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Aug 29, 2021

Handle with Care

Handle with Care

Passage: Psalms

Speaker: Patrick Lafferty

Series: Ascend

When words like division and polarization feel more like the rule than the exception, to even bring up a word like “unity” is likely to elicit something between amusement and cynicism. But what this brief, vivid Psalm sings to us--dares us to sing and believe--is that unity is worth too much to give up on, and requires far more than just a passionate call for it.

readings & Scripture

PREPARATION: Hebrews 12:28-29
LEADER: Therefore let us be grateful for receiving a kingdom that cannot be shaken,
ALL: and thus let us offer to God acceptable worship, with reverence and awe, for our God is a consuming fire.

NEW TESTAMENT READING: John 17:20-26
“I do not ask for these only, but also for those who will believe in me through their word, 21 that they may all be one, just as you, Father, are in me, and I in you, that they also may be in us, so that the world may believe that you have sent me. 22 The glory that you have given me I have given to them, that they may be one even as we are one, 23 I in them and you in me, that they may become perfectly one, so that the world may know that you sent me and loved them even as you loved me. 24 Father, I desire that they also, whom you have given me, may be with me where I am, to see my glory that you have given me because you loved me before the foundation of the world. 25 O righteous Father, even though the world does not know you, I know you, and these know that you have sent me. 26 I made known to them your name, and I will continue to make it known, that the love with which you have loved me may be in them, and I in them.”

CENTRAL TEXT: Psalm 133
Behold, how good and pleasant it is
when brothers dwell in unity!
2 It is like the precious oil on the head,
running down on the beard,
on the beard of Aaron,
running down on the collar of his robes!
3 It is like the dew of Hermon,
which falls on the mountains of Zion!
For there the LORD has commanded the blessing,
life forevermore.

BENEDICTION: Romans 15:5-7
LEADER: May the God of endurance and encouragement grant you to live in such harmony with one another, in accord with Christ Jesus, 6 that together you may with one voice glorify the God and Father of our Lord Jesus Christ.

ALL: Therefore welcome one another as Christ has welcomed you, for the glory of God.

SCRIPTURES:

  • Genesis 13:8
  • Exodus 29:7/Leviticus 18:12
  • Deuteronomy 25:5
  • Psalm 42:8
  • Proverbs 19:12
  • Ecclesiastes 4:10-12
  • Micah 5:7
  • John 17:20-26
  • 2 Corinthians 13:11
  • Philippians 4:9
  • Hebrews 13:1

DISCUSSION QUESTIONS:

  1. Best team--or some community of people--you were ever part of?  When, why? How did it become such a memorable contingent for you?
  2. What are several things that can threaten the unity of a people? How do they happen? What has to happen for them to be solved? Can you name examples from your own life or history where communities became estranged and then were restored?
  3. What was that oil upon Aaron for? What did it represent?
  4. In a world without irrigation systems, why make a big deal about morning dew? Why do you think the Psalmist is invoking that image to speak of the goodness of unity?
  5. What are several marks of a people unified in the church? 
  6. What lengths has God gone to bring unity to a people? How must that shape our thinking about the things over which we differ? How must that shape the way we conduct ourselves in the differing? How must that shape the ultimate goal of our working through our differences?

QUOTES:

  • In most cases the only way that the Christian gospel will appear plausible to our neighbors in the years to come will be to the extent that we can ground this alternative vision of reality in alternative forms of community. Jake Meador
  • It is surely a fact of inexhaustible significance that what our Lord left behind Him was not a book, nor a creed, nor a system of thought, nor a rule of life, but a visible community. Derek Radney
  • Tumbling through the
    city in my
    mind without once
    looking up
    the racket in
    the lugwork probably
    rehearsing some
    stupid thing I
    said or did
    some crime or
    other the city they
    say is a lonely
    place until yes
    the sound of sweeping
    and a woman
    yes with a
    broom beneath
    which you are now
    too the canopy
    of a fig its
    arms pulling the
    September sun to it
    and she
    has a hose too
    and so works hard
    rinsing and scrubbing
    the walk
    lest some poor sod
    slip on the
    silk of a fig
    and break his hip
    and not probably
    reach over to gobble up
    the perpetrator
    the light catches
    the veins in her hands
    when I ask about
    the tree they
    flutter in the air and
    she says take
    as much as
    you can
    help me
    so I load my
    pockets and mouth
    and she points
    to the step-ladder against
    the wall to
    mean more but
    I was without a
    sack so my meager
    plunder would have to
    suffice and an old woman
    whom gravity
    was pulling into
    the earth loosed one
    from a low slung
    branch and its eye
    wept like hers
    which she dabbed
    with a kerchief as she
    cleaved the fig with
    what remained of her
    teeth and soon there were
    eight or nine
    people gathered beneath
    the tree looking into
    it like a
    constellation pointing
    do you see it
    and I am tall and so
    good for these things
    and a bald man even
    told me so
    when I grabbed three
    or four for
    him reaching into the
    giddy throngs of
    yellow-jackets sugar
    stoned which he only
    pointed to smiling and
    rubbing his stomach
    I mean he was really rubbing his stomach
    like there was a baby
    in there
    it was hot his
    head shone while he
    offered recipes to the
    group using words which
    I couldn’t understand and besides
    I was a little
    tipsy on the dance
    of the velvety heart rolling
    in my mouth
    pulling me down and
    down into the
    oldest countries of my
    body where I ate my first fig
    from the hand of a man who escaped his country
    by swimming through the night
    and maybe
    never said more than
    five words to me
    at once but gave me
    figs and a man on his way
    to work hops twice
    to reach at last his
    fig which he smiles at and calls
    baby, c’mere baby,
    he says and blows a kiss
    to the tree which everyone knows
    cannot grow this far north
    being Mediterranean
    and favoring the rocky, sun-baked soils
    of Jordan and Sicily
    but no one told the fig tree
    or the immigrants
    there is a way
    the fig tree grows
    in groves it wants,
    it seems, to hold us,
    yes I am anthropomorphizing
    [. . . ] I have twice
    in the last thirty seconds
    rubbed my sweaty
    forearm into someone else’s
    sweaty shoulder
    gleeful eating out of each other’s hands
    on Christian St.
    in Philadelphia a city like most
    which has murdered its own
    people
    this is true
    we are feeding each other
    from a tree
    at the corner of Christian and 9th
    strangers maybe
    never again. “To the Fig Tree on 9th and Christian,” Ross Gay (also read here)

SERMONS / TALKS: 

“Can Church Be Good for You?” Sinclair Ferguson