Sometimes the end is only the beginning …

There is a new book out by Rawn James Jr. entitled Root and Branch. It tells the story of Charles Hamilton Houston and Thurgood Marshall and their fruitful efforts to end the laws of segregation. Their labors, according to some, essentially laid the groundwork for the civil rights movement. Houston, a professor at Howard University, would die before the Brown v. Board of Education decision in 1954. But it was Marshall, one of his students, who would lead a team to undercut every Jim Crow law in America. Houston’s life may have come to an end, but the work of his student Marshall was really only the beginning of ending segregation through the judicial system in this country.

There is no root or branch mentioned in Isaiah 6, but there is a stump. Perhaps that is a good place to start when we think about these last verses of the sixth chapter of Isaiah. They are hard to hear. Isaiah is told to “go and say” the following: “Keep listening, but do not comprehend; keep looking, but do not understand” (v. 9). This is hard to understand. Why would God want Isaiah to proclaim that?

Israel was not there when Isaiah saw that amazing vision. They did not see the Lord seated on a throne, the train of the robe filling the temple, the seraphim with six wings, two covering their faces, two their feet, and with two flying. They did not see the shaking doorposts and thresholds. Israel did not see that, but Isaiah did. Isaiah not only saw those phenomenal things; he volunteered himself to be sent to Israel.

He is sent with news that is hard to hear, and presumably hard to say. It is hard to understand why God sent Isaiah with this message we find in verses 9-13. Sure, Israel would have more kings, but King Uzziah had just died. Sure, Israel’s main enemy, Assyria, wouldn’t always be the superpower, but Israel was being progressively battered by the Assyrians. Sure, Isaiah would not always be the bearer of bad news, but why did he have to be the prophet of doom this time?

In the face of loss and grief over King Uzziah, and in the face of oppression from the Assyrians, God sends Isaiah, newly atoned for by that burning coal that touched his lips, with this message. This message was one that Israel would ultimately not be able to understand. The Lord tells Isaiah, “Make the mind of this people dull, and stop their ears, and shut their eyes” (v. 10). This language is so strong that even the Greek translators of the Hebrew Bible changed the verbs in these verses to sound a little less like instructions and more like observations. This message is hard to hear even today. And yet being hard of hearing is precisely the point.

Perhaps, there is something that God can do by not being understood. There are things that we face in our lives that just don’t make sense, aren’t there? In spite of that, things not making sense to us, sometimes God helps us gain insight—maybe not understand, but gain some perspective about it. Yes, God is so awesome that God’s purposes can be accomplished by no one getting it. This just confirms the beauty of grace. Our connection to God is surely not because we get it; it’s because God gets us. It’s because God gives grace to us, and love, and salvation, in spite of the fact that we don’t get it, maybe even because we don’t get it.

Maybe some of you today can remember a situation in your life that at the time seemed to be so hard to understand, but looking back, you can see more clearly now. Sometimes the strongest words that are the hardest to hear from a leader, a coworker, or a friend are some of the most helpful things someone can give us. Even if at the time the words do not immediately register, and even if at the time the words sting, somehow, some way, sometimes, those words can be exactly what we needed.

Today the “Who dat?” New Orleans Saints will face the “almost undefeated” Indianapolis Colts. As many of you remember, New Orleans, almost five years ago, was inundated. Not just flood waters by Hurricane Katrina, but by waters breaking through failing levees. People were waiting for aid and assistance on rooftops, and in makeshift shelters, and, yes, in the Superdome, where the Saints played NFL games Sunday after Sunday for years. People fled New Orleans, not as refugees, but as people trying to rebuild their lives after losing everything. And tonight an incredible number of people will watch this championship game and cheer for the Saints. The Saints represents for so many the city that was so recently underwater but now survives amidst ongoing efforts to rebuild and rise again. Even Indy fans may cheer if the Saints win.

Israel did not experience a hurricane and the breaking of levees. But Israel would experience, according to God’s message to Isaiah, destruction upon destruction. In response to Isaiah’s question, “How long, O Lord?” (v. 11), which sounds familiar to the question many psalmists used in some psalms of complaint, the Lord says “Until ... .” “Until cities lie waste without inhabitant, and houses without people, and the land is utterly desolate; until the Lord sends everyone far away, and vast is the emptiness in the midst of the land” (vv. 11b-12). My, my, my, until.

