Psalm 133: Oh, how wonderful, how pleasing it is when God’s people all come together as one! It is like the sweet-smelling oil that is poured over the high priest’s head, that runs down his beard flowing over his robes. It is like a gentle rain from Mount Hermon falling on Mount Zion. It is there that the Lord has promised his blessing of eternal life.
This is a psalm celebrating unity — brother and sisterhood — fellowship -- communion among God’s people. It is a call for people to declare themselves as part of God’s family and followers of God’s ways. It was most likely written at a time of some dis-unity during King David’s long reign when the psalm writer was seeking to draw the varying factions back together again.
While there are many ways for people to be separated, I’m thinking today mostly of the struggle some of us may be having from time to time with feeling that sense of unity as church when we are so physically separated from each other. We can’t sit together in our usual church clusters. We can’t hug each other. We can’t laugh together in the kitchen setting up for coffee hour or cleaning up after. All these things are important to us — and boy, do we miss them — and we miss each other.
But we probably need to remember that there have been times through our history when things were much worse. Times and places when being recognized as a follower of Jesus was a death sentence. Times when being the “wrong kind” of Christian could get you fired from your job or run out of town. Such things still happen in some places today. We clearly have it pretty “easy” compared to past centuries.
We can do this. It’s a struggle to maintain social distance, yes, but we can still be the people of God gathered in God’s love and care — even at a distance, because we gather together because of our God, who is not bound by time or space. Even in our human time and space we have options available for us to be in contact with each other that were unheard of 100 years or so ago. We have snail-mail, email, and texting. We have phone calls and Facebook and YouTube and Zoom. We can reach out at any time and be in contact with others.
Church worship has gone through so very many changes of form over the centuries. The religious practices of Jesus’ time still featured animal slaughter, after all. In pre-Reformation Europe there was only the Latin Mass, performed in front of people who had no idea what was being said. The early great cathedrals had no seating—the faithful stood for the whole service. Post-Reformation, many churches required attendees to be “tested” by human judges to see if they had been “holy enough” to deserve to receive communion. And for a long time, many churches had segregated seating, where the races were not allowed to mix while worshiping. I’m delighted that every one of those once common practices has gone by the way.
Even today, the ways a church can look like from the outside can vary hugely. Some of us do church a certain way because that’s what we were taught is the “right” way. We express ourselves in particular ritual actions and words that are familiar and comforting to us.
Hopefully, however we do it, we do church in a way that expresses our beliefs as followers of Jesus. Hopefully, we have joined ourselves together — in unity — to do the things Jesus did and the things he told us to do — feed the hungry, love each other, care for the poor and powerless, care for God’s creation, pray for each other, lift each other up, do what we can to heal the brokenness of our world — and we do it together — whether near or far — in the same building or not -- we are together in love, and that is the unity to which we are called.
While there are many ways for people to be separated, I’m thinking today mostly of the struggle some of us may be having from time to time with feeling that sense of unity as church when we are so physically separated from each other. We can’t sit together in our usual church clusters. We can’t hug each other. We can’t laugh together in the kitchen setting up for coffee hour or cleaning up after. All these things are important to us — and boy, do we miss them — and we miss each other.
But we probably need to remember that there have been times through our history when things were much worse. Times and places when being recognized as a follower of Jesus was a death sentence. Times when being the “wrong kind” of Christian could get you fired from your job or run out of town. Such things still happen in some places today. We clearly have it pretty “easy” compared to past centuries.
We can do this. It’s a struggle to maintain social distance, yes, but we can still be the people of God gathered in God’s love and care — even at a distance, because we gather together because of our God, who is not bound by time or space. Even in our human time and space we have options available for us to be in contact with each other that were unheard of 100 years or so ago. We have snail-mail, email, and texting. We have phone calls and Facebook and YouTube and Zoom. We can reach out at any time and be in contact with others.
Church worship has gone through so very many changes of form over the centuries. The religious practices of Jesus’ time still featured animal slaughter, after all. In pre-Reformation Europe there was only the Latin Mass, performed in front of people who had no idea what was being said. The early great cathedrals had no seating—the faithful stood for the whole service. Post-Reformation, many churches required attendees to be “tested” by human judges to see if they had been “holy enough” to deserve to receive communion. And for a long time, many churches had segregated seating, where the races were not allowed to mix while worshiping. I’m delighted that every one of those once common practices has gone by the way.
Even today, the ways a church can look like from the outside can vary hugely. Some of us do church a certain way because that’s what we were taught is the “right” way. We express ourselves in particular ritual actions and words that are familiar and comforting to us.
Hopefully, however we do it, we do church in a way that expresses our beliefs as followers of Jesus. Hopefully, we have joined ourselves together — in unity — to do the things Jesus did and the things he told us to do — feed the hungry, love each other, care for the poor and powerless, care for God’s creation, pray for each other, lift each other up, do what we can to heal the brokenness of our world — and we do it together — whether near or far — in the same building or not -- we are together in love, and that is the unity to which we are called.
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