We come to Psalm 133, which I’ve always thought of as the “Unity Psalm.”

How wonderful, how beautiful, when brothers and sisters get along! It’s like costly anointing oil flowing down head and beard, Flowing down Aaron’s beard, flowing down the collar of his priestly robes. It’s like the dew on Mount Hermon flowing down the slopes of Zion. Yes, that’s where GOD commands the blessing, ordains eternal life. (MSG)

Peterson calls it Community and talks about one’s participation (or not) in a local church.

But real community in a local church context is difficult. Peterson describes what sometimes happens – I see this phenomenon particularly in some larger churches and even smaller churches who take their cues from the large churches:

Another common way to avoid community is to turn the church into an institution. In this way people are treated not on the basis of personal relationships but in terms of impersonal functions. Goals are set that will catch the imagination of the largest numbers of people; structures are developed that will accomplish the goal through planning and organization. Organizational planning and institutional goals become the criteria by which the community is defined and evaluated. In the process the church becomes less and less a community, that is, people who pay attention to each other, “brothers and sisters,” and more and more a collectivism of “contributing units.”

The key to community (and unity!) is love. JD Walt wrote recently, meditating on Jesus’ prayer as recorded in John 17:

I do not ask for these only, but also for those who will believe in me through their word, 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. (John 17.20, 21, ESV)

Back to JD Walt. He observed:

I think what I am trying to say is if we focus on unity, we often get disagreement, but if we focus on love, we will get unity. 

That’s a good word:

A new commandment I give to you, that you love one another: just as I have loved you, you also are to love one another. By this all people will know that you are my disciples, if you have love for one another. (John 13.34, 35, ESV)