Preached at First Presbyterian Church of Rolla on December 7, 2025, the Second Sunday of Advent. Based on Isaiah 11:1-10.
Before we get into today’s text, let’s review a few things I said last week. Isaiah was a prophet in the 8th century BCE, the same time as Micah, Amos, and Hosea. The Assyrians were on the warpath, ultimately conquering Israel but falling short of conquering Judah. In this tumultuous period, Isaiah preached against the injustice that he saw in the Judean society, while looking forward to a time when they would beat their swords into plowshares and spears into pruning hooks. He spoke of shalom, peace, wholeness—the way things ought to be.
So now on to today’s lesson. We all have an intuitive sense of right and wrong that is based on a deep-seated emotion: disgust. Disgust is basically a sensed violation of our boundaries. The most fundamental level of disgust relates to the things that should be outside our body versus the things that should be inside our body. That’s why sewers are disgusting, open wounds are disgusting, rotten food is disgusting, and so forth. Disgust is the solution to what has been called the omnivore’s dilemma. Humans can eat “everything,” by which I mean we eat both plants and animals. But which plants are good and which are bad? Which animals, or which parts of animals, are good and which are bad? Disgust helps us to choose, and was critical for early proto-humans 100,000 years ago. If you are too sensitive, you might miss out on the only food available and starve to death. If you are not sensitive enough, you might eat contaminated food, get sick, and die. Disgust is fundamentally related to keeping contaminants out.
But humans are adept at converting a literal, practical tool into an abstract idea. If you read the Torah with disgust in mind, you’ll see that it’s lurking behind much of the Law of Moses. Kosher laws are mostly about disgust—which foods are “clean,” and which are not. Many of the laws around sexuality are based on disgust. Then there are rules about who is acceptable in the holy community and who is not—abstract extensions of the disgust principle.
The way disgust works is most obvious in the rules around leprosy. If you came in contact with someone leprous, you “caught” the uncleanness. So too if you touch a dead body or various bodily fluids. A clean person becomes contaminated by contact with someone or something unclean. There is no safe dose of uncleanness—the smallest amount contaminates the whole. We are wired to keep out contaminants, including people who “contaminate” God’s holy people.
It wasn’t until I read about disgust that I really understood the difference between an honor-shame culture, like ancient Israel, and an innocence-guilt culture. Shame is related to disgust. If you experience a boundary violation, you are disgusted, and so you incur shame. That’s why rape victims incur shame in so many cultures—not guilt, because they didn’t do anything wrong, but shame because they were unwilling participants in something disgusting. Shame and disgust are deep-seated emotions. By contrast, guilt is a cerebral notion, which relates to fear rather than shame.
Today’s lesson starts with a discussion of a righteous judge, one who renews the Davidic covenant to rule God’s people with justice. I already read the opening from the NRSVue translation, which is very good and the main translation I use. But I often consult the New English Translation, or NET, which has a slightly different philosophy and copious translator notes. Here are the first few verses from NET:
11 A shoot will grow out of Jesse’s root stock,
a bud will sprout from his roots.
2 The Lord’s Spirit will rest on him—
a Spirit that gives extraordinary wisdom,
a Spirit that provides the ability to execute plans,
a Spirit that produces absolute loyalty to the Lord.
3 He will take delight in obeying the Lord.
These are some very different fruits of the Spirit. Paul wrote that the fruit of the Spirit is love, joy, peace, patience, kindness, generosity, faithfulness, gentleness, and self-control. But Isaiah wrote that some fruits of the Spirit are EXTRAORDINARY wisdom, the ability to execute plans, and absolute loyalty to the LORD. Wow! That’s fantastic! I feel like Paul’s list is more internally focused, dealing with the heart, but Isaiah’s list emphasizes God’s action in the world. Like the ability to execute plans—which plans? Ones that come from extraordinary wisdom and loyalty to the LORD.
Jesus was this tender shoot that sprang from the stump of Jesse, on whom the Spirit of the LORD rested, a Spirit of extraordinary wisdom. Jesus was a doer, not just a talker. He spent his brief ministry traveling far and wide, healing people wherever he went.
But not just healing them—restoring them. Think about the times Jesus healed lepers. Under the Law of Moses, when Jesus touched a leper, Jesus became unclean. The uncleanness of the leper would spread to anyone who came in contact with them. But Jesus operated against disgust, against contamination. A book I’m reading right now calls this eucontamination, where “eu” means “good.” Rather than the disgusting uncleanness contaminating the clean, Jesus’s purity cleansed what was disgusting.
