A worship service was held at 10.30am in the church building on Sunday 16 August. The service will simultaneously broadcast on the Church Facebook page.  For the next four weeks, you can catch up with the part of the service here.

The Bible passages are Psalm 67 and Matthew 15:21-28 Duncan led the service and preached.  The sermon begins at 16:55 in on the catch-up.

Duncan spoke powerfully on Psalm 67. He discussed Christian Nationalism – the concept that any one nation is especially blessed and called by God to be an example to the world, and contrasted the vision of the Bible. God chose a people through which the whole world would be blessed and come to worship God. This people had its roots in Judaism, but since Jesus came we are all, as his followers called to be, through our lives and words, light-bearers in the world. As Duncan puts it, Our story as a church, as followers of Jesus, is that God so loved the world that he gave his one and only Son. ‘We have not received the blessing of faith in Jesus because we are better than anyone else. In the spirit of Psalm 67, we have been blessed by God. so that we might be a blessing to others’.

Here’s the full text of  Duncan’s sermon:

Sermon

Let’s just think for a few minutes about Psalm 67.

I want to come at it from a slightly different angle this morning, or maybe different from maybe what you’ve previously heard focused around Psalm 67,  but I think one that’s very prescient for the times that we live in.

Politics and religion is a very powerful and dangerous combination. As a minister of the gospel, I would never presume to stand here on a Sunday morning and tell anyone how they should vote in a general election or a referendum or any kind of local plebiscite.

Over all the years that I’ve been here at Hilton Church – quite a few now – I can scarcely recall ever having what you might describe as a party political debate or conversation with anybody in the congregation. In fact, I really haven’t got much of an idea how many people vote in this congregation and I would only just imagine that probably in common with kind of most kind of crowds in most churches there’s probably quite a spectrum of different political persuasions within this congregation.

I wouldn’t want therefore to make, and it would be wrong of me to ever kind of particularly want to highlight one political party over the other, and I wouldn’t comment in that way.

However, I think there is one area where I think it is relevant to comment, and I think Psalm 67 particularly kind of highlights this for us. And it’s really not so much in terms of what we might describe as party politics, whether you’re Labour or Tory or SNP or whatever.

I would want to really maybe think more about the political realm in terms of something that maybe you’re becoming increasingly aware of, I certainly am, and we would call it ‘Christian Nationalism’. Something that is very big in the United States these days and you’ll see it reflected in lots of political gatherings there. And it’s increasingly becoming part of the conversation in the United Kingdom in different kinds of ways.

Rather than specifically focusing on a current politician, we’ll keep it away from the current politics in that sense of a person. Let us go back  more than 40 years, to Ronald Reagan, who was the President of the United States from 1981 in 1989 – ancient history now.

In 1988, he made quite a famous speech about his vision for America, and this is what he said. He described America, and I quote, as a country that would be ‘a light unto the nations and a shining city. upon a hill’. Where have you heard that before? Effectively, Reagan was using Jesus’ words to proclaim America as a chosen country of God. In his view, in his speech, the greatest nation on earth – and we still hear these comments – the most exceptional country in the world. God bless America.

While America, and even that Scotland or Great Britain might be remarkable countries for all kinds of reasons with a very significant history, I think today, and that’s why I’m commenting upon it, there is something very dangerous about making such large claims for any nation on the face of this earth.

Because Jesus actually never spoke about nations, per se, being a light to the world. The light, according to Jesus in Matthew’s gospel in the Sermon on the Mount, shines not through the exercise of political power or national greatness, but rather through the lives of his disciples who show love and compassion, humility, mercy and forgiveness.

Jesus was consistently cautious, if you read the gospels, in relation to political moves of any kind. As we are seeing in our world today, it isn’t actually much of a leap to go from this Christian nationalism, which says ‘we are a special nation under God’, to something like ‘we can do anything we like. because we’re that special as a nation’.

So with that as a background to what I’m thinking about today in terms of Christian nationalism and this increasing sense of countries – one in particular – viewing themselves as chosen, let me take you for a few minutes to the songbook and the prayer book of the scriptures to demonstrate the kind of attitude we are to have all to have towards all people and all nations of the world.

