2 Chronicles 30:1-19; John 17:1-1

On Wednesday 22^nd June 1977 in an act of worship at Sydney Town Hall, and following the passing of various forms of “Uniting Church Act” legislation in our state parliaments, the Methodist, Presbyterian and Congregational Churches of Australia joined together to form the Uniting Church. Happy Birthday Uniting Church, we are 48 years old today. In response we join again with the psalmist, declaring make a joyful noise to the Lord, all the Earth (Psalm 100:1) because today is a day of celebration and worthy of remembering.

It is, but has it always been so? The Uniting Church has made some mistakes in the past, and it will probably continue to make more. Sometimes I wonder, as many ministers and lay persons do (and I am both of those things) where the Uniting Church is going and whether it is going where God wants us to go. I am, however, encouraged by this. In part because UI am not the only one who loves the Church and wonders where it is going, but also that the care of God’s people by God’s leaders is an ancient theme. In our reading from the Hebrew Traditions today we came across Hezekiah, a reforming king doing his best to reintroduce worship to the nation of God. The nation has fallen away, in many ways, and the king summons the other leaders to celebrate God and seek God alongside him at the most opportune time, even though the right time set by God’s ordinance and found in scripture and tradition had passed. As with the Uniting Church so with the nations of Judah and Israel we know that God does not demand our perfection, and impossible standard, but God would like our attention and our obedience more often than we seem to be able to offer these. The standard is not to high, and yet we always fall short.

When Hezekiah in his long period of reform comes across phase to in the timetable, the return of the people to God’s preferred worship, the king does not want the perfect to override the good, and that a lost opportunity to be on time would mean only that God would be glorified later on than not at all. That’s what we find in 2 Chronicles 30:2-3, and I’ll unpack that a bit more, later. First, let’s understand that Beersheba to Dan is “Hobart to Darwin” in Australian terms, or perhaps Cockle Creek to Cape York if you’re a Bruce Prewer type. Significant for me is that this invitation goes to the whole of the Promised Land: even after the kingdom is divided God invites both Israel and Judah to gather in Jerusalem (2 Chronicles 30:6) with a call to repentance and a summons to worship issued by the king of Judah. For as you return to The LORD, your kindred and your children will find compassion with their captors and return to this land (2 Chronicles 30:9). This is a story of reconciliation and justice, of apology and forgiveness, of the return home of alienated and estranged people, the ones driven away or allowed to walk away without being followed-up and invited to return in the company of a safer friend. It is clear from 2 Chronicles 30:6 and the comment about the remnant of you who have escaped from the hands of kings of Assyria that Hezekiah wants to see a united people; one kingdom. Israel had walked away from God following the end of the reign of King Solomon, and rejected the kingship of David’s grandson. A series of bad kings led to that nation undergoing conquest, while Judah continued. God, through Hezekiah (a Davidic great-grandson, and the son of King Ahaz) says, “those of you who are left up north, come home; come back to Jerusalem and join with God’s people once more”. Does that sound to you like the Uniting Church in Australia? Does it sound to you like Stawell Uniting Church? Does it sound to you like something God would be saying to Australia today? Are we doing what God has wanted since 700 BC? For The LORD, your God is gracious and merciful, and will not turn away his face from you if you return to him reads 2 Chronicles 30:9 in the king’s own words. Is that what you’d like to hear from your Pastor? Is that what you’d like Stawell to hear from me, and from the Elders of this church, as our message to the residents of our city who don’t attend here: that they are welcome and will be greeted with compassion if they’re brave enough to show up once more or for the first time? I hope your answer is yes, because that is God’s message to Stawell, the message God has given to them through me and the Elders here; it is God’s invitation through all who lead congregations in our city. It is God’s message to Australia, and it is a message clearly heard from The Uniting Church.

But, how will Australia respond? How will Stawell respond? How will our non-participating friends respond? 1 Chronicles 30:10 says, so the couriers went from city to city through the country;….but [the people of the county] laughed them to scorn and mocked them. Is that what you were expecting to hear? Is that what you thought might happen? We go to the farthest reaches of the promised land, the blessed and lucky country, to invite home the lost and the beaten up, many of them who stormed away from here rebellious and angry in the first place, and they spit at us and the message of loving welcome home? Kinda, eh! The Uniting Church in Australia is the fastest greying church in Australia; we’re getting older faster than any other church, mainly because young people aren’t joining us as quickly or as often as they join other churches, and we’re a very big church with a lot of very old people. In 1 Chronicles 30:11 we read only a few…humbled themselves and came; which I suppose is both happy and sad. Only a few, but still, a few came; it was worth inviting the whole country for the few who were afar off and came and joined the many already gathered in Jerusalem who we read about in 1 Chronicles 30:13 and who would have been there anyway. Even so, the ones who were there, the Judahites and the Jerusalemites themselves, were not perfect and they needed God’s grace as well, even the worship leaders. 1 Chronicles 30:15b, 17 makes it very clear that while God’s invitation was for everyone, what everyone was being invited to was a ritual of cleansing, and a realignment of the nation’s identity under God’s authority. Yes it was Passover, yes it was what Jews do; but it was too late and it was very messy.

