From Stump to Shoot

At the very beginning of this year, long before I knew how 2025 would unfold, I wrote a blog post from a little wooden pew at the Monastery of the Holy Spirit. I didn’t know it then, but I was standing on the edge of a year that would ask more of me than I thought I had to give. A year of pruning, of waiting, of allowing—however imperfectly—for God to work beneath the surface. (If you missed that reflection, you can read it here.)

On Saturday, as I stepped into my pre-ordination retreat with four others who will be ordained alongside me this weekend, I realized how deeply that word—allow—has shaped me. The five of us entered the room as strangers and, within hours, found ourselves tracing the hidden roots of our stories, recognizing in one another the ways God has been quietly cultivating something new. Each of us arrived by a different path; each of us carries our own pruning scars. Yet together, we could sense a holy convergence: that what we are becoming has been growing under the surface for a long time.

Perhaps that’s why this sermon felt so personal to preach, and why I want to share it here with you. It’s the first of three I’ll offer this Advent, and already I can see a thread emerging: growth, new life, becoming. Advent has always been that kind of season—an invitation to pay attention to what is stirring in the almost-light, to notice the small shoots of grace pushing through the places we thought were barren.

As you read, I invite you to reflect on your own journey: Where has this year pruned you? Where are the raw places still healing? Where might God be preparing space for new growth ?

What word—what whisper—might God be offering you as we enter a new church year?

And now, as you step into this reading and into this Advent season, receive this blessing:

May the God who tends the hidden places tend you in this tender beginning.

May the One who brings shoots from stumps awaken new life in you.

May peace—quiet, patient, unfolding peace—find you where you are,

and lead you gently into what is next.

And may you have courage enough to allow the holy work within you to grow.

Amen.

Sermon: From Stump to Shoot

Church of the Nativity - Fayetteville, GA

December 7, 2025

Advent 2, Year A

Isaiah 11:1-10, Matthew 3:1-12

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Advent always begins in the almost-light, in that tender threshold between what has been cut down and what has not yet begun to grow. It invites us into a slower way of seeing, into noticing the small, quiet signs of life we might otherwise overlook. These are not signs that shout; they whisper. They lean in close and say, “Pay attention. Something is beginning.”

Maybe that’s why a moment in my dining room stopped me in my tracks this week. I had been sitting with the readings, letting that line from Isaiah echo through me: “A shoot shall come out from the stump of Jesse.” It’s a phrase that feels almost impossibly hopeful, and it lingered in my mind as I went about the ordinary business of tending to my home. And somewhere in the midst of that ordinariness, I found myself in a tiny, unexpected Advent moment.

I should tell you: I’ve never been much of a plant-keeper. My mom and sister can identify anything that has sprouted from the ground and know exactly what it needs to thrive. Meanwhile, I love to look at plants, but I already have plenty of living beings relying on me—two teenagers, a husband, and a dachshund who remains convinced he is the center of the cosmos. If a plant requires more than a weekly watering, well…God be with it, because I will forget.

Except for this one African violet. It came from a little cutting a friend gave me four years ago, which somehow, against all odds, has survived under my watch. I love its deep purple blooms, especially in winter. It is, truly, my one horticultural triumph.

But this year, after being away for a week and losing a few other plants to a mysterious fungus, I noticed the violet drooping so badly it looked almost embarrassed. When I lifted it from the pot, I saw roots spilling out, long and tangled and starved for space. My mom took one look and, with the gentle authority of someone who has seen many of my plants come and go, said, “It’s done for.”

I wasn’t ready to accept that. Maybe out of stubbornness, maybe hope—maybe those two things are often closer than we realize—I repotted it anyway. I gave it fresh soil and a slightly bigger pot, offered it a little more attention than I’m accustomed to giving. And then, just a few days ago, as I was rearranging the dining room to make space for my nativity sets, I caught sight of it out of the corner of my eye.

