Fire From an Old Stump

As a young boy I was immersed in our family’s history.  Both sides.  From my father’s side, it was West Virginia and the Forneys who had been on that land since 1804.  There’s where the family graveyard sits, on a small portion of those180 acres.  Grandpa Jonathan Forney taught at Bethany College there in the Northern Panhandle.  There’s also, until it was recently replaced, a concrete bridge over Buffalo Creek that he built, or engineered.  Dad never told me what he taught, but I’m guessing it wasn’t Shakespeare.

The thing Dad did stress was that Grandpa was a hard-driving man with definite expectations of my dad, an only child.  Not strong on affection but stern on discipline.  That was part of my heritage from my father’s side.

On my mother’s side we were a mix of the Gross and Howe families.  Grandpa and Grandma Gross came from Iowa to California.  I wouldn’t say with nothing as Grandpa had a degree from Julliard School of Music.  He found a job as a letter carrier in Lodi where they’d settled.  Over the years he worked his way up ladder and at the apex of his career was the postmaster of Lodi, California.  His vocal talents were in great demand throughout the area and he sang at weddings, funerals, anniversaries, birthdays.  He had a great sense of civic pride, nurtured by his membership in the Odd Fellows organization.

Grandma’s side gave us two famous Howe relatives, General William Howe, who I told my 8^th grade classes, won the American Revolution by allowing General George Washington slip through his fingers three times.

Most exemplary in that lineage was Julia Ward Howe.  Yes, the author of the “Battle Hymn of the Republic.”  More notably, she authored the first Mother’s Day Proclamation in 1870.  Read it – it’s radical.  She was a suffragist and an abolitionist.  From her we get our activist roots.  It’s in our DNA to raise hell against injustice.

Altogether a marvelous lineage.  And what did I make of it?  Growing up, absolutely nothing.  I was so lost in my teen and early adult years, that all that heritage amounted to nothing.  I was as useless as an old stump.

Isaish, proclaims that even from old stumps can come amazing new growth.

“A shoot shall come out from the stump of Jesse, and a branch shall grow out of his roots.  The spirit of the Lord shall rest on him, the spirit of knowledge and the fear of the Lord.”

Out of a useless old stump, fire of new life shall come.  Yes, even the useless old stump my life had become in those early years. 

That fire was the appearance of John the Baptist, a voice crying in the wilderness to rouse up life in the House of Israel.  Breathing fire, he minced no words concerning the corrupt leaders of the people.  “You brood of vipers!  Who warned you to flee from the wrath to come?  Bear fruit worthy of repentance.”

What preacher ever began Sunday’s sermon screaming at the congregation, “You brood of vipers…?”  And kept his or her job?

It’s a parallel to John the Revelator chastising some of the do-nothing churches of his day. Yes, right there in chapter 3, he zeroes on the congregation at Laodicea, “I know your works, you are neither cold nor hot…so I will spit you out of my mouth.”  A heritage gone for naught.  An old dried stump of the Jesus Movement.

Truth is, those congregations that have lost their way through numbing complacency, probably won’t be spit out.  They’ll just be ignored as irrelevant.  Irreverent and as useless as a dead old stump. 

And we who might take our ease in Zion, no sense of mission, no little light shining, might dwindle away to nothing.  Much of that pitiful journey is the story of Mainline Protestantism.

But, sometimes, just sometimes we’re jolted out of our lethargy.  A John the Baptizer comes along breathing fire on the dry stubble.  A flame bursts forth and the Church is transformed into the Glory of God. 

That’s the story of our patron saint, Francis of Assisi.  He heard the voice of God calling him forth, “Build my church.” 

That call of the Baptizer echoes down the ages, and fired-up leadership emerges, lay and clergy.  Even a few bishops to boot.

It was a sermon that fired me up.  Paul Tillich’s sermon, “You are Accepted.”  It was a jolt from beyond the blue.  Acceptance, welcome, is the first mission of the church.  Acceptance, welcome, is the sacramental presence of the Grace of God.

Our St. Francis Garden of Hope is the visible sign of that as we are now providing huge amounts of fresh produce for those our economy has shut out.  That produce and the canned goods distributed at St. John’s Food Bank, is the open door of acceptance.  And though we might on the outside look like a withered old stump, the folks there are splendid new shoots.  Sometimes shoots of fire as in the shrub Moses spied in his wilderness.

There’s a story of an old stump in England that is instructive.   Liddy Barlow tells the story of some vandals whose criminal actions were the source of great sorrow and anger in a small English village.

“Nestled into Hadrian’s Wall at the northern edge of England, the elegant Sycamore Gap tree rose from a dip between two hills. Its dramatic setting made it one of the most photographed trees in the country, featured in calendars and guidebooks and postcards. Day hikers posed in front of the tree for selfies; couples said their vows beneath its branches; Kevin Costner and Morgan Freeman strolled around it in Robin Hood Prince of Thieves.”[1]

On a stormy night on September vandals took chainsaws to that tree and sawed it down, leaving only a stump.  In the morning not only were many in that village mourning the tree, but the entire nation was gripped in sorrow and anger at the destruction of that iconic tree.

What had taken a century or so to grow was demolished in only a matter of minutes.  Thousands poured out to mourn the loss.  Such a treasure turned into sawdust and wood for what?  A hobby, furniture, knickknacks?  Only a stump left behind.

