2nd Sunday in Advent
“Feeling Stumped?”
Isaiah 11:1-10
December 8, 2013
A shoot growing from the stump of Jesse, the gifts of the spirit, the peaceable kingdom where
predators and their prey live side-by-side, and babies play unharmed near poisonous snakes. Woody
Allen once gave his own interpretation of this vision: “The wolf shall lie down with the lamb. But the
lamb won’t get much sleep!”
I love the imagery in Isaiah. It is filled with renewal, rebirth, new life and hope. In a world filled with
natural disasters, school shootings, political corruption, and abuse of power it is imagery we need to
hear over and over again.
“A shoot shall come out from the stump of Jesse”
This wasn’t an easy time for Israel. It was a time filled with sadness, regret, and despair. I am sure you
know this. It was a time that many feel on a daily basis. Perhaps you are feeling it now?
But God sends another word: “A shoot shall come out from the stump of Jesse.”
For years my relationship with my dad was strained, uneasy at times, with little or no significant
conversation. Then I got a phone call from him that led to a conversation of some significance. It began
with an argument, both of us expressing our points of view. You can imagine that our views were on
the opposite side of the fence. But what ensued over a month or so of conversations is surprising to
me even to this day.
In my desire to finally unload years of resentment, the sharing of deep-seated feelings and hurts
revealed a side of my father that I had not known. Through the arguing I soon learned of many
misunderstandings and that led to a new appreciation of who my father was. That in turn led to a
renewed relationship that lasted until his life ended. The dead stump of our relationship gave root to a
new shoot, a seedling if you will. And from that came renewed understanding, respect, and love.
A shoot shall come out from the stump of Jesse
We often decide too soon where things can’t grow. “Surely not there!” we say. The circumstances, the
events, the harsh words and pain experienced are too great for life to be given birth. These are after all
the rocks that are too hard and the stumps have too long been dead. Nothing could possibly grow
there! How easily it is for us to draw conclusions based on sweeping generalizations we have made
about life, about people, or even about God.
But now, in the wake of Nelson Mandela’s death we as a nation are asked once again to stop and
reflect on what has transpired in South Africa. Once you begin to think on what took place, the
significant change in that nation it is no less than a miracle.
Pastor Greg Uthus
73 N. Hill Avenue ● Pasadena, CA 91106 ● 626 792-4169 ● www.hillavenuegrace.org
It seems that early on in his younger years, Nelson Mandela took up violence believing it was the way
to change the apartheid in South Africa. He soon learned that this would not help and then took on the
role of non-violent resistance. Colin Powell, speaking about the inauguration of Nelson Mandela to the
office of president of South Africa, remarked how significant it was that four generals escorted Nelson
Mandela to receive the oath of office. These men that were protecting him were the very men who
sought to do him harm under the former rule of apartheid. From the dead stump of apartheid grew a
shoot, a man named Nelson Mandela and a prosperous and accepting nation grew, one in which both
white and blacks live well together.
“A shoot shall come out from the stump of Jesse”
The stump of despair is often large and stubborn. It is difficult to think any new life would grow out of
it. Perhaps you have sat on a stump of despair like that one in your own life? I’ve sat there myself. You
may be there now -- at that place where hope is cut off, where loss and despair have deadened your
heart.
Yet, God’s Advent word comes to sit with us. It does not ask us to get up and dance. The shoot does
not become a mighty cedar. The shoot that was growing would be different from what the people
expected.
“For he grew up before them like a young plant, and like a root out of dry ground; he had no form or
majesty that we should look at him, nothing in his appearance that we should desire him.”
“A shoot shall come out from the stump of Jesse”
Fragile, yet tenacious and stubborn, it would grow like a plant out of dry ground. It would push back
the stone from the rock-hard tomb.
It will grow in the heart of a man cut off by sorrow until one morning he can look up again. It will grow
in the hearts of people told over and over that they are nothing. The plant will grow. It will break
through the places that seem impossible, out of the hard, barren, rock, the rock of our despair and
sorrow.
What if we believe in this fragile sign as God’s beginning? Perhaps then we will tend the seedling in our
hearts, the place where faith longs to break through the hardness of our disbelief. God comes to us in
this Advent time and invites us to move beyond counting the rings of the past. God will keep nudging
us: “Look! Look -- there on the stump. Do you see that green shoot growing?”
“A shoot shall come out from the stump of Jesse”
Feeling stumped? God is near, in you, helping your seedling of hope and faith to grow!
AMEN
Pastor Greg Uthus
73 N. Hill Avenue ● Pasadena, CA 91106 ● 626 792-4169 ● www.hillavenuegrace.org