These things would need to happen until. Needing something awful to happen is not comforting. But anything that needs to happen is usually not comforting. Not many people like doing their taxes. But it needs to happen. No, it has to happen. For Israel, it seems like this destruction needed to happen, had to happen. But this destruction would happen not because the people “deserved it” and not because the people “brought it on themselves.”

Some may argue, “Well, Israel was unfaithful to God, so its punishment is this ruin, destruction, and exile.” But that is not what we have here in these verses this morning. There are reports of unfaithfulness throughout the Bible, and more specifically in Isaiah, but what we don’t have here, in this sixth chapter, is a reason for the destruction. What we do have is a series of events with a limit: until. These things may need to happen, and it may be hard to hear and understand, but thanks be to God that there is a limit.

There is a very old agricultural practice called slash and burn. It happens when farmers purposefully decide to cut down and burn trees and plants on a parcel of their land that has been planted and harvested time after time. This slashing and burning are done to create better soil for future crops or make the land fit to be pasture for grazing animals. It is a way of enriching the soil. Some farmers see this as a way of rightly caring for their plots. They know they will get the most life out of the land if they do this. And yet it is hard to imagine cutting and burning down trees and plants that may have produced a crop another year. It is something that must be done, but it is not immediately apparent why. But in this slashing and burning, what ends makes way for something to begin.

The end of chapter six gives us a vision of trees being cut down and burned, an ending, if you will, but also what remains is a stump, a beginning, the part of the tree that remains after it is cut down. The Lord says to Isaiah that after the land has been laid to ruin, and again laid to waste, there will be a stump. And that stump is the “holy seed” (v. 13). The stump that remains is holy. The stump actually is the beginning disguised as the end, we might say.

For Israel this meant that even though Isaiah would continue to tell them “The Lord spoke to me” until there was destruction and more destruction, there would still be something left. Israel would not be entirely destroyed. Israel would not be completely ruined. The land and the people would not be altogether laid to waste. After all of that there would be a remnant, a population of people who would go on as Israel. For us, that stump is Jesus the Christ, a descendant of David, the branch grown from the stump of Jesse.

Our life as followers of Jesus Christ does not mean that we are not susceptible to being hard-hearted, deaf, and blind. Nor does it mean that we are immune to experiencing destruction and ruin in our lives and our lives together. But it does mean that something will always be left. Because Jesus lives, we live in Him. We used to sing a song back home that always used to touch me: “Because He lives, I can face tomorrow. Because He lives, all fear is gone. Because I know who holds the future. And life is worth the living, just because He lives.”

When things fall down all around us, and when thing go up in a puff of smoke and we look around and wonder where everyone went, wonder what happened to everything that used to be, Isaiah reminds us there is something that remains—a stump, a holy seed. In other words, there is hope. There is hope because of the One who lives. Even when Jesus Himself was crucified, when His life on earth came to an end, there was a beginning of His resurrected life, and our new life in Him. Our hope is in Him.

Maybe things haven’t gone wrong for you time and time again, but those of us who know what it is like to see our lives become desolate and deserted need you to remind us of the stump. Stumps are hard to see when a person is still trying to figure out what in the world has happened. Whether you are slow to understand or only an observer of ruin, let us all be reminded that Jesus the Christ is our stump. Jesus arrived when the world was laid waste in sin, and He arrives in our lives when all is laid waste, and He makes the ending, our ending, only the beginning. He is the One we can look to when everything around us has been slashed and burned, when there has been destruction on top of destruction, when we can’t hear, can’t see, can’t understand. There He is, our stump, our Savior.

Holy, holy, holy is the Lord, the holy seed, our stump.

It is hard to see the stump on your own. Today Jesus Christ our Lord invites you to come to Him. Because He lives, life is really worth the living. Whether by profession of faith or by letter, you are welcome here to journey with us. We can remind each other of the stump.