Psalm 127:1-2; Ephesians 2:17-22; John 17:1-11

Without wanting to get overtly political I have something profound to tell you: former US President and wall-builder-in-chief Donald Trump is not the Antichrist. However, in light of reading I have undertaken leading into today’s service I have come to the conclusion that Christ Jesus is the anti-Trump. This is especially true in June 2024 as much as it was in November 2016 when Mr Trump was elected on his “America First” platform.

Where the leaders of nations, (including our own), wish to build walls and enforce strict immigration controls to separate families and isolate the much loved but very unwell, Jesus offers citizenship of the greatest realm of all: the Kingdom of Heaven. Where many flee poverty and corruption, and others flee persecution and genocide, we are brought to thought by today’s readings that every one of us seated or standing in this house has fled sin and tribulation. Make of those words what you will; be they literal fire and brimstone for you, or simple metaphors of a life lived outside the love of God. I don’t know your past but I do know mine and both of those apply, the literal and the metaphorical. Paul says that we are all refugees from the world and that God in Christ offers us not only asylum, but also citizenship wherever God is king.

With respect to the Kingdom of Heaven as it was proclaimed by Christ, The Father’s “Operation Sovereign Borders” is a series of rescue, recovery, and reuniting manoeuvres; it is about expanding the reach of God to include all, rather than erecting barriers to exclude most. Unlike what we have seen in the land of Canaan in recent months, in ancient Philistia (Palestine) and Israel, in the homeland of the People of God the resources of compassion are never overwhelmed, and the earliest arrivals and previously settled are never envious or afraid of the newest arrival. In God’s realm the welcome at the door is as effusive for the last arrival as it was for the first.

In the Kingdom of Heaven, where we are no longer strangers to God in danger of deportation, we are citizens with all the rights, privileges, and responsibilities of belonging to the realm. In the Realm of God those rights and responsibilities include shalom (Ephesians 2:17); shalom; that deep, soulful, healing, energising, forgiving, cleansing, restoring, satisfying, joy-bringing peace that only perfect love can bring. That’s our experience, and that’s our mission as ambassadors of the Kingdom; we are not crossed-armed bouncers but are hospitable welcomers and stewards of the message of peace to the world. In Christ’s love, in the Father’s realm, in the Spirit’s fellowship there is no division because God is equally present everywhere and with everyone (Colossians 3:11). Paul told the Ephesians (and by our reading this morning he tells us) that the realm of shalom is the Kingdom of God, built upon the foundations of those who went before. Paul wrote of the apostles and prophets, women and men who are gifts of God to us and charisms, gifts of the Spirit; women and men who were sent by God and therefore are sources of authority and wisdom with Christ as cornerstone. Jesus is the connection holding all together. The temple which we are is a dwelling place for God; and it is the congregation who are the temple, not the individual, because as Paul wrote we are built together in the Spirit (Ephesians 2:22) to form the place which God inhabits in the world. Where God “lives” on Earth is where we gather when we are gathered. An empty chapel or a single Christian is not “the place”, but the congregation gathered where it is gathered is the place.

I preach often on the subjects of Shalom, the Kingdom of Heaven and the Reign of God in various combinations of those words. So today, when we celebrate the anniversary of the Uniting Church in Australia and its now 47 years of service to the nation under that name, and close to two hundred in the various forms of Methbytgationalism, I want to touch briefly on the topic of apostles and prophets.

The Uniting Church of itself is not a church of hagiography, the stories of saints; this building is named after its town, and even if we are a St Matthew’s we could never have been a St J. Davis McCaughey’s. But in the Uniting Church we do have our cultural heroes in Misters Knox, Wesley, and Brown of the Presbyterian, Methodist, and Congregational movements; and we do remember with thanks to God the work of Davis McCaughey and Ronald Wilson.  We celebrate the ongoing teaching of Stephen Burns, Chris Budden, Geoff Thompson, Robyn Whitaker, Fran Barber, and foremost, Damien Tann. We are a pilgrim people on the path to salvation on the Way of Christ, and we have been blessed with faithful guides along the way. Today we thank God for the women and men of faith and courage who walk a step or two ahead of us, or who walked a generation ahead of us, and leave us markers.

