Hilton Head Island, SC – November 17, 2013
The Chapel Without Walls
Isaiah 11:1-16; Psalm 133:1-3
A Sermon by John M. Miller
Text – Behold, how good and pleasant it is when brothers dwell in unity! – Psalm 133:1 (RSV)
Sixty years ago, international political alliances meant much more than they mean now. After World War II, the North Atlantic Treaty Organization (NATO) had much more influence than it currently has. The basic purpose of NATO was to serve as a deterrent alliance to the Soviet Union, and to convince the USSR and its allies that an attack on any of the NATO partners would result in a war which the Soviet Union could not possibly win.
On the other side was the Warsaw Pact, a treaty engineered by the Soviet Union among its satellites in Eastern Europe. The Warsaw Pact was intended to tell the NATO countries that if they were to attack any of the communist states, it would provoke a war they could not win. Both of these major treaties were attempts politically to dwell together in unity, but it was a unity intended to create a sufficient threat to the nations on “the other side,” in the bipolar world which evolved soon after the end of the Second World War.
There seemed to be a much higher level of unity on both sides back then than there is now. After the collapse of the Soviet Union in 1991, almost none of the former Soviet satellite states remained loyal to Russia. In the same way, the US does not enjoy the close relationships we had with our allies up until the dissolution of the USSR. Certainly we get along with Canada, Britain, Germany, Italy, and so on, but the friendship isn’t what it was 30 or 40 or 50 years ago.
The United Nations was established in 1945. It was constituted to give nearly all the nations of the world a forum for addressing their common as well as their conflicting goals. Despite that, the Korean War was launched ostensibly under UN auspices, although in reality it was mainly the US and the South Koreans fighting the North Koreans and Chinese. As is true of the international treaties which characterized the post-war world, the UN also has lost much of the enthusiasm which it evoked in the Fifties and Sixties. Now many nations and many of the peoples of the world think of the United Nations as being a toothless tiger, and that probably it was always more like a house cat or an ocelot than a tiger anyway.
Psalm 133 is a three-verse Song of Ascents which begins with a memorable and admirable proclamation: “Behold, how good and pleasant it is when brothers dwell together in unity!” But what is meant by the word “brothers”? And what is meant by “unity”?
To start with, where are “sisters” in this statement? If it is good that brothers dwell in unity, is it not also good that sisters dwell in unity? And would it be better if everyone dwelt in unity rather than just one sex, namely, the male sex?
Well, the truth is, males are far more likely to create international disunity than are females. If women had been the heads of state of most nations throughout history, almost certainly we would have had far fewer wars and international conflicts. Leaders who rely heavily on testosterone tend to create unnecessary international tension and discord.
Unfortunately, the Bible, like most ancient religious texts, was written almost entirely by men, and men tend to think mainly about “men” when they should be thinking about “people.” So they tend to use male terminology when they really mean human terminology. “Behold, how good and pleasant it is when people dwell together in unity!” is preferable to what we have in Psalm 133:1, but what we have is what we have.
Aside from that, what does “brothers” really mean? Surely it does not merely mean male siblings. The thrust of these words is far broader than that. However, does it mean “Israelite brothers or Jewish brothers,” or does it mean Israelites and Edomites and Syrians and Assyrians and Babylonians? Unfortunately, the rest of this short Psalm doesn’t make that clear, although because it speaks of “the beard of Aaron” and “the dew of Hermon” (the mountain at the northern border of the biblical land of Israel) and “the mountains of Zion” (the region immediately around Jerusalem), the unknown writer of this Psalm probably was thinking how good it would be if only the Israelites or Jews could dwell together in unity, to say nothing of the whole Middle East.
We cannot know when Psalm 133 was written, but likely it was composed after there were two kingdoms in the Holy Land, Judah in the south and Israel in the north. Or it may have been written after the northern kingdom of Israel disappeared after its conquest by the Assyrians in 722 BCE. It may have been a limited proclamation, but how good it would be if all Jews through all time were unified. But they haven’t been, and they aren’t, and they are like all the rest of us - - - disunited, often disgruntled, and too often dispirited.
