HOW SWEET IT IS John M. Buchanan
Psalm 133 Broad Street Presbyterian Church
March 8, 1981 - Communion Columbus, Ohio

There used to be a moment on television that intrigued me for some reason. Jt came
at the very end of the old Jackie Gleason Hour, one of the last of those marvelous variety
shows which included a Little music, dancing, and all sorts of comedy + cutlandish, slap-
stick, none very subtle. I still chuckle at the thought of Ralph Cramden and Ed Norton.
At the end of the hour Gleason came through the curtain to meet his audience: still working
brilliantly he would introduce everyone else on the show, the audience applauding wildly.
And at the very end, with the cheering at its crescendo, he would shout, "How Sweet It Is!!!
And it was. There was something special, something contageous about the fact that that
group of people was so caught up in the experience they had just shared, something almost
mystical in the unity of that moment, It communicated well. I still remember it. "How
Sweet It Is,"

It is always remarkable when people get caught up in something larger than themselves,
when individuality can be submerged in the unity of a group engaged in some common activity
Or experience. We know now the power of that phenomenon, Cultural anthropologists and
psychologists are still shaking their heads over what happened when a fanatic Austrian
paperhanger got behind a microphone, and with expert lighting, brilliant banners, stirring
music, turned the dispirited individuals of a defeated nation into the demonic ferocity of
the Third Reich. We know now about the power of a group of people willing to submerge self
for the sake of the state, or party, or ideology.

But we also know about its sweetness. Who will ever forget the extraordinary experienc
of the Bicentennial? Coming after the agony of Vietnam, the humiliation of Watergate, it
brought the nation together to celebrate a common heritage. Or, how else to explain the
extraordinary affirmations of National unity which occurred at the time of the hostage
release early this year? Human unity is always a special experience, It has always been a
major portion of the lure of sports, as participant and spectator. Competitors in team
sports know, first hand, the discipline but special joy of submersing self in a common goal
Spectators become part of that experience on a grand scale as the National Hockey team wins
the Olympic Gold, or as your child's Little League team loses a close one. It is part of
the secret shared by people who served in the military, and it is part of the enduring
appeal of fraternity and sorority.

Most of us have attended a family reunion. Most of us know that the older one becomes
the more important a sense of family is. Many of us who live away from our extended
families, and who encounter aunts, uncles, grandparents, and cousins rarely, know in a
unique way how sweet it is when brothers and sisters dwell in unity.

"Tt is like the precious oil upon the head,
running down upon the beard.

It is like the dew of Hermon
which falls on the mountains of Zion!..."

That's an old man and old woman, 2500 years ago, after a large dinner, surrounded by
sons and daughters, grandsons and granddaughters, together after a long separation. That's
a family, laughing and reminiscing and teasing and mingling the tears of joy with deep
affection and loyalty. Psalm 133 - a "Pilgrim Psalm", the scholars tell us, written for
holiday pilgrims on their way to Jerusalem to keep the feast. It leoks back to a much
earlier time, however; the days of the wilderness wandering, those heroic days when the
tribes entered and conquered the land. In those days families lived together - literally,
in one tent. It was the key to survival: father, mother, sons, daughters-in-law, grand-
children, lived together, It is the source of Judaism's legendary emphasis on the family.

-2-

"Those were the days"! T can hear an old patriarch saying - "those were the days when
families were really families.'' When the Psalm was written and used in Israel, families
were settled and scattered somewhat, But on the high holy days, entire families would go
up Eo Jerusalem together, They would meet on the way, and as religious pilgrims, they
would, once again, live in one tent. Can't you imagine how they must have looked forward
to that, and how marvelous it would have been? And at the end of the day, when they had
eaten and talked and laughed, the old people would say, "How good and pleasant it is when
brothers and sisters dwell in unity. How sweet it is to be together,”

{It reminded them,of course, of a broader family than their own even: the household of
Israel. It reminded them that God's people are a family. And it hinted at one of the
pivotal ideas which would evolve out of Judaism and plant itself in Christianity as well:
the essential unity of the human race: the family of humankind. It began modestly with
their growing understanding that Jahweh, their God, was not merely another tribal deity but
in fact the creator of all people, the Lord of all nations. That's one of the most importan
ideas ever conceived. Before, gods were attached to, almost the personal property of, the
tribe. Deities represented the tribe and vice versa. No one ever questioned that. When
one tribe defeated another tribe, everybody knew that their gods had struggled together toc.
But here is a people loosening their grip on their own god and hinting at least that he is
net personal property, that he has no favorites, that all people are his children, It is
an important idea historically. It is an important idea in contemporary terms as well.