That’s when I saw it: Shiny green leaves, color returning, life, quietly and defiantly, where I was certain none was left. I actually laughed out loud. It felt like the plant itself was saying, “Oh, you thought the story was over? Watch this.”

And that, I realized, is Advent. It’s a season that teaches us that God is already at work beneath the surface, in the places we have written off, in the stumps we have decided are too far gone. Advent invites us to trust the holy, hidden work of God, work that often begins where we least expect it. And that is where Advent’s second movement—peace—meets us today. This is not a peace born of perfection or resolution, but the quiet peace that comes when we stop resisting what is and begin allowing God to work beneath the surface.

Isaiah’s words come to people who know what it is to be cut down. The people of Israel were living in exile, their lives uprooted, their temple destroyed—the very place where they had encountered God. Isaiah does not gloss over any of that. He names the reality for what it is: sometimes what remains really is only a stump. The tree we loved is gone. The life we imagined no longer looks possible. There is no pretending here.

And yet, right there, in the place of loss, Isaiah dares to declare hope. He looks at the very thing that seems most final and says, “A shoot shall come out from the stump of Jesse.” In other words, do not assume that because you see an ending, God does too. Isaiah asks the people to remember the faithfulness of the God who raised up Jesse, who shepherded David, who stayed with Israel through their unfaithfulness and exile, and grief.

Isaiah goes on to describe the One who will emerge from that fragile beginning: a Messiah shaped not by the power structures of the world but by the very Spirit of God. He speaks of wisdom and understanding, counsel and might, knowledge and reverence. He imagines someone who will not judge by appearances, who will see straight to the truth of things.

Isaiah’s vision stretches further still, painting a picture of a world in which the wolf lives with the lamb, the leopard lies down with the kid, and a little child leads them. It is a vision where fear has no place, where harm is unimaginable, where creation is restored and at peace—not because danger has disappeared, but because everything has been transformed by the knowledge of God. This movement in Isaiah, from stump to shoot, from devastation to harmony, takes my breath away every year.

I wonder where the stumps are in your life right now. Where are the places that feel tired, depleted, or worn down to nothing? The places where you can’t imagine anything beautiful growing again? Advent invites us to stay with those places long enough to notice the smallest, most stubborn sign of life pushing through.

And then, just when we are basking in Isaiah’s poetry, the Gospel drops us in the wilderness with John the Baptist. John will not let Advent become sentimental. While Isaiah shows us restored creation and Paul shows us a widened welcome, John tells us what it means to get ready for such a world.

“Bear fruit worthy of repentance,” he says. He is not talking about behaving better or trying harder. He is calling for a turning of the heart, a clearing away of what no longer gives life, a releasing of what holds us back from the One who is coming. Even his sharpest words about an ax lying at the root of the tree begin to sound different when we remember Isaiah. Sometimes pruning is the only way new growth becomes possible. Sometimes God clears away what can never nourish us so that something holy has room to take root. This is the hard, holy labor that makes room for peace—because peace is not passivity. Peace comes when we clear away whatever keeps us from living freely before God.

Put these passages together, and they offer us a single, sweeping truth: God brings life out of what looks dead; God extends that life to the whole world; and God invites us to prepare ourselves for the new thing that is already coming.

So what does this mean for us, here and now? It means that if you find yourself in a season that feels like exile, Advent whispers, “Watch. Life is on its way.” If your heart aches for a world where the vulnerable are saf,e and creation flourishes, Advent responds, “This is the world God intends.” If you sense the Spirit nudging you toward repentance—not guilt, but reorientation—Advent invites you to make room. And if you are wondering whether God is still faithful, Advent answers with Isaiah’s stump and with John’s urgent cry: yes. God is faithful. God is still coming. God is still making all things new.

This is a season that invites us to look back and look forward in the same breath. It’s a season that acknowledges the bare places and the longing and the questions and insists that God is already growing something we cannot yet see.

