Imagine for a moment that you are living in a land you were told was a foreign land.  It is the land you were born in and the only land you had known, but you have been told that it is not where you belong.  You grow up hearing stories of Yahweh, the God who made heaven and earth, who chose your people and made covenant with them and gave them – gave you - the land of Israel after freeing them from Egyptian captivity.  But your people broke their part of the covenant, they disobeyed and worshipped the gods of other lands, they accumulated great wealth and ignored the plight of the widow and the orphan, they did not pay fair wages and failed to be the righteous and just people they were called to be.  So God punished the chosen people and sent them into captivity.  Imagine now after all these long years you are told that the time of captivity is coming to an end, that God had remained faithful and you would be freed from this place and return to the land of your ancestors.  This will be an exodus very different than the first, God was about to do a new thing!

Listen now to the words of the prophet Isaiah to the captive people in Babylon in saiah 43:16-21.  
We are a people who like to remember, and we remember everything..  It doesn’t matter what it is either; we remember the good and the bad.  We remember things from our childhood that hurt us; I can remember the name of my confirmation catechism teacher, Mrs. Murphy, because she was one of the meanest women I had ever known.  We remember things from our childhood that brought us joy as well.  I remember spending every Saturday night at my grandparents with my brothers and cousins so our parents could go out and the smell of meat balls on Sunday morning before the sun was up.  I remember often being the only one up and I would go down and spend the morning helping my great-grandmother begin the preparations for Sunday dinner.  I could go on and on, and not because I live in my past, but because these are the things that formed me and made me who I am.  Though we don’t share the same memories I am certain that most of you can spend a few moments and remember those things that formed you as well.  But there are other stories also, aren’t there?  There are the stories that you were told, history that you didn’t experience, but heard about, that lays claim to who you are.  I know, for instance, that my great-grandfather was left on the doorstep of a home as an infant and that the Belfiores took him in and raised him.  We know nothing of his birth parents, but my grandfather had beautiful blue eyes that came from his dad.  And every time I look at one of my boys, I remember where I came from.

When I looked for the first time at this text I recognized in the first two verses perhaps the most formative story of the Hebrew people, the story of the exodus from Egypt.  These would have been familiar images to those hearing these words, but what follows, would have been shocking; they were told not to remember those things any longer.  In the book of Deuteronomy the passing on of the collective faith history of the nation of Israel was made central to the raising of children.  As a matter of fact Deuteronomy 6:4-9, also known as the Shema, the daily prayer recited by the Jewish people twice a day declares, “Take to heart these instructions…impress them upon your children.  Recite them when you stay at home and when you are away, when you lie down and when you get up.”  In other words, these laws, this history, is central to all you say and all you do.  No one was to forget who they were, where they came from and who it was that got them there.  These are the stories that formed them as a people:  The exodus from Egypt, the flight from captivity to freedom, God’s show and tell about who was in charge.  Suddenly they were told not to even think about these things.  Why?  Because God is doing a new thing.  The Hebrew people in Babylon had lived there so long that generations had passed.  There were children who never knew Jerusalem, never saw the temple or experienced temple worship; people had taken jobs, married and learned to live as captives.  But that was about to end.  God did not form these people for a life of captivity; God had formed them to honor and praise the One who created them, nurtured them, loved them and set them free.  There would be a new exodus, a rediscovering of what it meant to be a child of God; there would be a revival in the land!

A number of years ago I attended a women’s conference at a friends church entitled, “woman, thou art loosed!”  I couldn’t tell you who the speakers were or what they spoke about, but those two days changed my life.  You see, for all the nurture I had received here, at my lay speaker training or during my Emmaus walk, I had remained unsure of my call and my vocation into ordained ministry.  On the second day of the conference I went for consultation and prayer.  You need to know that this was not a Methodist conference, but Southern Baptist, and I knew that doctrinally my struggle would make sense to these people because as a woman I was not supposed to be filling a pulpit or leading a church.  And to be honest, part of my struggle was about my role as a woman in ministry.  I grew up in a faith tradition that reminded women that there place would never be in the pulpit; church leadership was reserved for men.  We spoke for only a few minutes and my prayer partner laid her hands on my shoulders and prayed for the Holy Spirit to overwhelm me, to clear my heart and my mind, to give me courage and strength.  And I knew, even while she prayed, that I could no longer stay captive to my past.  I was to leave behind the things of old and look forward.  My exodus was to begin that day; God was doing a new thing that would require my vision to be focused forward.  You see I don’t think God was telling me or the Hebrew people that the past was unimportant or that we had to totally forget it, but what God was saying was that there is something waiting for those who call on Yahweh that is greater than anything we could ever have known. 