In Lent particularly, season of penitence, season of ashes and honesty, it is a
reminder that we move mostly in the opposite direction. We do not fashion tribal gods of
course, Our intellectual sophistication has eliminated that. But we persist in denying
the unity of the race.

Ironically, it is technology, not our theology, that has made us a global village.
Instant communication, high speed transportation have made the globe accessible but also
have made tribalism, chauvinism untenable and there was a time when western civilization
regarded a continent undiscovered until Portugese of Spanish explorers walked up on the
shore. We can't continue to think like that. If the entire world population could be
represented by a group of one hundred people, we Americans, after all, would be just six
of the one hundred, In isolation that isn't significant. But it is terribly important in
a world now totally interrelated. The gap between the wealthy members of the human family
and the poor members is increasing. Guatemala, El Salvador, whatever else they may be, are
signals that the wealthy part of the family cannot forever ignore that gap. The stakes are
high now and they get higher with every new dollar spent on armaments. Pope John Paul
visited Japan recently and at the Hiroshima memorial said: "Humanity must make a moral
about-face. From now on it is only through a conscious choice that humanity can survive."
The relationship of this nation's military strength to the dynamics of international reali-
ties is highly complex. It may be that increased military strength is the path to peace.
If so, may I submit that at least part of our responsibility as Christians is to be honest
about it and to weep over the fact, Lent is a sobering reminder that evil is still real:
that the human family is still fractured: that the most marketable political idea around is
still chauvinism: that evil exists in our world not because of the Devil's complicity, but
almost always because people live like you and me,who value - above all else - our comfort
and security, allow it to exist.

The old pilgrim Psalm reminds me that love for others is central to our faith. It
reminds me that all the Presbyterian theology and all the fundamentalist piety in the
world amounts to nothing more than the brittle, abrasive crashing of a cymbal; hollow
noise ~ until it eventuates in love. It reminds me again that the grandeur of this church
in God's eyes has to do only with the love, reconciliation and healing it generates in

the world.

-3-

Jt reminds me on this day particularly, as we come te table, of another table
gathering of friends, in an upper room. It reminds me of how like that group we are -
fractured, tired, discouraged sometimes, hanging on but in our more reasonable moments
admittedly skeptical about the plausibility of this faith. It reminds me of how Jesus,
on that occasion, stunned them by washing their feet and in case they failed to understand,
by articulating it - the new commandment - "that you love one another, even as I have
loved you, that you Love one another,!!

The ancient Jews understood the experience of unity as a gift of God. The disciples
of Jesus, as they reflected on it, concluded that the only unity they ever experienced was
given to them by a man who knelt in humble service and washed their feet. And nearly a
century later, in a small Christian community in Asia Minor, an aged saint wrote it down,
"We know that we have passed out of death into life, because we have loved the brethren.”

What we have to offer the world, I think, is something deceptively simple. [It is this:
full human life happens when we learn to love. And we learn to love when we know how
deeply and profoundly we have been loved. "All loving", Helmut Theilicke has observed,

"is a thanksgiving for the fact that we ourselves have been loved."

The Good News is this - we are = each one of us, loved of God. We are loved, as part
of a family - and as individuals, Real life - eternal life - is to know that and, in

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gratitude for it, to love the family and embrace the unity that has been given. ‘|

Perhaps the greatest temptation for middle class American Christians like you and me
is the oldest; namely, to conceive of God as our tribal deity: to continue the ancient
fragmentation of the human family: to trivialize the faith by simply refusing to be honest
about what it has to say about human relationships.

Let us not succumb to that gentle temptation. Let us be strong enough to bear what
judgment falls on us. God has an alternative scenario for His creation and for our lives.
God has in mind something other than war and violent revolution and alienation and un-
happiness, God does not intend starving children and homeless families. God has a vision,
a plan, 4 program. Some call it naive. I suspect its truth is so searing, so burning,
so true, we can't always bear it.

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“It's very old..,listen to it again.

Behold, haw good and pleasant it is
when brothers dwell in unity!
It is like the precious oil upon the head,
running down upon the beard,
upon the beard of Aaron,
running down on the collar of his robes!
It is like the dew of Hermon,
which falls on the mountains of Zion!
For there the Lord has commanded the blessing,

life for evermore,
(Psalm 133).

Amen.