Pursuit

In The Pursuit of God, A.W. Tozer writes, “God is a Person, and in the deep of His mighty nature He thinks, wills, enjoys, feels, loves, desires and suffers as any other person may.”

To think of God as a Person is a different kind of anthropomorphism than the kind encountered by the gods of the cultures surrounding ancient Israel.  Those cultures envisioned the gods as humans writ large.  Tozer is saying something more profound—that God is more than an unconscious Force, more than a Prime Mover of the universe, more than the collective consciousness of Nature.  God is a conscious being with a will, a personality, and the ability to be in relationship with other conscious beings.

It is this aspect of Personhood that Tozer explores in his book.  “In making Himself known to us He stays by the familiar pattern of personality.  He communicates with us through the avenues of our minds, our wills, and our emotions.”  So God is personal, but more than that, the Bible teaches that God is in pursuit of a relationship with His creation.  We may not be comfortable with the notion that God needs anything, much less a relationship, and we would be correct in that God is not in any way diminished were he not in relationship with any of his creation.  The Trinity says that God is always and eternally in relationship of God the Father, God the Son, and God the Spirit.  Yet the Trinity also says that God seeks out relationship with his creation because it is his very nature to be in relationship.  It literally is who he is.

Being created in the image of God means that we, also, were created in relationship, and just as God pursues a relationship with us, so also do we crave a relationship with our Creator.  Yet, our falleness reveals that we do not always pursue that relationship with God, and when we do, it is often not with the Creator that we pursue relationship.  In an ironic yet tragic twist, we seek to fulfill our desire for a relationship with the Creator by pursuing relationships with things other than the Creator. 

Thus we never find rest.  We are continually restless.  No matter how much we achieve, no matter how many friends or lovers we have, there is always that nagging sense deep within that says, “There has to be more than this.”  Because there is, we just have to look for it in the right place.

It’s not enough, however, to pursue and to be in relationship with God, because this Creator God not only is, but does.  He not only exists in relationship with his creation, but he also in active in, with, and on behalf of his creation.  God has a plan for his creation, and to be in relationship with this God is also to be active in God’s plan for his creation. 

This is where the doctrine of election truly comes to play.  Israel was chosen by God to be special instruments in accomplishing his plan for creation, and inasmuch as they cooperated with God in pursuing that plan, they were living within his will.  When they didn’t cooperate but pursued their own agenda—national wealth, the security of their homeland, self-aggrandizing worship to ensure their economic harvests—they were outside of his will.  This is what God called sin, and it is from what they needed to be saved.

As much as we need to pursue a relationship with God, we also need to pursue the agenda of God.  Sadly, it seems that few Christians can articulate what the Bible says is God’s will for his creation, other than to say that God wants everyone to be saved.  Well, yes, but what exactly does that mean?  If it only means that God wants everyone to go to heaven when they die—which is of course true—but if that is all one can articulate, then one has a very truncated understanding of God’s will for his creation.  In fact, that only says what God’s will is for heaven, but it says nothing at all about God’s will for this earth, his creation.

In the New Testament Paul speaks of the Church being God’s elect, but, like in Israel’s case, it is an election to play a role in accomplishing God’s agenda.  Yes, that means that those chosen are saved, and that those chosen have relationship with God, but all to the end that God’s will is pursued on earth, just like it is in heaven.  “Elect” is not just a status, it is a role to be fulfilled on behalf of all of God’s creation.  Election does not result in a group of people separated from everyone else for all eternity, but rather a group of people set apart for a role in bringing all peoples together.  God doesn’t choose some people to be his children, but chooses some of his children to help him rescue the rest of his children.

It is sad that, for many people, the will of God is such a mysterious subject, and we struggle to know what it is.  It is equally sad, if not more so, that for many Christians the issue of the will of God is framed as the issue of understanding the will of God for my life, as if my life is the center of God’s attention, when actually it’s the other way around.  We need to stop worrying about our lives and start worrying about the life of God, for the real issue isn’t whether we are going to invite God into our lives, but whether we are going to accept his invitation to share in his life.  We need to stop worrying about God’s will for our lives and start concerning ourselves with God’s will for the world, for when we understand that, we’ll see where our lives fit in the larger plan.

