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How good and pleasant it is when God\u2019s people live together in unity! It is like precious oil poured on the head, running down on the beard, running down on Aaron\u2019s beard, down on the collar of his robe. It is as if the dew of Hermon were falling on Mount Zion. For there the Lord bestows his blessing, even life forevermore. (Psalm 133)

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The Israelites didn\u2019t have separate denominations.\xa0 They certainly had conservative factions and progressive factions within their ranks (think of the disagreements in the Sanhedrin between Pharisees, Sadducees, and others later on from the New Testament!), but given the fact that there was only one city of Jerusalem, they only had one place to go to celebrate a festival.\xa0 The journey of ascents to the one, true God and to the one city of Jerusalem necessarily brought them all together as one, big, raucous family again.\xa0 Despite their grudges, despite their disagreements, despite their opinions of one another\u2019s practice of the faith: there they were\u2014worshiping, eating, and praying together as God\u2019s people.

Imagine that.\xa0 All of God\u2019s people living together as sisters and brothers.\xa0 The divided kingdoms of Judah and Israel living together as sisters and brothers.\xa0 The faithful exiles living together with the Samaritan traitors as sisters and brothers.\xa0 The Pharisees, Sadducees, Herodians, and Zealots living together as sisters and brothers.\xa0 In those rare moments when it happens: it is like the ordained, anointed blessing of God running over through the priesthood and down to all the people.\xa0 It is as if the plentiful dew of a lushly green-forested mountain fell on the dry rocks of Mount Zion; as if the day of God\u2019s gift of abundant life and blessing has arrived at last where all the people will gather in peace and celebration for the feast of the Messiah.

Each festival celebration was a foretaste of much better things to come\u2014the vision of what God was up to in calling Israel as his one, singular people.\xa0 In Jesus and around the Lord\u2019s Supper table, we catch a similar vision of the power of God at work.\xa0

We confess and believe in the one Spirit-fired \u201choly catholic church, the communion of saints, the forgiveness of sins, and the life everlasting.\u201d\xa0 Which is to say that we believe that Christians from the URC and the CRC, the Canadian Reformed and the Free Reformed, those on all sides of present school and church conflicts\u2014that all of them, in the end, are one.\xa0 Not because we have managed to work it out on earth, so much as that it is the reality of God\u2019s heaven.\xa0

In current conversations on sexuality, much is made of a morality rooted in a Creation-order ethic.\xa0 But I do wonder at times if we shouldn\u2019t find our starting point in the other end of history: in the New Creation where \u201cthey will neither marry nor be given in marriage\u201d and where all God\u2019s people are gathered fully and finally together\u2014progressives, conservatives, protestants, Catholics, and every one of the thousand-plus factions of \u201cthe Reformed faith\u201d\u2014all at the Wedding Feast of the Lamb.\xa0 This place where we will finally and manifestly be what we actually already are in God\u2019s reckoning: reconciled together in Christ into one body, through the one Spirit, faith, and baptism through which the one Lord bestows his blessing, even life forevermore.

May Psalm 133 inform our praying of the Lord\u2019s prayer that God\u2019s \u201cwill be done on earth as it is in heaven.\u201d\xa0 And, until that day when our journey of ascents is complete inside the gates of the New Jerusalem, may this psalm inform our living, too.

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