“Holy Stump!?”

By Rev. Jennifer Lapinskas

for Grace Lutheran Church, Green Bay, Wis.

February 3 & 4, 2007

 

Isaiah 6:1-13

As far as call stories go, Isaiah’s is pretty amazing.  The story we heard in our first reading today far outshines the mere burning bush that Moses encountered, and maybe even Peter and company’s magnificent catch of fish that we heard about in the gospel today.

Isaiah’s story is pretty amazing.  A story that begins with Isaiah seeing the Lord seated upon his throne, the room filled with just the hem of his robe, so mighty and magnificent the Lord was.  And then we have the seraphim, the fiery angels, hovering about, calling out to one another in voices so grandiose that they shook the foundations of the temple in which Isaiah stood.  And then there’s the live coal brought to Isaiah’s lips to purge his uncleanness from him, to take away his sin and his guilt so that he might be made fit to speak on behalf of the Lord.  And then finally we have Isaiah’s magnificent response to the Lord’s plea, “Whom shall I send, and who will go for us?”

“Here am I; send me!”

That would be a great place to stop because it would offer a wonderful picture of how we are to react when we find ourselves in a great throne room with angels zipping about feeding us hot coals – not to run and hide, but to announce confidently, “Here am I, send me!”  Or, if that doesn’t happen to you on a regular basis, it would at least be a great example of how to respond to God’s call, wherever it comes, be it in a throne room, or through the gentle nudging of a fellow Christian, “don’t you think you’d be great at...” or the unexpected opening of doors that make you think, “I wonder if God is trying to tell me something...”

And it would be a great place to stop if that’s where the story ended.  But it isn’t, and so narrative integrity, and if not that then surely Paul Harvey, would require us to hear “the rest of the story”.

And the rest of the story is important, because it adds a healthy dose of the real world Isaiah lived in and the real world we live in, to this glorious throne room scene.

“Here am I, send me!” says Isaiah.  And the Lord responds, “Great! Now go and tell the people of Israel not to listen, not to comprehend, not to see.  Tell them to shut up their eyes, minds and ears so that they don’t repent, so that they don’t change their ways.  Your mission, Isaiah, now that you have chosen to accept it, is to be a complete and utter failure as a prophet.  There will be no weeping and gnashing of teeth when you finish speaking, there will be no donning of sackcloth, people will simply go on their merry ways all the way to the day of destruction that is surely coming.

“By the time the people have finished not listening to your message their land will be laid waste, their homes destroyed, the people scattered – the few who survive the onslaught that is – and the whole nation will be empty.  When all is said and done, it will be nothing but a nation of chopped down tree stumps, and not just any chopped down tree stumps, but chopped down tree stumps that have been scorched, as if taking the life of the tree weren’t enough.  That’s your job Isaiah, now go to it.”

“Here am I, send someone else...” may have been Isaiah’s thought after hearing his mission.  And yet he did as he was bidden and the people did as the Lord predicted – they didn’t listen, they didn’t hear, they didn’t care and the destruction that Isaiah foretold fell upon them and then they asked, “Why didn’t anyone warn us? Why didn’t anyone tell us if we didn’t shape up we’d become a nation of scorched tree stumps?”

There is something very desolate and sad about a field of chopped down tree stumps.  Instead of a forest, you see only what once was.  You see only the remains of what might have been a beautiful life, teeming with birds and critters of all sorts; children playing in its shade or clambering up and down it’s branches.  There is a sense of finality, of life cut off, of something beautiful having been destroyed, ravaged even.  A violent and tragic end to a gentle, giving life.

A field of stumps, a nation of stumps, sounds so desolate.  The picture that that must have created for poor, shocked, burned-lipped Isaiah, must have been just horrendous.  His beloved homeland a burned-out ruin of burned-out, lifeless stumps of terebinths and oaks.  Life as he knew it crumbled to nothing, with nought but ugly, gnarled, scorched tree stumps to remind him and his people of what had once been.

So desolate, and so how odd that the Lord would choose to make that very symbol of darkness and utter destruction the one and only hopeful thing in the whole prophecy he gives to Isaiah.  The word of the Lord given to Isaiah in the throne room ends by saying, “The holy seed is its stump.”  It’s a rather ambiguous statement and easy to miss.  The holy seed is its stump.

Holiness is a big deal in Isaiah.  The prophet frequently refers to the Lord as the “Holy one of Israel”.  In the scene from today’s reading too, holiness abounds.  The holiness of the Lord.  The seraphs singing, “Holy, holy, holy”.  The seraph making Isaiah holy through the fire of the live coal from the holy altar of the holy Lord.

And now, in the midst of terrible, horrific desolation and devastation, holiness appears in an unholy place: the holy seed is its stump.  The Lord almighty hiding holiness where our eyes might see only devastation and darkness and decay and death.  Just like the Lord almighty hid holiness in the figure of our Lord and Savior Jesus hanging on the cross...

The Lord Almighty telling Isaiah to tell the people who would not hear and to tell us who by God’s grace hopefully will, even in the midst of utter desolation, new life can arise.  You, you nation of stumps, you nation of cut off, broken, burned out destroyed creatures, you, you individual burned out, cut off, broken person, broken stump out there all alone in some desolate, barren field, you, hear this: The holy seed is its stump.

Hear this, oh congregation of stumps – for stumps each of us are, if not now then some time in our past or some time in our future, each of us knows, has known or will know the desolation Isaiah foretold back in the year that King Uzziah died.  Each of us in our own way has had to deal with some form of having been cut off, each of us carries within us that desolate stump that Isaiah speaks of.

It may be the tree stump of illness, a disease that eats away at us or someone we love.  It may be the scorched stump of a broken relationship, a shattered marriage, a crumbling friendship, a wall gone up between siblings.  It may be the tree stump of a relationship broken not by human sinfulness, but by death itself, with those left behind feeling cut off and alone.  It may be the scorched stump of a lost job, a lost dream, a lost way.  All of us, every single person here in this room, bears within us the tree stump, that broken symbol, of something that has gone counter to our hopes.

And so all of us, every single person here in this room needs to have our ears unstopped, our eyes opened and our minds cleared - and thanks be to God through the power of the Spirit they are –  so that we may hear buried in the last line of today’s reading, the final words of a clearly angry God: terrible things will happen, cities will lie waste without inhabitant, houses will stand empty without people to live in them, the land will be utterly desolate, a wasteland.  Terrible things will happen, but the holy seed, the holy seed is its stump.

The spark of hope in the midst of devastation.  The spark of hope that tells us that even when justifiably angry God still can’t find a way to let us go forever.  The spark of hope that tells us that if that is so, then no other kind of desolation that we experience, no other kind of darkness, not even death can separate us from God’s power, God’s grace, God’s mercy, God’s love, God’s capacity to bring life out of death, hope of out of despair.

Out of desolation life can come.  And even if we can’t feel that, or see it, or hear it or understand it, that doesn’t change the truth of the matter – out of the stump of death and decay, life can come, life does come.  Out of death, life does come because the Holy One of Israel made it so by sending his Son to enter into our world, to live and breathe as one of us, to die a horrific, desolate death and to rise again three days later, leaving horror, desolation and death behind in the grave.

The last place you’d expect to find life is in the midst of death, and yet that’s exactly what the Lord instructed Isaiah to proclaim and exactly what the Lord accomplished through Jesus Christ – life out of death.  Hope out of despair.