Rebuilding the Foundation

Author: Mark Fenstermacher
June 25, 2021

Starting over can be exhausting. You know that if you have moved, started a new job, gone through a divorce, or lived through a disaster that destroyed your home. Starting over can be exhausting.

But there is this one thing about rebuilding: you get to do things in a new and better way. You get to incorporate what you have learned as you begin a new chapter, starting a new career chapter or beginning a new relationship. If you are building a new house, or rebuilding on the old foundation, you can expand some space, redesign other rooms, and add those electrical outlets you always said would be a good idea. You can relocate the washer and dryer from that cramped place into a more open space, and you can add windows—and sunlight—to the family room which had been dark for so long.

Nehemiah, in the Hebrew Bible, returned to a shattered Jerusalem and began to rebuild the city by first focusing on reconstruction of the walls. (Everyone had a hand in that rebuilding, by the way.)

The prophet, in chapter 58 of Isaiah, speaks to a people recovering from the shattering experience of the exile. The prophet says the old way of going through the motions of faith and piety isn’t enough, and it is time for people to live out God’s love and compassion in real ways.

This Sunday begins a three-week series of strategic messages about who and what our church will be all about in this next chapter. We are calling the series, Rebuilding the Foundations. This Sunday we’ll explore what it means to be a community created out of a common devotion to Jesus of Nazareth. What would it look like if the people that meet at the corner of East 7th Street and Duesenberg were committed to knowing Jesus, loving Jesus, serving Jesus, and following Jesus? (Note: in the coming weeks we will talk about being an open community where people can connect and grow in their faith, and we will explore the power of outreach/missions and acts of kindness.)

Some patterns in the church pre-COVID were beautiful and good: we need to hold onto those. Other patterns were not really all that helpful. Some of the things we did helped fulfill our mission and some of them were a distraction that used up resources for no good reason.

Let’s not waste the crisis of the last two years: let’s invite God to put the church back together in a new way.

The prophet, in chapter 58, says this about the new chapter in the life of God’s people (The Message):

9-12 “If you get rid of unfair practices,
    quit blaming victims,
    quit gossiping about other people’s sins,
If you are generous with the hungry
    and start giving yourselves to the down-and-out,
Your lives will begin to glow in the darkness,
    your shadowed lives will be bathed in sunlight.
I will always show you where to go.
    I’ll give you a full life in the emptiest of places—
    firm muscles, strong bones.
You’ll be like a well-watered garden,
    a gurgling spring that never runs dry.
You’ll use the old rubble of past lives to build anew,
    rebuild the foundations from out of your past.
You’ll be known as those who can fix anything,
    restore old ruins, rebuild and renovate,
    make the community livable again.

I’m so hopeful about what God might do with us if we go chasing after Jesus, letting him be our Teacher and Guide...our way, our truth and our life.

And I love that phrase about using “the old rubble of (our) past lives to build anew.” If we loved people the way Jesus did, if we spoke for the poor and oppressed the way Jesus did, and if we welcomed the stranger as Jesus did, our lives will begin to “glow in the darkness.”

See you Sunday: it’s rebuilding time!

Grace and peace,
Pastor Mark

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