What do you do when you run into one roadblock after another? When you’re frustrated, stymied, stumped? Here’s a meditation on the importance of time and tenacity. It’s based on a reading from the Prophet Isaiah (Isaiah 6.1-13) and a poem, "Snowdrops," by the Nobel laureate, Louise Gluck. I preached the sermon on February 6, 2022 at Davis Community Church, Davis, California.

Have you ever been stumped? Have you come to a place where you didn’t know what to do next? Out of ideas? Foiled? Thwarted? Frustrated? Stymied?

There’s not a human being who hasn’t run into a road block of one kind or another. Maybe a crossword puzzle stumped you. Maybe a relationship problem stumped you. Maybe you had a medical problem that thwarted diagnosis, a math problem that foiled your knowledge, a fork in a roadway that wasn’t on the map and left you scratching your head.

We’ve all been stumped before. We will be stumped again.

The question is, what do we do when we find ourselves stumped?

Mary Ellen Pleasant found herself stumped over and over again in life, but she never gave up. Her story is a good story to tell here in California and today at the beginning of Black History Month.

Mary Ellen Pleasant began her life somewhere around the year 1814, in Georgia, born into slavery. She was bought and freed by some compassionate soul and ended up as an indentured servant to a shopkeeper in Rhode Island. There, she wasn’t a slave, but she wasn’t entirely free either. She was, however, stuck. But from the shopkeeper she learned the basics of running a business and she learned about the abolitionist movement in the North; the shopkeeper’s family, despite limiting her as an indentured servant, had abolitionist sympathies. Later she found herself married to a wealthy free landowner named J.J. Smith, also an abolitionist. In a new situation now, she struggled alongside her husband to fight the slave trade and funded abolitionist causes, including the Underground Railroad and John Brown’s raid on Harper’s Ferry.

Mary Ellen’s knowledge of business and her marriage into money gave her the possibility of a secure future. But then her husband died suddenly. She found herself stumped again; her path blocked by her status not only because of her race but also as a widow.

Eventually, she headed west and found herself in San Francisco. At the time, San Francisco was a rough place, nearly lawless. This new and dangerous town stumped her again, and she found it difficult to stay safe and stay healthy. But drawing on her innate creativity and courage she found a job as a cook and offered herself as a servant in the homes of San Francisco’s elite. She slowly put together the business acumen learned from the Nantucket shopkeeper with her innate entrepreneurial skill and started her first of many boarding houses in the City. She not only figured out how to expand her businesses but to also create ways for other women like her to gain an income, women who found themselves stymied by the dangers and injustices of the City. In addition to her boarding houses, she began training women as servants in the great houses of the wealthy. Over time, she wisely invested her money and amassed a startling personal fortune based on stocks, real estate, and a series of businesses. At her peak, she was estimated to be worth an astonishing $30 million dollars. She was the first African-American self-made millionaire, and the most powerful black woman in Gold Rush-era San Francisco.

But she wasn’t just a business person. Mary Ellen Pleasant used her money and her influence as well as her abolitionist experience in the East to fight civil rights injustice by using her power through the California court system.

But eventually she found herself stumped again. She’d taken on the financial support of a court case of a woman caught in a marital battle with a powerful senator from Nevada. She was up against an entrenched system of power and privilege, marked by gender and racial discrimination. Sadly, this was one roadblock she couldn’t overcome. Because of that experience and several other challenges, she lost her fortune and died in the cold winter of economic poverty.

But time recognized her contributions and Mary Ellen Pleasant is now remembered as “The Mother of Civil Rights in California.”

She may have been stymied and couldn’t find a way past her last great challenge. But her legacy triumphed over time.

To paraphrase the prophet Isaiah’s words we heard a few minutes ago: her life shows that there’s “a sacred seed inside every stump.” Even when you’re out of ideas and options, when you can see no way forward, no end to the logjam, no solution—when we find ourselves terribly stumped, we can trust there’s something sacred still afoot which may take years to manifest.

The story of Mary Ellen Pleasant exemplifies three truths I offer to you today:

First, to be stumped is to be human.

Second, through creativity and courage we can often find a way through the roadblocks that are set against us.

And third, there are times we get stuck, stymied, stumped. And that’s it. Finis. Done. But there’s a sacred seed hidden inside the stump. And life will always triumph. We may not live to see the goodness and beauty and justice we hoped to see, but it will come.

For me, this is particularly relevant today, certainly on an individual level—for who among us hasn’t felt stumped in one way or another in the last few years?—but also on a large, societal scale. It’s easy to feel overwhelmed and even paralyzed—stumped—by the pandemic, the aggression between nations, the environmental crisis, the entrenched structures of racism and identity injustices, and widespread lies and conspiracies and machiavellian machinations of unethical politicians and their operatives.

It doesn’t seem unreasonable that unless we can find a way through the gridlock, we will fit the imagery of Isaiah’s prophecy:

The “cities lie waste without inhabitant, and houses without people, and the land is utterly desolate . . . . And the trees have been cut down and only stumps remain.

Whether you feel stymied, foiled, frustrated, or stumped by something personal, something societal, or something global, remember the three truths I just mentioned:

First, to be stumped is to be human. I’m going to be stumped. You’re going to be stumped. We’re going to be stumped.

