively that a community dwelling together in peace and unity is much more pleasant than disunity.  Whether it is the community of family, of a neighborhood, a city, state, or nation, people in unity can accomplish great things when they are not wasting their time and resources at war with one another.  What is true of human community outside the church is also true within it:  it is good for brethren to dwell together in unity, or as Jesus prayed before His passion in John 17, That they all may be one; as thou, Father, art in me, and I in thee, that they also may be one in us: that the world may believe that thou hast sent me.  Yet there is a distinct difference in how the world pursues unity, and how the church receives unity; for the world, unity is pursued by the power of human effort, and for the church it is a gift of grace by the Word of God.  For as Jesus prayed in the same chapter for unity among His disciples, He also asked the Father to sanctify them through thy truth: thy word is truth.

 

It is worth noting that worldly unity, pursued by the fallen powers of men, is often also inspired by the fallen desires of men.  Those who seek political unity may find it good for their own fortunes to subject others to their will, to bind up those who disagree with them, and pay off those who support them.  The politics of civil society have been plagued by the passions of evil people in the pursuit of power for millennia even as they are today, with a few governmental structures designed to curtail or impede those aspirations (such as the US Declaration of Independence and Constitution.)  When the world seeks unity, it often intends something far more like the totalitarianism of various regimes, from variations on Marxism to the pure despotism of military dictators and monarchs.  Some of these systems have produced better or worse potentates across the centuries, but all of them tend toward the elevation of one political class over others, so that the pleasantries of such unity are only experienced by the favored or the powerful.  Fallen human thinking is so universally consumed with pursuits of power, wealth, lust, and domination that these patterns emerge across the globe, regardless of individual regions’ cultures or histories.  Likewise, in almost all cultures there are histories or legends of the good kings, the good leaders, who brought prosperity by resisting the evils of their office… but Arthurian-type legends are few and far between the legacies of many wicked despots.

 

The histories of the church share a similar pattern, when ancient Israel and Christendom followed worldly impulses.  Moses was a great leader of the people of God, raised up by God to lead His people by His Word, but in the roughly 450 years between him and King David, there were only a few leaders and Judges of the people who even approximated Moses’ faithfulness.  And though David was noted as a man after God’s own heart, in the nearly 1000 years between him and the Advent of Jesus, only a handful of relatively faithful kings emerged.  After Jesus’ Ascension and the blessing of His Apostles’ non-political leadership, the ensuing 1900 years or so have seen a few decent leaders within Christian lands, but even in the church good leaders were often hard to find.  No later than the 4^th and 5^th centuries, St. John Chrysostom was purported to have said that the road to hell was paved with the skulls of unfaithful clergy, and St. Athanasius was said to be standing nearly alone against the onslaught of politically motivated Arians.  There is no association of people, when motivated by the pursuits of vice to achieve political unity, that has much of a record in producing the good and pleasant unity heralded in Scripture.  But this is because the unity God offers is entirely different than what fallen men devise in their darkened ambitions.

 

God’s unity begins in Himself, and extends outward to all who abide in Him.  While God is all powerful, He does not use His power to coerce people into His fellowship.  Instead, God gives to all people His love and grace, calling them into His fellowship by His Word and Spirit.  What man lost in his fall and has inherited from his ancestry as a fallen mind, a corrupted spirit, and a dying body, God offers to heal and restore through the Vicarious Atonement of His Son, Jesus Christ.  Where fallen men chase the ghosts of power and pleasure into the chasms of endless night, God calls all people to turn from the broad highways of destruction into the narrow path of life.  When fallen men yield to motivations of selfishness and pride, God reveals a way of life that is selfless, sacrificial love.  God reveals His Kingdom as one perfect in both Law and Gospel, with absolute Truth and the totality of Grace dwelling together in peaceful harmony.  While God leaves man free to choose a path of destruction and death, to earn the wages of evil and bear them for eternity, God also reveals His love for us by making a way back to everlasting life through His Word of forgiveness and new birth spoken to us by His Son.  In this Eternal Word, the Everlasting Good News of forgiveness, life, and salvation in Jesus Christ alone, we receive what we could never earn, and abide in the unity of God’s people forevermore.

 

Christian unity is not a denomination, or a political movement, or an ecclesiastical hierarchy—it is the very Word of God made flesh who dwelt among us, full of grace and truth.  It is the saving Word given to us freely that none of us may boast over our neighbors, and the Word of forgiveness, hope, joy, and peace we may all speak freely to one another, in Jesus’ Name.  The unity of Christians is not something created or even maintained by Christians, but a gift of grace and faith, in and through the Word of Christ.  Hear that Word come to you today, that you may live together in peace and joy with all those whom the Father has called through the Word of His Son into the fellowship of His Holy Spirit, One God, now and forever, and unto ages of ages without end.  Soli Deo Gloria!  Amen.