God pursues a relationship with all people, and he is pursuing his plan for all the people in all his creation.  Likewise, we need to pursue a relationship with God and, just as much, we need to pursue God’s plan for all the people in all his creation.

And in doing so, we find a life that is worth living forever.

DWJS

DWJS.

That’s my riff on the popular WWJD fad a while ago.  “What Would Jesus Do?” isn’t a bad question.  We confront all kinds of circumstances that Jesus never confronted, and it would be nice to know what Jesus would have done had he, for instance, been given the choice of paper or plastic.  (I can never remember which is the more responsible of the two.  Of course, more responsible than either is to buy a couple of those cloth shopping bags and keeping them in the car.  I just keep forgetting to bring them in with me to the grocery store, so I end up with my groceries stuffed in multiple plastic bags [My grocery store no longer asks me whether I want paper or plastic—they probably got tired of people trying to remember which one they were supposed to say.  Or with Christians asking themselves, “What would Jesus do?” and then standing there holding up the line while trying to figure out the answer.])

(You know you’re getting carried away with a parenthetical thought when you have a parenthetical thought within a parenthetical thought.)  (And then follow it up with another parenthetical thought.)

What was I talking about? 

Oh yeah, DWJS and WWJD.  So people got those little rubber bracelets with WWJD on them to remind themselves to act like Jesus would have acted had he been a 21^st Century American.  Which is interesting because so many 21^st Century American Christians don’t even understand how Jesus acted as a 1^st Century Jew.  But anyway, like I said, WWJD is not a bad question, but rather than wondering what Jesus might have done in our situation and then, maybe, doing it, it occurs to me that we ought to first worry about doing the stuff that Jesus actually did tell us to do. 

You know, like love our enemies, make peace with our accusers, turn the other cheek, put the sword away, deny ourselves, take up crosses, not worship until we’ve reconciled with anyone we’ve hurt, etc.  Stuff like that.

I mean, we don’t have to wonder about that stuff.  He said it.  Of course, that doesn’t keep us from wondering whether he really meant it, or was just, you know, making a point or something.

I think he meant it.  He went to a lot of trouble just to say it, and he was willing to die because some of the stuff he said offended powerful people who had the ability to have him crucified.  And he never once, not once—not while they were punching him, not while they were pulling his beard out, not while they were scourging him or nailing him to the wood, said, “Dudes, c’mon, I didn’t really mean it, I was just making a point!”

 So he said these things and he meant these things, and they are pretty straightforward.  Seriously, “Love your enemies” is rather clear, isn’t it?  You can word-study the thing if you want, but there are only three words in the whole phrase—four in the Greek, which, translated literally, would be “You love your enemies.”  Which removes whatever ambiguity one might find there.  “Who, me?”  “Yes, you.  You love the ones you hate.”  Pretty clear.  And he meant it, which means you don’t really get to call yourself a follower of Jesus if you aren’t at least trying to not only stop hating but to start loving the ones you have been hating.  Or if you aren’t seriously seeking to forgive those who have hurt you, or seriously seeking reconciliation with those you have hurt.  I mean, what does it mean to call yourself a follower of Jesus if you aren’t actually following him—you know, actually doing the stuff that he told you to do?

Ah, but there’s the rub.  People don’t call themselves “Followers of Jesus”, they call themselves (and each other) “Christians”, which has come to mean a person who has accepted as factually true certain data about Jesus—his divine sonship, his virgin birth, his sacrificial death, and his bodily resurrection.  Say yes to all that stuff, pray a prayer, and you’re a Christian.

And there’s nothing else you have to do.  Including the stuff that Jesus told us to do.  That’s like extra credit, good for some jewels in your heavenly crown.  Or maybe for the fanatics.