Here we have a song a prayer from the Psalm, Psalm 67, which is probably, just think about it, 3000 years old, And yet it continues to speak into the global politics and indeed the vanity of nations in 2026.

Psalm 67 may have been sung by the people of Israel,  because there’s a repeated chorus ‘May the people praise you, God. May all the people praise you  (verses 3 and 5) .Or maybe these words were a call and response like we do sometimes at the beginning of the service. Words from the leader of the worship and then words of response. That’s what we have in verses three and five.

But what we can see immediately in verse one is that this song or prayer actually goes back to the very beginning of Israel’s journey in Egypt to the promised land. These words at the very beginning, ‘Lord bless us and be gracious to us’. These words are actually almost a direct lift from Numbers 6. What we know in the church today as the ‘Aaronic blessing’, and we still use these words at baptism today in our worship. ‘The Lord bless you and keep you. The Lord make his face to shine upon you and be gracious unto you’.

And why pray for God to bless us? Why pray for God’s favour and grace in our lives? Yet again, that is rooted in a much older story that we find also in the Old Testament. Verse two reminds us that God’s blessing, God’s grace and favour isn’t given so that we can have an inflated view of ourselves as a nation or even as individuals. God’s blessing is given… Listen to this ‘so that your ways may be known on earth, your salvation among all nations’.

In other words, God’s blessing, God’s favour is given not as an end in itself not just for you and for me, but rather God’s blessing is poured out,  to use imagery of Paul. God’s blessing is poured out so that we can be a blessing to others. so that the whole world can be blessed. The whole world.

Think of that in terms of the way that so often nations put themselves above others today in our world. Verse 2:  ‘all the nations’. Verse  3:  ‘all the people praise you’. Verse 7 ‘all the ends of the earth’.

And the writer of the Psalm doesn’t make this up himself. This calling is actually in the very history of Israel itself. Genesis 12:3  (The Message). These words addressed to Abraham: ‘I’ll make you a great nation and I’ll bless you.  I’ll make you famous and you’ll be a blessing….. All the families of the earth will be blessed through you’.

Psalm 57 is rooted in the Abrahamic covenant. ‘The whole earth will be blessed through you’. That’s the vision we’re encouraged to have today. Abraham was chosen not for himself, but chosen so that his descendants and all of the world might be blessed through him.

And followers of Jesus today, we believe that the blessing was ultimately fulfilled in the coming of Jesus. And that’s why even in Matthew’s Gospel, it begins with a genealogy, the book of the genealogy of Jesus Christ, the son of David, the son of Abraham. Jesus said, ‘Your father Abraham rejoiced that he would see my day….. Before Abraham was. I am’. (See John 8:56-58)

Our story as a church, as followers of Jesus, is that God so loved the world that he gave his one and only Son. We have not received the blessing of faith in Jesus because we are better than anyone else. In the spirit of Psalm 67, we have been blessed by God. so that we might be a blessing to others.

That’s ultimately what the calling is, to be a blessing all around the world in every way that we can be. ‘May the nations be glad and sing for joy….. May all the peoples praise you.’ As followers of Jesus, we’re called today not to have an undue view of the importance of ourselves or of our nation, whatever our nation is.

We are called today to have a global vision. to take an interest not just in own little corner of the world.

Three thousand years ago, in an insignificant part of the world, an unknown writer penned these words

You mark us with blessing, O God.
Earth’s four corners—honour him! (Psalm 67:7  The Message)

Psalm 67 calls all people and all nations in this day and every day to humility. In God’s world there are no special nations and none of us have achieved anything in this life that wasn’t a gift from God, and a blessing to be shared. Ultimately Psalm 67 is a call to mission, the mission of Jesus Christ to love the world, a call to share the love and the blessing we have received from God that others might be blessed and share in it too.

Greatness as world leaders isn’t the ultimate destination in life. Greatness as world leaders isn’t what Jesus is interested in. His priorities are very different. Not domination, but service. Not superiority, (‘I’m better than you’), but humility. It’s not privilege, it’s responsibility. It’s wanting the best for everyone, not just my side, and praying and working towards that vision in truth.

So today we look at our troubled world and we pray, may the nations praise you, God. May all the people praise you. May all the nations be glad.