Think what it would be like for us to be celebrating Easter today because during April we’d forgotten it was on, and nine weeks ago we had been too busy doing other stuff over the long weekend. Perhaps we’d all gone camping with our friends, or we had been distracted by something else…say an Athletics carnival or something. Imagine we had suddenly realised what we had done, or had not done, on the night upon which we was betrayed and then tried to do it now. That’s where Hezekiah, King of Judah, is. The king of God’s Nation is trying to get God’s people back on track by doing the thing and asking The LORD for a second chance at faith by throwing himself into worship, and pleading The LORD he’d ignored until that point to start speaking again. Does that sound to you like the Uniting Church in Australia? Does it sound to you like Stawell Uniting Church? Does it sound to you like something God would be asking of Australia today? Are we doing what God has wanted since 700 BC, that we listen and obey at least from now on? In 2 Chronicles 30:19 we read another of Hezekiah’s prayers, asking that The LORD pardon all who set their hearts to seek God, The LORD the God of their ancestors, even though not in accordance with the sanctuary’s rules. “I know we’re doing worship wrong, God, and we were meant to do this a while back”, prays the king, “we are worshipping you but we are not worshipping you inside the rules of worship clearly set down in scripture, and we’re being led by Priests and Levites who haven’t done the ritual stuff first; but, look, we’re here to love you as best as we messily can, so could you overlook the wrong-coloured candles and just listen and receive our love?”

One of my key discoveries this year, as I have prayed for you and for me and for God’s Kingdom Come, God’s will be done on Earth as it is in Heaven, is that God is not a perfectionist. I am a bit, perfectionist, and my current discipleship growing-edge with God (if you’re interested), what I am learning as a Christian in my own right and not just your minister, is how I go about being a professional without being a perfectionist. I am a man with a white-collar job, a man accountable to the organisation with which he is employed: of course I want to do well, and I want to do it well, whatever it is this week. However, it doesn’t have to be faultless and pristine, just authentic and effective. The work we have done as a Church Council between my arrival two years ago and today has been hard graft, and today we will commission with God our new councillors. Those who joined afresh a month ago, those who left a month ago after years of service, and those who were here last year and still are, none of us are perfect and none of us are useless. The new council has a new job after the last council completed its: well done good and faithful servants. The last council was not wrong, it was the right council for its time; just as the new council is not right but is the council for its time, and will need to be refreshed in 2028. Some changes have been made, some corrections have been made, some updates, some pruning of ideas and habits. All things however have been done with grace and prayer, and they always will be, because that is who Stawell Uniting Church is. It is who I am, grace and prayer, but you know better than I that that was also Rev Susan, grace and prayer; I trust that grace and prayer will characterise Rev Next from 2028.

In our call to worship and our introduction we were encouraged to make a joyful noise to the Lord, all the Earth, (Psalm 100:1). The Psalmist thought that was a good idea, and Hezekiah prayed that it would be enough. Perhaps our sound will never be perfect, or precise to three decimal places of accuracy, that’s certainly not going to happen under our new council’s leadership because that is not the path we are taking. Yes we want to be as close to God’s purposes as we can, we will listen closely and we will obey as best we can; with God’s help we will, but our goal is not perfection it is satisfaction. Is God pleased with us? If yes, wonderful: if not, it doesn’t matter how wonderful we think we are when our perfection falls short of God’s purpose.

We are a church, (and I am speaking of the UCA well as St Matthew’s here), we are a church that does the wrong thing at times. At other times we do the right thing the wrong way, late or out of pitch. However, and I do believe this of the UCA well as St Matthew’s, we always try to please God. Even when we make a mess of it, and of each other, our intention is to serve God and save the world alongside the World’s Saviour. Here we have a team that God chose and you endorsed: pray for us servants, now and at the time of our test.

So, happy birthday Uniting Church in Australia. Forty-eight years ago today our Assembly assembled and then began to walk, today we recommit to a new assembly and a continued walk.

Amen.