At the turning of every year, I go to the Monastery of the Holy Spirit for a day. I’ve been doing this for a decade, and I return yearly with the intention of reviewing the year behind me and praying for the year ahead. For many years, God has given me a word during those hours of silence, a word that becomes a kind of anchor for the year ahead.

This year, my word drifted in quietly. It was not a word I wanted or welcomed. I remember sitting in that stone church, exhausted from a grueling year of work and grad school, and parenting. I had been told, unexpectedly, that instead of being ordained in 2025 as I thought, I would be set back another year, because of the timing of some requirements. And I was staring down the final stretch of a dissertation that had taken me three years. I felt tired in places I didn’t know a person could feel tired. The future felt uncertain. I longed for stability and sameness. A word kept floating through my mind, but I refused to claim it.

When I finally stepped outside, stretching my legs after a long period of prayer, I turned onto Magnolia Lane—my favorite place on the property. There’s one particularly massive tree I always visit. Its massive branches create a kind of cave you can hide in. I would always go sit inside it on one of the sturdy branches, hidden from the world, to pray.

But that day, when I turned onto the lane, my breath caught in my chest. The branches that used to spill over onto the road were gone. The limbs had been pruned, manicured so sharply that they no longer resembled the trees I had loved. I rushed to the nearest scarred trunk and touched the raw places where branches had been cut away, and I began to weep. I knew the grief was about more than the trees. It was about that place I knew God was calling me into that I didn’t want to go. I finally acknowledge the word God had been whispering to me all morning…allow.

I thought about how pruning is necessary to remain healthy, how cutting back what is weighing you down can lead to new growth. But that doesn’t mean it won’t hurt. I sensed the season of pruning I was in wasn’t going to stop, and I needed to accept that. Later that day, I knelt in noonday prayer and said the words I wasn’t sure I meant: “Yes, God. I’ll let life happen to me this year. I’ll allow whatever you want. Your will be done.”

As the year unfolded, “allow” was the word I came back to again and again. Allowing is its own form of peace—the quiet peace that comes when we stop trying to control what only God can heal. Allowing became the work of a thousand tiny choices: choosing to trust that God was working beneath the surface of my life even when all I could see were bare places and cut-back branches. If I’m honest, I didn’t always do it well.

All year, I’ve been clinging to these words by poet Rainer Maria Rilke:

I want to beg you, as much as you can to be patient toward all that is unresolved in your heart and try to love the questions themselves like locked rooms and like books that are written in a very foreign tongue. Do not seek answers, which cannot be given you because you would not be able to live them. And the point is, to live everything. Live the questions now. Perhaps you will then gradually, without noticing it, live along some distant day into the answer.

Now—here, at the end of the year—I look back and see something I couldn’t see in January. I see shoots growing from places that once looked dead. I see the way pruning made room for something I could not have imagined. And I see that I am standing on the threshold of a weekend I once thought was far off. Today is the last sermon I will preach as a layperson. In just a few days, I will take vows and join the holy order of deacons, stepping into a calling I could not have pictured in January, when all I felt was delay, exhaustion, and uncertainty.

The words I prayed at the beginning of the year have, without my noticing, become true. I have been living the questions. I have been learning to allow. I have been watching new life emerge from hard and holy pruning. There is a kind of peace that grows only when we stop demanding answers and begin living the questions faithfully.

I invite you to ask yourself, as we stand together at the edge of a new church year: Where have you felt pruned this year? Where are the raw places still healing? Where might God be preparing space for new growth? And what word—what whisper, what nudge—might God be offering you for the year ahead?

This is the peace of Advent—not the peace of ease or certainty, but the peace that comes from trusting the slow, hidden work of God. Allowing shoots to rise from stumps. Making room for Christ to come again—not into a perfect world, but into this one, exactly as it is.

So may this new year, this Advent, meet you with both honesty and hope. May the pruning in your life give way to growth you cannot yet imagine. And may the God who brings life out of what looks dead fill you with all joy and peace in believing, so that you may abound in hope by the power of the Holy Spirit.

Amen.