July 5, 2026 - Sixth Sunday after Pentecost: One Nation Under God

July 5, 2026  Sixth Sunday after Pentecost
Ladue Chapel Presbyterian Church
Psalm 133
“One Nation Under God”
Douglas T. King  

“One hundred bottles of beer on the wall, one hundred bottles of beer…” Everyone of a certain age has either sung it or suffered through it at some time in their lives.  Back in the day, joining in this awful song was one of the ways time was passed on those endless family road trips.  When I am on a long car trip, I choose to torture my wife by singing along to theatre soundtracks like “Rent,” “Jesus Christ Superstar,” “The Rocky Horror Picture Show,” and “Hadestown.”    All the lyrics, permanently etched upon my brain, have crowded out less important information like my social security number and the names of the twelve disciples.
 
Psalm 133, which we just heard, is the second to last of the fifteen psalms of ascent, the traveling music of the pilgrims to Jerusalem.  But instead of keeping track of a dwindling beer supply, these brief, easily memorized psalms, allowed those journeying to festal celebrations in Jerusalem a chance to be shaped by their faith tradition.

The structure of the psalm is fairly simple.  It opens with a celebration of an experience of family cohesion, “How very good and pleasant it is when kindred live together in unity!” and concludes with claiming that experience as a blessing from God, “For there the Lord ordained God’s blessing, life forevermore.”  In between we are given two visible metaphors upon which to ruminate.

Aaron, Moses’ brother, was the first high priest.  The oil running down his beard and collar is a sign of economic prosperity and personal well-being.  Using it so extravagantly
was a sign of generous hospitality.

The second image of dew symbolizes productivity and renewal.  This productivity is not so much in the sense of human effort but rather an arrival of helpful resources beyond human control, a divine gift if you will.  The mountain the dew is found upon, Hermon, is located at the northernmost reaches of the boundary of the nation.
 
The final line of the psalm “For there the Lord ordained God’s blessing, life forevermore” speaks to what one scholar calls the divine “creation-blessing.” (Brueggemann, p. 48)  This idea that God has fashioned the entire world to provide for us in amazing ways and being placed in the midst of it is a privilege to be cherished together.
 
I do find biblical texts like these unrealistic.  Sure, I wish our life together as a community was one long Coca Cola commercial with everybody holding hands and singing songs.  But this text is not a description but a text of proscription.  This is a text calling us to recognize the value of unity and its blessings offered to us and to live into the fulfillment of that unity.  

Too often in our culture, unity is built upon being over and against some other group.  We unify in the battle of blue versus red.  We unify as a nation over and against another nation.  And Christian Nationalism preaches not a gospel of inclusion but one of exclusion.
 
But this text paints a different picture of unity.  First, we hear of Aaron, the high priest. He is the ultimate insider.  Then we hear of the dew on Mount Hermon located on the farthest edges of the territory of the nation.  And finally, we hear of God’s blessing upon the entire world.  Unity in this psalm is a movement continually outward.  The unity of a distinct group allows that group to reach out beyond its borders to others.  We get an example of this in the wedding liturgy during the prayers for the bride and groom when it says, “Make their life together a sign of Christ's love to this broken world, that unity may overcome estrangement, forgiveness heal guilt, and joy conquer despair.  Give them such fulfillment of their mutual love that they may reach out in concern for others.”  What binds us together calls us to widen the circle.

This weekend we celebrate two hundred and fifty years of this remarkable American experiment.  We are reminded of how a rag tag group of colonies chose to unite together to form a nation founded on democracy and passionate free speech.  Over our history there have been glorious eras when we have stood together, battling fascism during the Second World War.  And there have been dark eras when we have been torn asunder, such as the Civil War.  But in each of those darker moments when it has felt that our unity as a nation was at stake, we have found a way forward together.