We see this again and again throughout the Gospels. Remember that certain people are considered unclean, too. But Jesus ate with them, with tax collectors and sinners. He let a sinful woman anoint his feet. Again and again, we read about scribes and Pharisees chastising Jesus for violating the boundary between clean and unclean, between pure and disgusting. But in His wisdom, Jesus demonstrated that His purity overcomes all uncleanness. Jesus purified and sanctified anyone who came in contact with him. His goodness and love are like a reverse contaminant, a eucontaminant that pushes out all uncleanness. Just as a small amount of something disgusting can ruin something good, it only takes a little bit of Jesus’s purity to purify those who are touched by Him.
There are plenty of metaphors for disgust, so I thought I should develop one for eucontamination. Consider a group of people all washing their hands. One option is to have a large bowl of water. Now, how many people need to wash their hands before you would question the wisdom of sticking your hands in the bowl? Just thinking about it makes me a little queasy. I guess it depends on the people, but regardless, once someone gets their hands clean in it, the water is dirty, right? Maybe a little bit dirty, maybe a lot, but I don’t really want someone else’s dirt on my hands. That’s the logic of disgust, the logic of contamination and uncleanness.
The other option is a sink with running water. As the clean water flows over your hands, all of the dirt and grime flow down the drain. Your uncleanness does not spread up through the tap to the source. The source remains clean and pure no matter how many people are washed by it. Everything disgusting is washed away.
So too, God’s abundant grace cleanses us all. Justice rolls down like water. Righteousness is an ever-flowing stream. The river of the water of life, bright as crystal, flows from the throne of God and of the Lamb.
Nothing we do can pollute the stream. Nothing we do is too disgusting for God’s grace to wash away. Nothing, nobody, is ultimately unclean in God’s holy kingdom. Not because anything or anyone is kept out, but because all who enter God’s kingdom are cleansed by God’s abundant grace.
This is the Peaceful Kingdom that Isaiah described. A righteous, equitable judge—our Lord and Savior—will rule over it. At His command, wickedness will be cast out. What’s left will be complete reconciliation. No longer will there be predator and prey—the wolf shall live with the lamb, and the calf and the lion will feed together. God’s abundant grace will wash away any fear, any violence, any covetousness that would disrupt relationships. True peace, shalom, will hold sway.
But the kingdom of God is at hand! Today is John the Baptist Sunday—happy Advent, you brood of vipers! Repent, for the kingdom of heaven has come near! John stood in the tradition of the Hebrew prophets, preaching that God would separate the good from the bad, the righteous from the evil, the clean from the unclean. He wasn’t wrong, exactly, just a little incomplete. Yes, God will separate the righteous from the evil, but not by casting some people into eternal conscious torment. Rather, the purifying eucontamination of Jesus Christ will purge the evil from everyone and everything, leaving only righteousness. As Solzhenitsyn famously said, the line between good and evil runs down the middle of every human heart. Jesus’s purifying, sanctifying grace is more powerful than any evil in our hearts, able to purge us of all wickedness so that we are made worthy of entering His peaceful kingdom.
But again, the kingdom of heaven has come near! We are already being purified and sanctified. We are already welcome in God’s eternal kingdom. And we are called to bring others into the kingdom by channeling God’s grace and letting it flow through us and over the world.
We, the Church, are Christ’s body. The logic of contamination and disgust say that we need to keep out the “wrong type” of people. The tax collectors and sinners of our age. We see this logic at work in almost every church, only with different boundaries. Some will say that you’re excluded if you believe the wrong thing. Some will exclude you if you are in the wrong kind of romantic relationship. Some will exclude you if you question authority. Some will exclude you if you vote the wrong way. Some will exclude you if you dress the wrong way, or have tattoos or piercings.
But we are Christ’s body. Who does Christ exclude? Nobody. By God’s grace, we are all purified and made worthy of full inclusion in Christ’s body. Nobody can corrupt our holiness. Nobody can make us “unclean” in Christ’s eyes. And so, our task is to seek those who have been excluded from other manifestations of Christ’s body—other churches in our community or around the world that have drawn boundaries where God does not.
We are channels of God’s grace. We are called to seek those who need to be welcomed in from the margins. We are called to seek those who disgust us, for whatever reason, because they are clean in God’s eyes. We are called to share God’s ever-flowing righteousness and let it wash away all of their shame.
The revolution will not be televised. Prophets are not interested in spectators. Jesus came to call us to action, to transformation of ourselves and the world. We are expected to participate in the flourishing of God’s kingdom, here and now, in each of our hearts, in this church, in our community, and throughout the world. We have been made clean and pure, holy parts of Christ’s body, so that we can do Christ’s work in the world, bringing everyone into God’s eternal, already-but-not-yet kingdom that is emerging among us. Let us seek this day, this Advent season, and all through our lives to share the abundant, ever-flowing grace that has washed over us and that promises total transformation and reconciliation of Creation. Amen.