Well, among the many reasons that Jesus died is that he believed what he said and he wouldn’t back down at all, even with death staring him in the face.  Therefore his followers better take what he said very seriously.  So instead of wondering What Would Jesus Do? maybe we ought to simply Do What Jesus Said.

DWJS.

I’m ordering bracelets.

Sticks and Stones

Since the tragic shooting last week in Tucson, a lot of debate has been thrown around about the connection between it and the increasingly inflammatory political rhetoric that has characterized public discourse in the Information Age.  Personally, I don’t make much of the connection, at least directly.  The shooter is mentally unstable and, according to the news, doesn’t seem to be tied to any particular political ideology.  And the fact of the matter is that inflammatory political rhetoric isn’t anything new; it’s as old as politics.  Have you ever read some of the things that were said about George Washington in the papers while he was president?  As bad as it can get, today’s rhetoric doesn’t touch some of the outlandish things that were printed in the early days of the republic.

Of course, in order to read those things you had to a) be able to read, b) buy a newspaper, and c) read the inflammatory article.  Today, not only can most people in the country read, but political rhetoric is not limited to newspapers, pamphlets, and speeches.  Blogs, books, Tweets, texts, YouTube, email, radio, television, online newpapers and magazines all make information—or disinformation—widely and instantly available.

So whether or not there is a direct connection between a particular event and the rhetoric being flung around, words matter more than ever.  Sticks and stone can only break bones, but words can sully a reputation, destroy a career, lead innocent people to believe falsehoods, and grind to a halt the forward progress of an organization—or a nation.

All people of faith must remember this when entering into the realm of politics.  Unfortunately, too often people of faith get sucked into lowering themselves to the often rancid level of political discourse when in fact we are supposed to bring something different to the discussion—if not new ideas, at least a new way of discussing the old ideas. 

My friend Brent Walker, Executive Director of the Baptist Joint Committee for Religious Liberty, recently wrote the following:

Our public debate has moral fiber for all of us -- people of faith and non-believers alike. In our pluralistic political culture we will seldom all agree on much of anything, and it is a sign of a vital democracy to debate our differences with passion and intensity. But we must always speak the truth, and do it lovingly and with a touch of humility.

The Hebrew and Christian Scriptures enjoin us to tell the truth, speak from the heart, avoid slander and keep our word. For the Psalmist it was a condition of entry to the Tent of Meeting in the temple. In his first letter, St. Peter says to be ready to make a strong defense of the hope that is within us, but to do it with "gentleness and respect."

Unfortunately, rather than raise the level of debate in the public arena, all too often we bring the low level of political debate into our churches.  As you might imagine, I know a lot of pastors and church leaders, and few can say that they have never witnessed this in their churches.  Whether in the open at business meetings or through the grapevine where the gossip occurs, most have not only seen it, they have been the target of it.  All have been hurt by it.  Some have left their churches because of it; other have left the ministry because of it.  And that’s just pastors.  How many have left the church because of it?

This is not a new issue for the church, just as it’s not a new issue in politics.  As Brent noted above, the ancient Israelites dealt with it, Peter wrote about it, as did James, who called the tongue “a restless evil, full of deadly poison.”

Words matter.  They have the capacity to wound or to heal, to bring people together or keep them apart, to build the Kingdom of God or to forestall it.

In our speech we can be followers of Jesus, or we can be followers of Rush Limbaugh or Keith Olberman.

But we can’t be both.

Ins and Outs

I must be the most uncool person around.  Maybe you had long ago come to that conclusion, but it is something that, though I had sensed it, was recently had confirmed when I looked at the Washington Post’s list of “What’s In, What’s Out for 2011.”

Who gets to decide this stuff anyway?  I’ve always wondered about that.  Does the Washington Post have an exclusive bead on what’s going to be out and what’s going to be in this next year?  How do they find this stuff out?  I mean, they outed Nixon, so I guess they’ve proven that they can find out stuff that nobody else knows about.  Maybe the reporters who wrote the article, Monica Hesse and Dan Zak, have some source that they meet in some D.C. parking garage, their very own “Deep Throat” of Coolness. 

