Ps 133

25 June 2000

 

"Can We Talk?"

 

Before I became a Presbyterian, I was a Pentecostal.  When I was baptized into the Christian faith, it was in the Assembly of God church where my parents remain members.  Before I went to seminary to prepare for parish ministry, I was a student at the Assemblies of God Bible college in Lakeland, Florida, Southeastern College.  It was there that I had a friend who once made a comment about today's psalm that I'm reminded of every time I read it.

I don't remember the exact occasion—it may have been a Bible study or a prayer meeting; I don't know.  But he read the psalm and afterwards had kind of a puzzled look on his face.  "Uh, I really don't know what this means," he said, "but it sounds good!"

A lot of us could say the same thing.  The little poem we know as Psalm 133 has an attractive quality to it, even if we don't quite understand it.  There are some strange images in its three verses, things that don't seem to make a whole lot of sense.

The first verse is simple enough:  "How very good and pleasant it is when kindred (literally, "brothers") live together in unity!"  We can easily appreciate that.  Yeah!  It's a good thing when, to paraphrase Rodney King, "we all just get along."

It's those last two verses that can leave us scratching our heads.  When verse 2 compares unity to oil poured on Aaron's head, so much that it runs down his beard onto his robe, our reaction may be one more of revulsion than anything else.  Picture this in your mind.  When Banu and I anoint someone with oil, we use a little bitty bottle and put a drop or two on our finger, and then make the sign of the cross on the person's forehead.  What's going on here is that an entire flask of oil is being poured out on the head of Aaron the priest.  Sure, the anointing oil has a beautiful scent, but I'm guessing that most of us wouldn't want the upper half of our body drenched in something that repels water!

Verse 3 isn't much easier to figure out.  What does moisture atop Hermon, a peak in Syria, have to do with the mountains of Zion—and what does any of that have to do with the theme of kindred living together in unity?  I doubt that the original readers of this psalm had to ask such questions.

As you might guess, there are a number of interpretations of this psalm.  It's usually considered to be a wisdom psalm (like Psalm 1, since it gives advice on how to live).  Beyond that, differences abound.  Some see it as praise, literally, of brothers living together.  Others have in mind a celebration "of the fellowship of the Covenant community in Jerusalem."^[1]  One rather creative take on the psalm is that it pictures the reunion of the northern and southern kingdoms.  In the image of flowing down, whether it's the oil running down Aaron's beard or the water flowing from Hermon in the north to Zion in the south, there's the idea of Israel and Judah coming together.^[2]  Whatever the case, the psalm celebrates the unity that only God can provide.

In August of last year, the journal Homiletics, in an article focusing on this psalm, included the following story from the Boston Globe:^[3]

 

It can never be said that Adele Gaboury's neighbors were less than responsible. When her lawn grew hip-high, they had a local boy mow it down. When her pipes froze and burst, they had the water turned off. When the mail spilled out the front door, they called the police.

The only thing they didn't do was check to see if she was alive. She wasn't.

On Monday, police climbed her crumbling brick stoop, broke in the side door of her little blue house and found what they believe to be the 73-year-old woman's skeletal remains sunk in a five-foot-high pile of trash where they had apparently lain for as long as four years.

"It's not a very friendly neighborhood," said Eileen Dugan, 70, once a close friend of Gaboury's, whose house sits less than 20 feet from the dead woman's home. "I'm as much to blame as anyone. She was alone and needed someone to talk to, but I was working two jobs and was sick of her coming over at all hours. Eventually I stopped answering the door."

 

I guess this is a true story; it's said to have been in the newspaper!  One wonders how four years could go by without anyone ever checking on the occupant of a crumbling house.  Still, we know that in less dramatic ways, we increasingly suffer from a loss of what psychiatrist Edward Hallowell calls the "human moment":  an authentic psychological encounter that can happen only when two people share the same physical space.

Think, for a minute, about this idea of the "human moment" and all the things we can do without it:  send documents and mail, go shopping, do our banking, play games, and chat with groups or individuals.  How about becoming socially, emotionally, and spiritually mature?  Not exactly.

There's something about being in the presence of another human being that can't be replaced.  Neither letters nor telephone nor internet, though each has its benefits, really does the job.  We can point to things like...the way we communicate nonverbally—facial expressions, gestures, and so on.  That's a big part of it.  But I wonder if something more intangible is at work.  I wonder if the fact that, when we encounter another person, we encounter one made in the image of God doesn't have a whole lot more to do with it.

I know—it's not easy to keep that in mind.  Sometimes we're too busy; sometimes we're too scared; sometimes we just don't care enough to acknowledge the presence of another human being.  At least, that's true of me.  I try to remind myself that it doesn't require a soul-searching in-depth conversation, although that may happen.  I just need to say, "Yes!  I recognize that you exist!"  And then go from there.  In doing that, we help build a little of the unity mentioned in our psalm.  We help people feel welcome.  We give them a place where they can "hang out."