Second, when we are, there’s a good chance we can, through creativity and courage, prayer and persistence, find a way to the other side. And what’s true for us personally is true for us publicly. On a large, societal scale, we need courage and creativity, prayer and persistence to overcome the problems we face. We can’t give up, no matter what.

And third, when we’ve done all we can and we’re still stuck, stymied, or stumped, and if we die trying but were not able to break through the barriers, we can lean on the truth that our labor has not been in vain—that God, working with what we and others have done, can and will carry it forward, and that the divine dream for the world will triumph over all that divides and destroys, dismembers and dehumanizes.

When God called to the prophet Isaiah, God laid out an astonishing vision of the power that governs the universe. When God called out to Isaiah, Israel was teetering on the brink of chaos. So God gave the prophet a vision of the power that is beyond all earthly power, a force that no human power can thwart. God lifted the veil between the worlds and Isaiah was given the chance to behold the Divine Presence, “high and lofty,” as if the Eternal Essence was seated figuratively on a throne of ultimate power. And around the symbolic throne, divine beings, called “seraphs,” each with six wings, flew around the Presence and “called to one another”:

Holy, holy, holy is the Lord of hosts;

the whole earth is full of God’s glory.

This means that there is no deity that can be domesticated to human interests—this is no petty, parochial, or provincial power. The biblical language, “The Lord of hosts,” means that this Presence we call “God” leads a vast multitude of lesser powers who do the will of the One who rules them all—a vast and holy army. This is, of course, all symbolic language for what cannot be described in human terms. What’s more, there’s no place on the earth or in the cosmos where God is not. Everything is full of the divine glory regardless of whether or not God is acknowledged, worshipped, or resisted by us mere mortals.

This is the God who calls Isaiah into action, the God before whom Isaiah feels not only puny but woefully inferior, the God who thunders: “Whom shall I send, and who will go for us?”

“I will,” says Isaiah. “Here am I; send me!”

But what Isaiah then hears absolutely stumps him:

“Go and say this to the people,” says God, “‘Keep listening but do not comprehend; keep looking, but do not understand.”

“What you’ve seen, Isaiah, will be incomprehensible to most people. I’m sending you to them, but they won’t get what you try to tell them. Their minds are locked up by conventional systems of thought; they won’t be able to open them enough to let the light of My truth break in and lead them into healing. Their behavior is captive to societal expectations; they have no idea of the ways I could lead them into peace and justice if they would only yield to Me. Their politics is bereft of the sacred. Their religion is a mockery of true piety. They will not heed what you say, but keep at it anyway, even when you’re resisted; even when you’re frustrated; even when you’re weary, when you’re ready to give up, when you think there’s no hope that what’s holy will win in your world.”

“How long do I keep at it, Lord?” Isaiah asks.

“A long time. Don’t stop. Don’t give up. Ever. Even when the ‘cities lie in waste, and the houses have no people, and the land is desolate, and the last tree is cut down,’ don’t give up.”

“Keep preaching, keep teaching, keep showing them My way. Even if you’re worn out, thrown out, down and out . . . even if you’re stumped over and over again.”

“How am I to keep going against such challenges?”

“Isaiah, what looks like the end is never the end; a holy seed is in the stump. You do not see it but that doesn’t mean it’s not there.”

Isaiah preached but never saw the world turn toward the ways of God. Jesus healed but only met with recalcitrance and resistance. Saint Paul spread the vision but was thwarted at nearly every turn. Mary Ellen Pleasant proved that an unmarried black, former slave could transcend enormous odds, but she was stumped in the end.

And yet, Isaiah, Jesus, Paul, and Mary Ellen Pleasant were not defeated.

On their shoulders rose up a new generation, and on that generation’s shoulder arose another, and after that generation, arose yet another. Each time the world changed just a little bit. Very few people have seen all they hoped to see in their lifetime; some of them saw nothing they hoped to see. But they didn’t give up.

Why? Because there is a holy Presence always at work—hidden, yes, but never conquered. For God cannot be conquered. God will always triumph.

I don’t think any of us will ever see all the change we hope to see. We will be frustrated, stymied, stumped.

But does that mean we should give up?

No. We should never give up, never tire of doing good, never give in.

Why?

Because “a holy seed is in the stump.”

In her poem, Snowdrops, which we read earlier, the Nobel laureate, Louise Glück describes a time she did not think she would survive. She speaks of the soul’s winter, the bone-chilling effects of mental and emotional paralysis. Her experience was deeply personal, but it can equally describe the kind of society paralysis we now know. But Glück came to know that there’s an indomitable force of life beneath the ice that can hold us all, suppressed.

There are seeds left after every wildfire. There are Crocuses and Snowdrops that find a way to break through the last, hard ice of winter. There’s something holy in the soil, a force that refuses to be held down for long.

Listen now for hints of Easter Sunday’s triumph after Good Friday’s crushing blow. Listen for the invitation to trust that spring always comes, even after the bleakest winter, and that joy can run again in the raw wind of the world God will bring, a Spirit that triumphs over every lesser power:

Do you know what I was, how I lived? You know

what despair is; then

winter should have meaning for you.

I did not expect to survive,

earth suppressing me. I didn't expect

to waken again, to feel

in damp earth my body

able to respond again, remembering

after so long how to open again

in the cold light

of earliest spring—

afraid, yes, but among you again

crying yes risk joy

in the raw wind of the new world.