I fear we face another moment in our history when the state of our union is in question.  When there was once spirited debate, we now experience toxic attacks rarely allowing for substantive discussion.  The voices on the extremes are raised the loudest.  Gerrymandering and social media political isolation bring no encouragement of compromise or quest for mutual understanding.  The days of adversaries like Tip O’Neal and Ronald Reagan sharing a cocktail at the end of a day of political debate no longer exist. Political historians teach us that one of the significant factors in the fall of the Roman empire was an inability for political factions to engage in respectful dialogue.
 
So, why discuss this in a sermon?  Leave politics to the politicians and religion to the clergy.  But I am not preaching a political perspective, I am preaching about God’s call upon our lives to live in unity.  And the promise we have received that with unity comes divine blessing.  That call in the 133rd psalm was upon the nation of Israel to be a model and blessing for all the world to receive, a blessing that continues to widen the circle of unity.
 
Now I am not suggesting anyone need lay down their strongly held beliefs.  What I am proclaiming is that God has called us to place our common bond as children of God as a priority in how we engage in living together as a church, a community, a nation, as the world.

This does not mean we need to perpetually hold hands and sing Kum Ba Yah.  Healthy churches, communities, and nations, all need to engage in spirited debate about the best way for them to move forward.  But God has called them, one and all, to move forward together with loving respect.    
   
Years ago I had an experience that gave me a new understanding of what unity may look like.  For many years, every December in New York, the composer Phil Kline has been hosting what he calls a “free outdoor participatory sound sculpture,” entitled “Unsilent Night.”  What the heck is that?  Kline invites the public to gather and hands out a bunch of boomboxes and mp3 players with a variety of themes of one of his electronic compositions. The idea is for all of the players to play together as they march through the city.  He counts down one, two, three, play, and the music begins.  One year I joined the adventure starting in Washington Square Park.  When Kline called out play, everybody hit their buttons.  Of course, simultaneous is a relative thing with groups and it was clear the players were all starting at slightly different times.  As well, the person standing next to me hit the wrong button and the first thing I heard was the opening chords to a heavy metal AC/DC song.
 
But soon we were on the move and making our way through the village on our way to Tompkins Square Park.  The music swirled around us as the crowd of artists, aging hipsters, and adventurous stockbrokers journeyed.  As the group ebbed and flowed with traffic lights and different walking paces, the musical piece was on the move itself and constantly changing.  At times it was seemingly pointless cacophony and at times it was a magical symphony.  Random onlookers joined the journey because they felt the energy of people gathered together in common purpose.  
 
As we walked by a bar, a young man on his way in paused to take in the scene.  He called out imploringly, “What’s it all about?”  Nobody offered him any explanation
because I am not sure we had one to give.  But if I had a second chance I might have responded, “How very good and pleasant it is when kindred live together in unity!”

The reality of all human community is that it will always be far from cleanly harmonious.  It will certainly never unfold in lock-step fashion.  As we continued our march we ran into an older gentleman, who seeing the crowd before him, announced with cranky conviction, “Get out of my way, I am headed for coffee!”  There is no such thing as seamless unity on this side of heaven.

When I think about the pushing and pulling within congregations, communities and our nation, I say there is nothing wrong with the cacophony of the democratic process.  God has created us in all our diversity with the ability to express ourselves.  The risk is when our political perspectives overshadow the respect we offer to our fellow children of God.  Our circles grow smaller and smaller and our blessings dwindle.  We are called to continue to try and walk in the same direction, each of us with a soundtrack playing a different variation of the same tune, perhaps not quite in sync.  What may be lost in purity of theological boundaries, or socio-political purpose, we more than make up for in sharing the journey of faithfulness and growing God’s blessings.

So, I do not know if we ever will all be together with oil dripping down our beards, sipping dew off of mountains and singing hymns.   But if in all of our debates we never lose sight of our call to honor and respect one another as beloved children of God, perhaps that cacophony may just sound more like a symphony to the divine.  And may those blessings flow down on the United States of America and all of God’s world. May  there be 250 more years of this remarkable American experiment.

Thanks be to God.  Amen.        
     
Bibliography

Brueggemann, Walter, The Message of the Psalms, Augsburg, Minneapolis,1984.