“Listen! What a good and what a pleasant thing it is for brothers and sisters to sit in unity. It’s like pleasant oil upon the head coming down the beard, the beard of Aaron coming down to the hem of his robe. Like the dew of Hermon coming down on the mountain of Zion, where the Holy One has commanded there to be blessings forever” (Psalm 133, author’s translation).
Psalm 133 is one my favorites because of the way it is like a camera slowly pulling back: close-up on the oil coming down on someone’s scalp, pulling back to reveal it coming down the hair and beard, then how it covers the whole body, dripping off the hem of the robe, sparkling in the morning like dew on the mountain.
It can be taken as utopian. But this, like so many of the Psalms, is grounded in reality. It’s a poem about the here and now and what is required for we brothers and sisters to sit together in unity.
“Listen,” it begins. Listen, here’s what it is going to take to sit together. Most translations choose dwell, but sit, I think, captures something closer to what’s being proposed, this isn’t just living together, tolerating each other’s presence. This is people gathered together, sitting side-by-side. And we are their host.
“It is like oil on the head.” Part of hospitality in the ancient world was to offer oil to your guest, something fragrant to cover their sweat and a balm over their sun-baked skin. This sitting together in unity, all of us, is about hospitality. It’s about welcoming one another as if, to borrow from Paul, they might be angels unaware.
But the camera pulls back, and we see this isn’t just an anointing of a guest, but an ordination. Aaron the first High Priest is the person we see, but it’s the act associated with the office we are to notice. As the camera shows us more of the scene, the poet reveals more of what is required of us.
We who have chosen to follow Christ have been called. Jesus has ordained us to the office within the priesthood of all believers. And call it priest, pastor, shepherd, or minister the role is the same: cura animarum—the care of souls.
It is not just hospitality, the Psalmist tells us. It’s responsibility. We are responsible for those around us, whether they hold our views or not. More than that, we are answerable for the care we show.
Look, the Psalmist says, it is good and pleasant to sit together, to share meals and a live together. But it isn’t easy. It requires things of us. It requires us to be welcoming, treating others as if they are honored guests. We are ordained and called to do this by the One who welcomed us to his table. And we are responsible for one another, to care, to feed, to tend the wounds of those around us.
But, the Psalmist says, it is not completely up to us. Because, it is also like the dew on the grass as the sun rises in the morning. Something we cannot bring about on our own.
This ideal, this good and pleasant thing is not something we do alone. We must act as both host and priest. But we must remember that we depend on Christ to do things we cannot.
Then, and only then, might we sit and feast on the blessing of being together.