But I rather doubt it.  I don’t know who Monica Hesse and Dan Zak are, but I have a feeling they are less like Woodward and Bernstein and more like the cool kids who all ate together in the high school cafeteria, scorning the rest of us who, for reasons unbeknownst to us, didn’t cut it for coolness.

So why do they get to decide what’s in and what’s out for next year?  If I and some of my friends were allowed to decide, then maybe “Late Night Theological Discussions at the Frederick Coffee Company” would be “in” and me and my friends would all be cool.

Except “Late Night Theological Discussions at the Frederick Coffee Company” sounds pretty nerdy any way you cut it, doesn’t it?

Back to the list.  Here’s how I realized that I am so far from being cool that you can’t even see it from here: I don’t even know what most of the stuff on the list means.  For instance, apparently “Mummblecore” is out and “The King’s Speech” is in.  Huh?  What is “Mummblecore” and why is it out?  More to the point, how did it ever get in?  And how did it get supplanted by “The King’s Speech”, whatever that is?  See, I’m so uncool that I didn’t even know that something that is out was once in and what is now in, I haven’t a clue what it actually is.  What king, and which of his speeches?  Martin Luther King Jr.’s “I Have a Dream” speech was “in” from the moment he gave it, and it’s never been out, so I don’t imagine that’s what they are talking about.  (And the nerd in me snickers to the rest of the kids at my cafeteria table that the cool kids probably don’t even know who Martin Luther King, Jr. is.)

Don’t think that I picked the most obscure pairing on the list, for almost all of it is like that.  Apparently, “Epic” is out and “Brobdingnagian” is in; “Tiny houses”: out.  “Teepees”: in.

Huh?

Here’s one I understand, but don’t.  “Brussels Sprouts” are out and “Sauerkraut” is in.  Excuse me, but how were Brussels sprouts ever in?  And why are they replaced by sauerkraut?  If it were my list I’d replace Brussels sprouts with potato chips.  In fact, that’s what I do, and it works for me.

Want more?  OK, just so you’ll know, “Circumnavigation” is out in 2011, and “Sofalizing” is in.  That’s upsetting, because on my list of goals to accomplish this next year, “Sailing around the world” was number 6, right after “Watch all previous seasons of ‘The Big-Bang Theory’ on DVD.”  “Bobbleheads” are out and “Throttlenecks” are in.  I’m sorry, but as a life-long baseball fan bobbleheads are never out.  If the Orioles have a Nick Markakis bobblehead giveway this season, I’m there, wearing my brand new Nick Markakis Orioles jersey.

(And, no, that is not nerdy.  It’s not at all like going to a Star Trek convention wearing a Spock outfit.)

“Oprahism” is out, but I got tired of her a long time ago.  Unfortunately, it’s been replaced by “Atheism.”  I’m not sure there’s much difference, but there has arisen a more militant, confrontational form of atheism these last few years.  It doesn’t bother me as much as you might think, because atheism in any form requires as much faith as theism, maybe more.  And anybody who has the capacity for great faith is not beyond the reach of the Kingdom of God.

One final “out/in” pairing: the cool kids have declared that “Betty White” is out and “Anne Meara” is in.  Anne Meara is a nice character actress, and I’m glad that someone is giving her some love.

But Betty White will never be out.

OK, I’m done.  Now I’m just going to sit here with my friends and have my chocolate milk and bologna sandwich.