Pete Hamill writes of "hanging out":  "To 'hang out' is a special thing. There is no specific way to define the experience, but everyone who has ever done it knows what it is all about.  It means, first, that you have friends .... But aside from friends, there must also be a Place ... the Great, Good Place that [everyone] carries in his [or her] heart, the place of safety, the place where the harshness of the real world is fended off."^[4]

Everyone needs a place where they can hang out.  Some people find that place on a street corner; some people find it at a country club.  Not being able to find that place is much the way I felt in my junior high school cafeteria.  I didn't have any friends, so I would try to find a group that I could sit next to, a group that would at least tolerate my presence.  I hated lunchtime.  I wonder how many people there are who hate coming to church for the same reason.

Even if they aren't aware of it, people ask the question, "Can we talk?"  (And in saying that, I'm not attempting to quote Joan Rivers!)  We want to know if it's possible to enter into true dialogue.  We want to know if it's possible for us to talk and have our voices heard.  At the same time, others want to know if it's possible for them to talk and have their voices heard by us.

Still, even when we answer the question, "Can we talk?" with a yes, we're still only halfway to the goal.  We're still a long way from the unity of Psalm 133.  You see, this is the problem:  I can know that you'll hear my voice—that you're really listening to my words.  But when you hear them, you may not like what I'm saying.  In the same way, I can assure you that you're being heard and still not like what you say.  We can have this "human moment"; we can be talking, and wind up farther apart than before.  Unity is not easily achieved.

That's something the commissioners to this year's General Assembly, which began yesterday in Long Beach, California, will realize time and again.  Among the 96 overtures on the agenda—that is, amendments to the Book of Order—are ones dealing with such things as how GA meetings are to be conducted and with the issue of same sex unions.  That last one is especially prompted by the decisions of some Permanent Judicial Commissions (in a sense, church courts).

One notable case involves the Synod of the Northeast, to which our presbytery and congregation belong.  In Benton v. Presbytery of Hudson River, our Synod's Judicial Commission concluded, "absent a specific amendment to the Book of Order, same sex 'holy union' ceremonies are constitutionally permissible."  (The word "constitutionally" refers to our Book of Order, which, along with the Book of Confessions, comprises the Constitution of the Presbyterian Church (USA)).  Overtures both for and against same sex unions are being considered at General Assembly.

Two overtures that deal directly with our church's lack of unity have been offered by the Presbytery of Beaver-Butler, located not far from us in western Pennsylvania.  The first, #00-5, requests that an “irreconcilable impasse” be declared within the Presbyterian Church on such matters as biblical interpretation and the nature of salvation in Christ, to name a couple.  These are seen as parts of “two mutually exclusive theologies.”

The second, #00-6, proposes that a task force be created to figure out how the Book of Order can be amended to permit congregations that cannot in good conscience comply with G-6.0106b to leave the denomination, along with their property.  Just in case anyone needs a reminder: G-6.0106b is the recently-added statement in our Book of Order, the so-called “fidelity and chastity” clause, which prohibits ordination to all except those who “live either in fidelity within the covenant of marriage between a man and a woman or chastity in singleness.”

Among the differences we have in the Presbyterian Church are things like the ordination of gay and lesbian candidates for ministry and our understandings of biblical inspiration.  The overtures see these, no doubt correctly, as symptoms of more fundamental differences.

I can understand why some people might feel, for the good of the church—in order to make peace—it’s better to just split up and go our separate ways.  These overtures seem to offer the best way out of a bad situation.  Politically and logistically, they present a way to avoid the messy business of the so-called “conservative” and “liberal” camps of our denomination from having to deal with each other.  It’s certainly easier to just get up and leave.

There’s a single word, though, that I can’t get past.  It’s the adjective that describes “impasse” in 00-5; our impasse is said to be “irreconcilable.”  Irreconcilable.  That's a strong word.  Who are we to say that?  To me, it’s difficult to find a better word than “irreconcilable” for limiting God’s power—limiting God’s power to make a way where there seems to be no way.  It even seems a bit arrogant and short-sighted.

We Presbyterians aren’t alone in this—every church, if it isn’t some kind of mind control cult, has a diversity of theological outlook.  But we tend to focus on our differences, rather than on what, and who, we have in common.

In Jesus Christ we have the one who quieted the storm that terrified the disciples.  That's from our gospel reading.  Our epistle lesson in 2 Corinthians 6 is a continuation of Paul's teaching on reconciliation.  He actually begins in chapter 5, where he says, "From now on, therefore, we regard no one from a human point of view (literally, "according to the flesh"—remember that from last week?); even though we once knew Christ from a human point of view, we know him no longer in that way.  So if anyone is in Christ, there is a new creation:  everything old has passed away; see, everything has become new!  All this is from God, who reconciled us to himself through Christ, and has given us the ministry of reconciliation" (vv. 16-18).

The New Testament tells us that the word "irreconcilable" has no place in the Christian vocabulary.  We see from the examples of the Corinthian church and the Presbyterian Church that divisions abound.  I'm well aware that some would say that my remarks express the dreams of a naive idealist.  Were it not for the grace and power of Jesus, I would agree.  It is only through Christ, who surpasses our differences, that the unity celebrated by the psalmist is possible.