Turing to today’s set gospel reading in John 17:1 we read Glorify your Son that your Son may glorify you. These are the words of Jesus, and since it’s John 17 you already know that these are among the last words of Jesus. Glorify your Son said by Jesus on Maundy Thursday seems obvious, but what do those words mean for us? How can we pray this? Well, in many ways this is a prayer only Jesus can say since he is Son in the way that no other man is – and there are no daughters like him either. Jesus alone is worthy of the glory of God, I’m sure I’ll get no argument from you at this point, however I wonder if “glorify” might also mean “shine the light of world attention” on us so that we might “shine the light of world attention” on God through our glorifying. The Church can certainly pray that, we can and indeed should have the courage to pray that God would make us notable such that we can point to God when people are looking at us. Let the Uniting Church in 2024 be another Statement to the Nation as Assembly issued in 1977 and 1988. Again in the steps of those who walk ahead of us let us give thanks for those times when the Australian society has established justice, equality, and mutual respect among people; has placed care for the people who have least above sectional interests; has welcomed new migrants and refugees; has exercised solidarity and friendship in times of crisis in Australia across divisions of race and culture; and has engaged constructively with the peoples of Asia, the Pacific and the rest of the world as peacemaker. This is what we told Australia in 1988: let us in Stawell be a sign on the highway, a sign of the compassion, grace, justice, and shalom of God. In words addressed by the newly birthed Uniting Church, to Australia, in 1977 let us continue to challenge values which emphasise acquisitiveness and greed in disregard of the needs of others and which encourage a higher standard of living for the privileged in the face of the daily widening gap between the rich and poor.I know this is a passion, a flavour, of Stawell and Pomonal and even as this afternoon we gather to enact a fresh beginning for a changed future in Landsborough my prayer is that we would continue to hold the wounded world in our eyes even as we keep Christ central in our hearts and minds.

Eternal life, the life of the Kingdom of God is the knowledge of God and Christ whom God sent (John 17:3); so it is about fullness rather than endlessness. Eternal life is not just chronologically infinite, it is broad and expansive. Eternal life is seeing Jesus for who he always was (John 17:5), the one from before time, the glorious God the Son. In Jesus we see God, God who is compassionate and self-giving, generous to death, not wrathful. Eternal life is also responding to the complete revelation of Jesus by making Jesus known in the world (John 17:6), especially in the part of the world to which we have been given and has been given to us.  As people of The Northern Grampians gathered as a Uniting Church on this 23rd day in June we ask who our people are, where our country is, and to whom we should share the glory of God revealed to us in Jesus Christ. When we proclaim Christ what we proclaim is what Christ proclaimed to us, they are his words and we have heard them before because they are the words to which we responded in the first place (John 17:8). Jesus prays for us that God will be with us as God has been with him, since Jesus is no longer in the world in himself but only through us (John 17:11).

The believing community has been formed by Christ’s call to each to follow him, and to whom he has displayed God, and by the receivers of revelation and the responders to call becoming brother-sisters with each other in that coming together.

In the context of Psalm 127:1-2 we are the house built by God, and therefore not built in vain. This reminds us to build only for God and in partnership with God, our being a Church and a Christian organisation does not protect us from foolishness and failure if what we do is not directly informed and partnered with God. (We partner with God first, not asking God to partner with us in projects of our choosing, although we are encouraged to be creative in our response to God’s call to meet the world’s need.) Without God, all work is a waste of time, even the work of being church and doing faith stuff. Not only must we rely on God we must make known that God is our source; we don’t take God’s help and then take all the credit, neither do we do the work of the gospel yet hide our light. We do what we do with God, and we do what we do to glorify God. Even if it succeeds, if we haven’t made God’s fame public in the doing of it then the whole point is not made. It is good to be compassionate, it is better (fullest) to be compassionate and let God be glorified (the illuminated focus of the world’s attention). We don’t serve the world for credit and our own fame, but we do serve the world for God’s credit and God’s fame: our humility (and especially our fear of embarrassment) must not get in the way of God’s glory. We are God’s advertisement, not our own, but not anyone else’s either.

What we advertise is that God is dependable, and that we attest to this because we are dependent upon God and God sustains us. The same power that conquered the grave lives in us, and can live in others who want what we have, because of God. Because of God we do not strive, we have no need to. We operate in the world out of shalom, out of eternal (fat) life.

So, whether you trekked alongside the followers of Wesley, Knox, or Brown before 1977, and whether you march amidst the followers of  “Dutto”, “Albo”, or even “Dumbo” today, the call to you is the same: walk with Chris. Walk his Way, share his love, and invite others to join you on the road to God which already traverses the outlands of the realm of God.

Amen.