Hoping Against Hope

I’ve often wondered why God kept the Israelites waiting so long.  The Exile began in 586 B.C.E. when Nebuchadnezzar destroyed Jerusalem and everything in it, including Solomon’s temple, killed a lot of the people and carted off to Babylon a lot of the rest of the population, including the Davidic king.  Since God had promised that David’s kingship would be eternal, the people immediately began looking for a restoration of the kingdom with one of David’s descendants on the throne.  Almost six hundred years later, they were still waiting.  Why did God wait so long?  Six hundred years just seems excessive.  Even if the Exile was punishment for Israel’s collective sin—their idolatry, their forsaking God, their exploitation of their own poor citizens, including their own widows and orphans—surely a couple of hundred years was a long enough punishment, wouldn’t you think?  After all, after just a couple of generations everyone who participated in those collective sins was gone.  What is the point of continuing to punish the great-great-great-great-great-great grandchildren of the perpetrators?

But that wasn’t the first time that God waited a long time.  The Israelites were enslaved in Egypt for over 200 years before God sent Moses to deliver them.  That’s only one-third as long as the Exile, but there’s an important distinction—the Exile was caused by Israel’s sin, but the Israelites were in Egypt by Joseph’s and the Pharaoh’s invitation, and they were made slaves when a new Pharaoh was threatened by their burgeoning population.  You’d have thought that God would have done something about their slavery almost immediately—and yet he waited 215 years to deliver them.  (Some of you—and I know who at least some of you are—are ready to send me an email pointing out that the Israelites were in Egypt 430 years, but the 430 years refers to the period between the establishment of the covenant with Abraham and the deliverance from Egypt.  See Paul’s reckoning in Galatians 4:16-17.)

Why the wait?  That’s always bothered me.  Maybe it’s because in order to get people to believe that God can do the impossible, they have to be put in positions where the impossible is the only solution.

This is the same God who isn’t content to have a couple in their sixties have a baby.  As impressive as that might have been, it wouldn’t have been as impressive as a couple in their seventies, right?  In 2008 a 70-year-old woman gave birth to twins, and she is considered to be the oldest woman to have given birth.  But that’s not enough for God, because, as unlikely as it is, it obviously isn’t impossible, and God doesn’t want to be known merely as the “God of the Unlikely.”  No, God promises a childless couple, Abraham and Sarah, when they are around 75, that they will have a son, and then makes them wait 25 years before he is born.

And here is what Paul says about the faith of Abraham: Hoping against hope, he believed that he would become "the father of many nations,” according to what was said, "So numerous shall your descendants be."  He did not weaken in faith when he considered his own body, which was already as good as dead (for he was about a hundred years old), or when he considered the barrenness of Sarah's womb.  No distrust made him waver concerning the promise of God, but he grew strong in his faith as he gave glory to God, being fully convinced that God was able to do what he had promised.  Therefore his faith "was reckoned to him as righteousness."  Romans 4:18-22)

For Paul, faith was “hoping against hope”, believing, not when things were merely bleak and there was little basis for hope, and deliverance was unlikely, but when things were at their darkest, completely and utterly hopeless, and there was no chance for deliverance.

These were the circumstances into which Jesus was born.  After a hundred years of exile, people probably started wondering if God was going to keep his promises.  After two hundred years, they probably decided he had forgotten them.  After three or four hundred years, the Messiah was probably just an abstract theological concept—something everyone believed in as a matter of doctrine but only the fanatics truly expected to happen in real life.  After five hundred years?  No hope, no real expectation, only a resigned acceptance of the reality of darkness.

It is into this world that the light is born, for God is not the God of the unlikely, but the God of the impossible, the one “who gives life to the dead and calls into existence the things that do not exist.”  (Romans 3:17)

Peace Sign

Therefore the Lord himself will give you a sign. Look, the young woman is with child and shall bear a son, and shall name him Immanuel.

This verse is well-known to anyone familiar with the story of the birth of Jesus, yet it doesn’t come from any of the Gospels, and it’s not about Jesus.

