Right away as I began to learn about the community of Grace I discovered some differences emerging here and there. Healthy communities always strike a balance between the needs of their members. So for starters I want you to turn to your nearest neighbors and say good morning to each one of them. You do not need to go beyond the people within an arm’s length. If you do not know someone, introduce yourselves. [pause] Now AFTER the service I want all of you to join me in the parish hall for coffee. There we can actually chat and get to know one another. The best communities come together socially on a regular basis just to share love and affection with one another. That’s what coffee hour is for.

Five years, seven years perhaps even ten years from now, I will give a sermon based upon John (3:30) where John says “He [Jesus] must increase and I must decrease.” It is my constant theme in ministry and a constant reminder to me. Real, authentic Christian ministry whether one is ordained or not builds up the presence of Christ in other people. It builds up the community and it NEVER builds up the minister.

We must keep this in mind because new beginnings are full of both promise and peril. If we keep our hearts and minds focused on building up Christ in one another and in the community around us then we cannot go wrong. For us to be successful Jesus Christ must increase here and I must decrease. As Paul tells his community in Philippi, “whatever gains I had, these I have come to regard as loss because of Christ.” And for me the converse is also 1: whatever I have lost in this world has become gains for Christ.

Our psalm starts out with a wonderful notion as perfect for us today as for those who had waited 70 years in Babylon to return to their home in Zion. “When the Lord restored our fortunes in Zion, then were we like those who dream.” Later the psalmist implores God to “Restore our fortunes like the watercourses of the Negev.” These verses were written about the same time Isaiah made his bold proclamation.

Nearly six hundred years before Christ, the Babylonian king Nebuchadnezzar attacked Jerusalem and marched 40,000 of the leaders and elite of Jerusalem 600 miles across the desert to Babylon where they remained under house arrest for several generations. The prophet in what we call “Second Isaiah” announces to these Israelite captives an unthinkable future. He tells them

Do not remember the former things,
or consider the things of old.
I am about to do a new thing;
now it springs forth, do you not perceive it?

Very soon God will use Cyrus and his Persian army to defeat Babylon and release captive Israel. Cyrus will see that they return safely to their homeland and he will see to it that the ruins of Jerusalem will be rebuilt. Second Isaiah speaks on behalf of God, “I am about to do a new thing; … do you not perceive it?” In just a few years God accomplished what they had been dreaming about for 70 years. What have the people of Grace Church been dreaming about for so long? What holds us back?

Let’s stay with Isaiah a bit longer. While the period of exile for the Jews sounds like a terrible experience the Bible says otherwise. Mostly the leaders and educated Jews were deported to Babylon. They were well organized, allowed to own land, continue in worship, participate in trade, enjoy the benefits of Babylonian life and even serve on royal projects with the military. They were safe, had many freedoms and many enjoyed wealth. In short, they were flourishing in a foreign land.

Meanwhile back in Jerusalem things were quite a bit worse. The city had been sacked and was occupied by people from surrounding countries. Jerusalem was quickly returning to the state of the barren rocky Judean desert. The challenge presented to Isaiah was how do you get a group of people to move who are comfortable, settled, whose children are born in the new country, to move back to a bleak shell of a city occupied by foreigners and with no immediate prospects for income? Isaiah’s task was to convince these well off comfortable people to return to Jerusalem and rebuild the city.

The leaders in exile had learned one thing that would be key to their return. They realized that it was only through God’s grace that they were able to flourish and enjoy the life they had in Babylon. All Isaiah had to do was to remind them that whatever they had done, God forgives them. Next he recounts for them all the mighty acts God had done for them.

Fortunately they were allowed to worship in exile. They realized that what they accomplished in Babylon was not done on their own but only by God’s grace. With that kind of faith these people left a very comfortable life. They went back to the desert for a difficult 600 mile journey home.

During those months traveling across a dangerous, dry desert they must have asked themselves about their future. Everything was uncertain. But they pressed on in faith and utter confidence in the same sense of Paul where he “forgets what lies behind and straining forward to what lies ahead, I press on.”

And we will press on together you and me. We will strain forward in faith and hopefully with a good dose of humor and forbearance. We can have fun and there will be much work to do. We will laugh and we will cry together. With God through our faith in the work of Jesus Christ we will return and rebuild the city. Only when we build up our faith; only when we build up each other will God be able to do a new thing. “Now it springs forth. Do you not perceive it?”