Holy Stump
Isaiah 6:8-13
April 26, 2026
Matt Goodale
When you hear the word “holy”, what do you think of?
One of the basic stories in our western culture is the quest for the holy grail. It’s a literary trope that has captured imaginations and generated many great stories over the centuries from the King Arthur myths of the 6th century to the great film, Indiana Jones and the Last Crusade. Monty Python and the Holy Grail!
It makes for great entertainment, but one of the reasons I think this trope has transcended centuries and cultures, is because there is something in it that resonates with the human experience. It taps into something in the human psyche that longs for holiness.
And I don’t mean the kind of holiness most church-going Christians picture when they hear the word. I don’t mean angels and bright golden throne room scenes or glowing halos. I’m talking about something transcendent, something that promises more life than we currently have.
The quest for the holy grail taps into something in us that desires more than just muscle and money, something more than what is right in front of us. We’re all after something—all of us want more life than we get simply by eating three meals a day, checking our phone and getting a little exercise. We’re after something holy…something transcendent that gives a real sense of purpose and deeper meaning to this existence of ours.
We all know at some level that living is about more than just accumulating wealth and trying to maintain a good diet. That something more we all long for at a deep existential level is what I am calling holy. It’s something we can’t buy at Costco – though if we could they’d probably have a good deal on it—and it’s something we can’t earn by working harder. Holiness, most of the time, isn’t something you can buy or find by looking harder…it’s something you stumble into.
At least, that’s how it works in the Bible. The holy shows up all over scripture. Moses stumbles onto it in a fiery bush in the middle of the desert—“this is holy ground”. Ezekiel stumbles into it while he’s washing his clothes by the river. John stumbles into it while in exile on the island of Patmos.
We could all probably name a moment or two in our lives when we stumbled into something holy…and I don’t mean that we saw angels or heavenly throne rooms…I mean moments of sheer abundant life. Moments when everything felt right and whole, when heaven and earth feel as if they met. Maybe it was when you held your child in your arms for the first time or said your wedding vows. Maybe it was when you shared a meal and laughter with a group of friends last week. Maybe it was when you summited that hike and saw a glorious mountain vista laid out in front of you.
A couple years ago Meghan and I spent a few days in Banff. And to be honest I was not super excited about it. I mean, I was looking forward to it, but it was the first time we were leaving Iona for several days and I was a bit anxious and sad about that.
But I’ll never forget the moment on our drive there when I caught my first glimpse of the Canadian Rockies. My jaw literally dropped – and remember, I’m from Colorado…I know mountains—I’m a mountain snob! But I had never seen mountains like those. The sheer beauty of it melted all my anxieties away and I felt something holy.
Pastor Eugene Peterson defines holiness as the most intense experience we ever get of sheer life—it’s authentic, firsthand living—not life enjoyed from a distance or through a screen. Holiness is when we find ourselves living out the abundant life that Jesus promised us.
But I’ve wondered: what about when life doesn’t feel so abundant? These transcendent moments of holiness are wonderful and treasured and give us glimpses into what life is perhaps really about…but…what about all of the other moments in between? Especially the moments that hurt?
Most of us don’t live on these mountain top experiences and we’re lucky if we get an occasional glimpse every now and again…so, what about the rest of life? Is everything else unholy? Is there holiness to be found, even where life feels anything but abundant?
In our passage today, the prophet Isaiah is writing to a people who have known abundant life and lost it. The first line of the chapter tells us everything we need to know: “In the year that King Uzziah died.”
King Uzziah was a beloved, long-reigning King in Israel, and his death signals the end of an era of relative bliss, and entrance into an era of instability. Israel’s beloved king is gone…he’s soon followed by a string of horrible kings that lead the nation into ungodliness and injustice. Isaiah is tasked to warn the people that a time of instability is coming, when their cities will lie in ruin, they will be taken into exile and their fields will be left desolate and their trees all cut down.
We also know a bit about instability and trees getting cut down, don’t we?
But then God, speaking through Isaiah says the strangest thing: “But as the terebinth and oak trees leave stumps when they are cut down, so the holy seed will be the stump in the land.”
Isaiah puts two words together that shouldn’t be: holy and stump. Just a few verse earlier, Isaiah is taken up in a vision into God’s heavenly throne room where the angels are singing “Holy, Holy, Holy! Is the Lord God almighty.” Now that’s holy. You know what isn’t holy? Stumps.