The verse is Isaiah 7:14, Isaiah is the speaker and he is speaking to Ahaz, King of Judah, who has received word that the king of the northern kingdom, Israel, and the king of Syria are forming an alliance to attack Jerusalem.  It shall not happen, Isaiah tells Ahaz.  The head of Syria is King Rezin, and the head of Israel is King Pekah…and just leaves that thought hanging.  The implication is “…and the head of Judah is…God.”  But then Isaiah issues a warning to Ahaz: “If you stand firm in faith.  If you don’t stand firm in faith, you won’t stand at all.”  Isaiah isn’t telling Ahaz to be true to his doctrinal positions regarding the nature of God.  He’s not telling him be believe certain facts about God without compromise.  That’s nothing.  Isaiah is telling Ahaz not to go to war and defend himself, but to trust that God will take care of things.  That’s fairly easy to do in theory, but when your enemies are gathering armies, joining forces and heading your way, that’s another story.

We don’t know whether Ahaz believed Isaiah—believed God—or not, but he readied his army.  If that would seem to indicate unbelief, one might say he was just being prudent.  “I believe God, but I have a responsibility as king to protect the people and to be prepared for any situation.”  What he believed is ultimately irrelevant; it’s what he did that matters.  If he went against his instincts, his deep belief in what was going to happen if he didn’t defend himself, and then didn’t ready his army—now that’s faith.

So God sent Isaiah to Ahaz a second time.  Isaiah tells him to ask God for a sign,  any sign, as assurance to God is serious about protecting him.  But Ahaz’s mind is made up, and he refuses to ask for a sign.  With false piety he says, “I will not put the LORD to the test.”

You know, if God tells you to put him to the test, you better put him to the test.

But Ahaz refuses, and Isaiah responds:

"Hear then, O house of David! Is it too little for you to weary mortals, that you weary my God also?  Therefore the Lord himself will give you a sign. Look, the young woman is with child and shall bear a son, and shall name him Immanuel.  He shall eat curds and honey by the time he knows how to refuse the evil and choose the good.  For before the child knows how to refuse the evil and choose the good, the land before whose two kings you are in dread will be deserted.

The birth of this child would be a sign that God was on the side of Judah in this conflict and wouldn’t allow the invasion to take place.  Sure enough, a few months later Pekah and Rezin were dead and Assyria had deported a large section of the populations of their kingdoms.  It’s unclear from the context who the child was whose birth was to be a sign to Ahaz, but the best scholarly consensus points to Hezekiah, who would succeed Ahaz as King of Judah.  (Hezekiah was one of the few kings of the divided kingdom to receive a favorable evaluation in the book of Kings.)  But the ambiguity of the text allowed later generations after the Exile to look to this passage and see the coming of a future king whose birth would signal that God had forgiven the unfaithfulness that led to the exile of both halves of the divided kingdom.  Through this king God would establish an eternal kingdom, and there would be peace.

Matthew tapped into this understanding when he applied this verse to Mary and Jesus.  This eschatological interpretation of Isaiah’s prophecy was based on the conviction of the early Christians (even before Matthew wrote his gospel) that in Jesus God is actually present with his people.

One wonders if, in the expectation that there would be peace in this kingdom, the people understood that it would be a peace that comes not from having mighty armies readied to defend against all others, but rather from trusting that God would protect them.  Apparently not, because many who believed in his lifetime that Jesus was indeed this king still carried swords in anticipation of the ultimate and final conflict. 

But Jesus understood, and told Peter—and the rest of us—to put his sword away.  The Kingdom of God operates differently from the kingdoms of the world.

During Advent, Christians are called to radical faith.  In the midst of all the uncertainties of life, when we are confronted with the outbursts of war and violence, faith and trust in God anchors our lives and helps us stand firm and not fall.

The Nobody Branch

When Herod died, an angel of the Lord suddenly appeared in a dream to Joseph in Egypt and said, "Get up, take the child and his mother, and go to the land of Israel, for those who were seeking the child's life are dead."  Then Joseph got up, took the child and his mother, and went to the land of Israel.  But when he heard that Archelaus was ruling over Judea in place of his father Herod, he was afraid to go there. And after being warned in a dream, he went away to the district of Galilee.  There he made his home in a town called Nazareth, so that what had been spoken through the prophets might be fulfilled, "He will be called a Nazorean."