We worship a God that is about new beginnings.  These are not just upgrades; these are truly new beginnings.  When we consider where we have come from, what we have done with our lives and what we have made of the church, I often wonder what captivity we are in.  What is our Babylon?  In the movie Happy Feet the elders of the penguin community believed that anyone who was different brought a curse into their community, that to maintain their particular style of life they had to purge themselves of those whose gifts weren’t just like everyone else’s.  In this case the gift was singing, not dancing.  And so they threw the little dancer, Happy Feet, out of the community.  Everyone was the same, no deviation, and life was maintained at a constant familiarity.  For the Hebrew people in Babylon and for the Christian community known as Holy Covenant familiarity with our traditions and lifestyles may make us feel good, may make us comfortable, but it keeps us from desiring exodus to the land promised to us, the kin-dom of God.

God has given us a new thing in human form, Jesus Christ.  And that new thing, that gift to us, allows us to have one eye on the past while both feet are moving forward.  And we don’t even have to wonder who will lead us on this exodus, because the only one capable of leading to the place we need to go is Jesus.  Perhaps it is the choices he made and the choices his disciples made that proclaimed a new thing was being done.  Perhaps that’s why people sought him and his disciples out.  Perhaps that’s why they didn’t need to knock on doors. 

Everywhere Jesus went things were made new, not just subtle changes that maintained life, but changes that turned life upside down!  Bartimaeus, the blind beggar, who was told to shut up by the disciples, was given sight (Mark 10:46-52), thousands were fed on a few loaves and fish bringing the good news of abundance in the midst of poverty, the bleeding woman, the lepers and the lame were healed and restored to community, women were given respect and empowered to work for the kin-dom, and children were honored and valued as persons not property.  The tax collectors, prostitutes and gentiles received hospitality and the honor of having a meal with the Lord.  This was not simply about meeting needs, it was about restoring a sense of dignity and worth not because it is deserved, but because these were children of God, valuable, precious and worthy for no other reason.       
If we are indeed God’s chosen people created for God’s purpose, then it is not only possible, but required that we offer the same relationship to those who live around us that Jesus offered to those who lived around him.  We know there are needs in this community for food, rental assistance, utility assistance, job search, child care and more, and we actually do a great job meeting many of those needs either ourselves or with the help of Metrocrest Social Service Center.  But do we support this community with our time and our hospitality?  Are we being good neighbors?  Are we beings friends? 

We have been given the opportunity by the Ad Council to determine who it is who lives in our neighborhood and what it is we can do to be good neighbors.  Did you know that there is a nursing home behind Trinity Medical Center, Brookhaven Nursing Center?  I go there regularly and visit Jean Svehlek, but I also visit with many other men and women who live there.  We talk and laugh, sometimes cry, we may even gossip a bit.  I have often said it is harder to leave there than I ever imagined.  These people are my friends and I love them.  Is it hard to be a good neighbor?  Not really.  “I am about to do a new thing,” says the Lord, “now it springs forth, do you not perceive it?”  The day of our exodus has arrived, a way in the wilderness has been made, rivers are in the desert places. 

Theologian Walter Brueggemann comments, “I think much of the church has lost its way.  We worry about rules, about morality, worry about members and dollars, worry about culture wars and church splits, worry about imposing our way on others in order to get everyone in the right on morality or doctrine or piety or liturgy…as though we have not received mercy. Listen to this:  Once you had not received mercy, and now you have received mercy.  That’s all.  That’s everything.  That’s what the world in its desolate anxiety does not know.”  We can bring that knowledge.  Jesus and his disciples didn’t knock on doors and introduced themselves.  People came to them.  We have the unique opportunity to be the new thing that God has brought to this world; we can be the gospel.  We have been given the grace to do it.  Will you do it?  There’s a path paved for you.  There’s water running and there’s life.  So with Jesus as our leader, let us set our faces toward Jerusalem and follow the one who is going there, and together we can bring the message.  I pray you will go with me.