A stump shouldn’t be holy. A stump is the dead leftovers of what once grew and was beautiful. Trees are beautiful and perhaps holy. But not stumps. Stumps are…ugly.
When we moved into our last house there was this big ugly stump in our front yard from an old birch tree that had died. And one of our very first yard projects was getting rid of that ugly stump. I hacked and drilled at it for several days in a row, and finally, blessedly, someone happened to drive by who had a woodchipper and offered to get rid of it for some money. That stump was so ugly I paid good money to have it removed!
And Isaiah is talking about some ugly literal stumps. After the Assyrians come through Israel, only stumps will be leftover from the trees…but Isaiah is also talking about the lives of the people who are about to be carted off to exile. They will be left with a stump of a life. Everything good and beautiful and life-giving will be cut off and all you’ll have left is a stump.
I think some of us know what it feels like to have a stumpy life. Your life is going along so well and then something happens. A medical diagnosis. A phone call. A divorce. An addiction or depression. The abundant life you had is cut off and you’re left with what feels like a stump of a life. This isn’t what you had planned and yet, it’s become your reality.
In our passage, Israel is left with nothing but a bunch of stumps. The abundant life they once knew is cut off. They used to dwell in God’s holy presence all the time, and now even that is cut off. The temple, the one place they knew they could find God and holiness is gone…wiped out. Cut off.
And to these stumpy people living stumpy lives, Isaiah says something very strange.
Isaiah declares that somehow the stumps left behind are holy, that somehow they contain the holy seeds for new life.
There are those two words together again: holy and stump. It feels like those two words should have nothing to do with each other.
But the good news of the gospel…the unexpected and backwards and glorious truth that the story of scripture bears witness to, is that yes, in fact these two words do go together.
Think about the climactic story of the Christian faith that we remembered a few weeks ago: Jesus’ death on a cross. Everything about it is ugly and hopeless and stumpy. Jesus’ life is cut off like a tree axed down, nothing left but its stump.
And we know what happened next. A holy seed sprouted from that stump. New life issued out of death.
The incredible and backwards and unexpected and glorious truth that Jesus’ life testifies to, is that holy life issues out of dead places. Beauty can begin in ugliness. The stump is not the end of the story, because the stump holds the holy seed of new life.
As Christians, we believe that new life can come out of dead places, we believe that ugliness now doesn’t mean there can’t be beauty later. We believe that just because there is a stump—and believe me, every time you turn on the news it’s just stumps all around—doesn’t mean that’s the end of the story. And remember, believing isn’t the same thing as knowing. Believing is hoping. We don’t know beyond the shadow of a doubt that new life comes out of dead places, but we live as if it is true.
And yet, we do know that death and rebirth is the pattern to all of creation around us. Every year we live through it as things die in winter and are born again in spring. The sun sets every evening to rise again the next day. Living things die and fertilize the ground for new living things to grow. I told you about our stump in the front yard that was so ugly, right? Well we used the mulch from it to grow a garden…and that garden thrived with help from what was once an ugly stump. Life issuing from death seems to be knit into the very fabric of creation.
And if, as people of faith we can hold onto that hope, then we will never look at stumps the same. If we can come to see that holiness and stumpy lives actually go together…then perhaps we can encounter God and find life in more places than just the mountaintop experiences…perhaps we can find God and new life even in the stumpy places.
If your life feels like a stump right now—or if you are discouraged of all the stumps you see every time you turn on the news, Isaiah assures us that holiness, that new life is not far off, and in fact the seed for that new life lies in the very stump itself.
I’ll close with:
There’s this incredible thing that trees can do. In forests, trees that live so close together create a community of sorts. They share nutrients through their root systems and can communicate if there’s a threat like disease or in some cases, animals. And if a tree is cut down in a forest and nothing is left but the stump, the other trees nearby can actually keep the stump alive by sharing water and nutrients through their root systems until it’s able to grow again. It’s kind of incredible!
And I think it’s a great analogy for what the church community can be. If something happens and you’re left with nothing but a stump, you’re surrounded by a community that can help share nutrients and resources and encouragement until the holy seed of new life can grow again.
The good news of the gospel is that stumps are holy and Jesus came to show us that new life can issue from unexpected places. Amen and may it be so.