How very good and
pleasant it is when kindred live together in unity! It is like the precious oil
on the head, running down upon the beard, on the beard of Aaron, running down
over the collar of his robes. It is like the dew of Hermon, which falls on the
mountains of Zion. For there the Lord
ordained his blessing, life forevermore. [Psalm 133]
This is one of the Psalms in the lectionary for
next Sunday – and it’s very brief, just three verses. The Psalmist loves the thought of brothers –
the Hebrew, as you might expect, says brothers, and in this English version it
is changed to kindred which presumably includes sisters – living together
peaceably, in unity. He has rapturous
visions about it. Unity is like the
precious anointing oil running down the beard of the High Priest. It is like the gentle morning dew on the
hillsides of Israel. In my experience,
it’s a little difficult to be so lyrical or poetic about unity after an hour or
two in some church meetings.
In St John’s Gospel chapter 17 we find Jesus’s
great prayer before he is arrested – and this prayer is about unity…
I
in them and you in me, that they may become completely one, so that the world
may know…
But the unity Jesus sees is not about everyone
agreeing with each other and all living happily together. On the other hand, the minute we start to
talk about the inner life of the Holy Trinity people’s eyes start to glaze over. Nevertheless, what Jesus is seeing here is
the unity which is the essence of the life of God, a unity of love. It is the bond between Jesus and God whom he
called Father. This bond of unity and
love he wishes his followers, his friends, to share. And that ultimately is the nature of prayer. In the silence and the stillness we are
joining Jesus in his prayer of unity
and love. We have nothing to say because
he says it all. We are there with him as
he prays for all creation to come together in beauty and love. We enter that vision.
It is really not possible then for Christian
contemplatives to have enemies, as Jesus pointed out. Any fracture in human relationships is felt
as a wound, needing to be healed. Jesus’s
vision of unity absolutely entails our willingness and our ability to celebrate
human difference. It requires humility
about what we know and what we think.
Omniscience goes out the door along with omnipotence and omnicompetence. Unity is a state of mind and a state of
heart, gifted, gentled and instructed by the risen Christ.
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