That following spring the Northumberland National Park Authority placed an amazing sign at the roped-off stump.  “This tree stump is still alive,” followed by the hope, “If we leave it alone it might sprout new growth.”  Passersby were warned to heed the admonition to respect the barrier.

And wonder of wonders that spring there were seven new shoots that had come forth.

Isaiah speaks to a nation that had a battle axe taken to it as families were split, killed and hauled into captivity.  A nation as dried up and desiccated as an old stump.  But out of the Torah heritage of what had once been a flourishing tree with strong limbs for birds to roost in, would come new life.  Green shoots.  As captivating as a burning bush in the middle of nowhere.

One would be sent and on him would rest the “spirit of counsel and might, the spirit of knowledge and the fear of the Lord.”

John the Baptizer would proclaim his advent, breathing fire and thunder at those who had led the people of Israel astray.  Offering an opportunity for repentance at the River Jordan.

And that old stump continues to produce wonderous growth, inviting all who would read and heed the summons.  Yes, fire from an old stump – that was John’s summons.

And that fire yet lives on in the hearts of all who have signed up to follow that Prince of Peace, that Mighty Counselor, God with us.

I saw it in a very small way in the grocery checkout line as I waited with Ileen, my home health aide.  We were behind a woman in one of those motorized shopping carts who was having great difficulty in getting her purchases out of the basket.  Without saying a word, Ileen went around in front of her and asked if she might help.  That customer was so grateful, it made my day.

But behind us was an elderly gentleman also in a motorized cart and there was Ileen in a flash helping him.  In just a few minutes of kindness, all of us were chatting together like old friends.  What an Advent delight.  Ileen is the embodiment of her Catholic tradition with a strong social conscience.

A delightful green shoot from that tradition.  A blazing spark of delight in what could have been a dead stump of a mind-numbing wait in a long line, listening to insipid Christmas elevator music.

President Obama was right when he counseled Americans on how to get through the deadness of a nation gone amiss in lies and repression.  Be kind.  Kindness is important, he advised.  It will get us through.  Its pedigree goes right back to the Prince of Peace.  Ileen is most kind – an Advent harbinger.

Amy Frykholm in her interview with a genuine woman of peace brings to her reader the Straight Glory right out of Isaiah’s promise.  Leymah Gbowee shares the amazing tale of an African woman caught up in the terror of Liberia under the dictatorship of the warlord Charles Taylor.  And the price the women of that nation paid.[2]

During that savage reign of horror, Leymah was a terrified 18-year-old girl.  As a result of the fighting between rebel forces led by Charles Taylor and the government, she and many others had taken refuge in a nearby Lutheran church compound, St. Peter’s in Monrovia.

Government forces, looking for food, attacked the church.  After raping and killing the woman who held the keys to the church they proceeded to massacre most of those sheltering there.  With knives, machetes, machine guns, they slaughtered more than 500 men, women and children.

Because Leymah’s uncle had lied to the soldiers, telling them that their family was of the same tribe as the soldiers, they had been released.

Traumatized by that incident, Leymah fell into a desolute life, entering into a relationship with a married man who was abusive.  Giving birth to four children.  She eventually moved back home to her family and reunited with that congregation at St. Peter’s.  There the pastor recognized her unique gifts and her intelligence.  He soon had her reading M.L. King, Gandhi and the Mennonite peace activist, John Howard Yoder.

One night she heard the summons, a call as distinct and clear as any ever heard by a prophet.  In the midst of that turmoil, sleeping in a church office, she heard the ask. “Gather the women to pray for peace.”[3]

Some women overheard her sharing that call but she didn’t see herself as a religious leader. 

“She was a single mother, never married, who had a complicated relationship with her church. ‘It was like hearing the voice of God, yes, but . . . that wasn’t possible,’ she writes in her memoir. ‘I drank too much. I fornicated! I was sleeping with a man who wasn’t my husband, who in fact was still legally married to someone else. If God was going to speak to someone in Liberia, it wouldn’t be me.’”[4] 

A gentle shoot out of desiccated remains of a nation torn by violence, rape and famine.  The few women who had overheard her sharing the vision of that night with a co-worker told her, “We need to pray.”

Some twenty women began to pray once a week, and this small green shoot became a national movement, “Women of Liberia Mass Action for Peace.”  It eventually was comprised of thousands, not just Christians, but Muslims, Jews and others – crossing all tribal, religious, educational levels, rural and urban.

Out of this Spiritual fire was born a new Liberia from the dead stump of a ruined nation.  Under the soul force of these woman, warring parties were brought to heel and arms were laid down.

Out of the stump of Jesse, God continues to breathe new life into the People of the Covenant, the people of the Jesus Movement.  And when that roll is called up yonder, I want my name to be there along with the wonderful folks of St. John’s and St. Francis in glorious array assembled. 

This godly heritage, every bit as much as the familial backgrounds of each of us, yet bears the possibility of new life.  If we but attend to and heed the promptings of the Advent Promise.  Amen.

---

[1] Liddy Barlow, “More Life to Come,” Christian Century, December 6, 2025.

[2] Amy Frykholm, “To tell the truth: Nobel winner Leymah Gbowee,” Christian Century, November 16, 2011.

[3] Op cit.

[4] Op cit.

Farmer Miguel with some of Wednesday’s harvest, 12-3-25
A sermon you can see and taste!

December 7, 2025

Second Sunday in Advent

Isaiah 11:1-10; Psalm 72:1-7, 18-19
2^nd Reading: Romans 15:4-13; Gospel: Matthew 3:1-12

“Fire From an Old Stump”