Christians aren’t united. We have Roman Catholics, Eastern Orthodox, and Protestants. And among the Protestants we have dozens of denominations, scores of denominations, yea verily, hundreds of denominations. And then we have non-denominationals, folks such as attend The Chapel Without Walls. Muslims aren’t united; they have Sunnis (most of them) and Shiites (about 15% of them). Buddhists aren’t united; they have Mahayanas and Hinayanas. Russians aren’t united, nor are the Chinese or Indians or Iranians or Nigerians or French or Dutch or Brits --- or Americans. But how good and pleasant it would be if all of us dwelled together in unity.
Or would it? Can we be united? Do we want to be united? Is world unity a widespread desire in the world, or is it an ideal sought or desired by only a relatively small percentage of fuzzy-minded political or religious liberals?
The unification of the entire human race is probably much more likely to be sought in theory than in fact. For example, what would it mean to unite all Christians? Since Roman Catholics are by far the largest branch of Christendom, would all the rest of us have to fall in line with Rome? But as it is, are all Catholics united? The answer is no. World unity is a consummation devoutly to be wished, as Shakespeare said, but does that mean we would have to find common ground with the Russians and Chinese and Iranians and Pakistanis and the Taliban and the Yemenis and Saudis and Somalis? How are we going to manage to pull that off?
Indeed, it is good when people dwell together in unity, but when has it ever happened? And if it should happen, for how long would it hold?
There were four children in my mother’s family of origin: two boys and two girls. There was a boy, and then fairly quickly a girl, and then fairly quickly another boy, and then, a dozen years later, no doubt as a profound surprise, another girl. My mother was the first-born of the two sisters. The younger daughter was my Aunt Irma. But Irma was so much younger than all our other aunts and uncles that all of the cousins just called her Irma, never Aunt Irma. Go figure.
Mom by herself without Irma was the soul of close friendship and diplomacy, and Irma by herself without Mom was the also the soul of friendship and diplomacy. But Mom and Irma together were forever oil and water, an open can of gasoline and a match, a cat and dog in the dryer, and when they were born nobody had dryers, but that’s what they were. Every summer our family would go to Canada to our grandmother’s home, and Irma, a lifelong unclaimed treasure, which was most unfortunate because truly she was a very fine if strong-willed woman, lived with Grandma. And every summer, when we got about thirty miles from Ingersoll, Ontario on the old No. 2 Highway, Dad would say to Mom, “Now Margaret, when we get there, you and Irma will behave yourselves, and if you don’t, we’re going to get in the car and go right back home.” And within a few hours of our arrival, Mom and Irma would get into it, and they would continue their tiff until two weeks later we got into the car to head back home, with both of them in tears that they would not likely see one another for several months or a full year. It was always like that.
How good and pleasant it would have been if my mother and my aunt could learn how to bury the hatchet and dwell together in unity, however it was that the hatchet became a factor in their relationship, but it never happened. They were both very exemplary women, but unified they weren’t. Given how strong their personalities were, I’m not sure they could ever manage to get along permanently and peacefully. It wasn’t in their makeup to make up.
Currently the American Republican Party and the Democratic Party are Margaret Hutt and Irma Hutt. We are experiencing the greatest degree of political disharmony and dysfunction that any of us has known in our lifetime. Behold, how good and pleasant it would be if these people would determine to get along and to get on with the business of governance, but they don’t, and they don’t. Those on the extremes seem to hold all the power, and no one in the middle (of whom there are far too few) seems able to coax or coerce anyone else into the middle, and so very little gets done. Sadly, nearly everyone on both sides demonize those on the other side. It has been going on so long now that it is very difficult for the people currently in office to overcome their divisions. And it is hard to get anyone currently in office out of office.