Matthew 2:23

Part of the birth narrative of Jesus is the flight to Egypt to escape the murderous plans of King Herod.  In this passage we see Joseph returning to Israel and settling his family in Nazareth, in fulfillment, Matthew says, of the prophets that Messiah would be “called a Nazorean.”

Um, , okay, except we kinda can’t find anywhere where any prophet, much less prophets, said any such thing.

Oops.

In fact, the city of Nazareth isn’t mentioned anywhere in the Old Testament, much less anyone being from there.  It was such an obscure, backwater village that Josephus, writing in the decades immediately following Jesus’ death, didn’t even include it in a list of towns in Galilee.  Nazareth wasn’t just Nowhere, it was the other side of Nowhere.  And nowhere can we find a mention that the Messiah would be a Nazorean.  Some have speculated that Matthew is claiming that the Messiah would be a Nazirite like Samuel or Samson, one who was consecrated and set apart of life-long sacred duty; yet no Old Testament passages claim this for the Messiah either.

Some have suggested that, because Nazareth was a Nowhere town, anyone from there must by definition be a Nobody, and this is what Matthew is claiming—that the prophets said that the Messiah would be a Nobody.  This suggestion has some merit.  Isaiah 53:2 says this of the Messiah: “For he grew up before him like a young plant, and like a root out of dry ground; he had no form or majesty that we should look at him, nothing in his appearance that we should desire him.”

And the first part of that verse perhaps points us in a new direction as well.  One of the Hebrew words for “branch” is nezer, which both written and spoken is close to the word for Nazarite, nazir, which can also be translated as “an untrimmed vine” (as in Leviticus 25:5, 11).  I know this sounds like a stretch, but this kind of word-play is exactly the kind of thing that Hebrew writers liked to do.  So perhaps Matthew is evoking images of the Messiah being a branch that is consecrated for sacred services, and that is an image that is certainly attested to in the prophets, perhaps no more clearly than this passage from Isaiah which is often used as an Advent reading:

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 wisdom and understanding, the spirit of counsel and might, the spirit of knowledge and the fear of the LORD.  His delight shall be in the fear of the LORD.

Isaiah 11:1-3

The stump is the fallen Davidic monarchy, cut down and sent into exile, and Isaiah is prophesying that, in his mercy, God has not washed his hands completely of sinful Israel.  Out of David (Jesse was David’s father) would someday come a righteous king who would rule with fairness.  With the righteous King would come a righteous Kingdom, which would encompass all Creation, so that there would be peace at last:

The wolf shall live with the lamb, the leopard shall lie down with the kid, the calf and the lion and the fatling together, and a little child shall lead them.  The cow and the bear shall graze, their young shall lie down together; and the lion shall eat straw like the ox.  The nursing child shall play over the hole of the asp, and the weaned child shall put its hand on the adder's den.  They will not hurt or destroy on all my holy mountain; for the earth will be full of the knowledge of the LORD as the waters cover the sea.  On that day the root of Jesse shall stand as a signal to the peoples; the nations shall inquire of him, and his dwelling shall be glorious.

Vss. 6-10

So Matthew means for this little phrase, “He will be called a Nazorean,” which we have always taken to mean merely that Jesus came from Nazareth, to mean so much more.  Jesus comes onto the scene as a nondescript little shoot from some stump out in the middle of nowhere, yet that little shoot will grow to be a mighty tree, king of the forest.  And his coming signals the inauguration of the Kingdom of God, which itself starts out as small as a mustard seed, “but when it has grown it is the greatest of shrubs and becomes a tree, so that the birds of the air come and make nests in its branches."  (Jesus of Nazareth, Matthew 13:32, emphasis mine.)

And in Isaiah’s vision, this kingdom isn’t just for the benefit of a few insiders, it’s for all creation.  Everyone’s invited.

Even Nobodies from the other side of Nowhere.