Probably it is unrealistic to imagine that our two political parties will ever be significantly unified in any meaningful sense of that word, but we cannot afford to continue to suffer the devastating disunity which now characterizes our political process. Far too little that needs to be done is getting done because far too few are willing to work together to get it done. It is understandable that we, the people, loudly grouse, “A plague on both your houses!”, but we also need to do something. Either we should flood the mailboxes or e-mail boxes of our Members of Congress with letters, or we should express our displeasure in next November’s election, or both.
What all of this suggests is that genuine unity is very hard to come by. It requires enormous effort and understanding and overlooking. Unity necessitates compromise, and compromise means it is not possible to get everything anyone wants. But then, it is not only foolish but also very selfish always to try to get everything anyone wants. God made all of us free agents, and that means we are free to focus too much on our own designs and desires as well as to try to understand the positions of other people which are at odds with our own positions. If unity were easy, we wouldn’t need Psalms praising it or hymns proclaiming it. Unity is a very tough goal to achieve. But its difficulty should never negate the attempt.
In my Encyclopedia of Religious Quotations,I found a short poem by a man named James G. Johnson, who was associated with a publication called the Watchman-Examiner, and about either I know nothing. But Mr. Johnson, who likely has long since entered the Church Triumphant, wrote:
When I was small
I knew no color or creed at all.
Since then, of course, I grew:
Now I know Negro, Gentile, and Jew.
Please, dear Lord, let me always be
Small, that I may never see
Color, or creed at all.
That brief poem is simple, and perhaps simplistic, and it doesn’t address nuances or hard realities or intractable differences. But there is something to be said for this plaintive plea for tolerance and human unity. One of the primary reasons that human beings are disunited is because some of us we were taught the building blocks of disunity as children.
Do you remember Nellie Forbush and Lt. Cable from Rodgers and Hammerstein’s musical South Pacific? The story was based on James Michener’s Tales of the South Pacific, which was based on Michener’s experiences as a soldier in the island-hopping campaigns of the Pacific War. Lt. Cable fell in love with a beautiful Polynesian girl, much as James Michener also did, and he knew how upset everyone back in Philadelphia would be over this misbegotten tryst. So the lieutenant sings to Nellie, who herself has fallen in love with a French widower who had married a Polynesian girl and had two mixed-race children,
You’ve got to be taught to hate and fear,
You’ve got to be taught from year to year,
It’s got to be drummed in your dear little ear –
You’ve got to be carefully taught.
You’ve got to be taught to be afraid
Of people whose eyes are oddly made,
And people whose skin is a different shade –
You’ve got to be carefully taught.
You’ve got to be taught before it’s too late –
Before you are six or seven or eight
To hate all the people your relatives hate –
You’ve got to be carefully taught.
Fortunately, most of us were not taught those terrible teachings.
Psalm 133 is not a description of reality. It is instead the lifting up of an ideal. Anyone who imagines that getting along with everyone is easy has not thought very deeply about that. Nevertheless, God wants us always to strive for the ideal, to seek the elusive goal of unity, to try when our arms are too weary to reach the unreachable star, as Don Quixote sang in Man of La Mancha. Skeptics and cynics insist it isn’t worth the effort, but idealists and even realists know that to ignore human unity is to erode what it means to be human.
God made us one human race, Homo sapiens, not many races or ethnic groups or nationalities. We do the dividing, not God. Therefore let us, under God’s guidance and inspiration, engage in the very difficult but very rewarding effort, also to do the uniting. A hundred and fifty years ago this Tuesday, a great American expressed it with supreme eloquence: “Fourscore and seven years ago our fathers brought forth upon this continent a new nation, conceived in liberty and dedicated to the proposition that all men are created equal.” Let us live up to the challenge presented by that marvelously idealistic realist. Behold, how good and pleasant it is when brothers dwell together in unity!