Lo, How a Rose E’er Blooming

Liturgy Lesson: December 20, 2020 – 4th Sunday of Advent
Morning Service (9 and 11AM)
Call to Worship: Psalm 126
Prayer of Invocation
Hymn of Adoration: Lift Up Your Heads, Ye Mighty Gates (#198)
Confession: from Isaiah 64
Assurance: Luke 1:46b-55
Hymn: All My Heart This Day Rejoices
Advent Reading: Matt. 1:18-25
Congregational Prayers
Reading of the Word: Isaiah 49:1-7
Doxology: Same as Advent 1-3
Sermon: Rev. Eric Irwin
Meditation
Supper: Lo! How a Rose E’er Blooming (#221); Joy Has Dawned
Benediction

Photo Credit: Lorent TheSaint, freeimages.com

Ahh…Christmas, thou art the enchanted season. December, thou art the decorated month, wherein our senses are beguiled, yea, even bombarded. Heaven has entered earth in the form of a birth, and all our symbols serve to suggest that the Savior has come. The incandescent lights below are all aglow with the LED (Light Erasing Darkness) of His eternal splendor. But he has not come to merely adorn our planet. He has come with a purpose. The cradle leads to the cross. Christ descends to take our place upon the wood, and we erect a tree. He is born that we no more may die, born to raise us from the earth. And so, the evergreen takes its temporary place among us, razed to die. The angel-song trumpets his arrival, and now heaven and nature sing. The God of all glory is tabernacled among us, and now the stuff of earth seems no longer sufficient to greet him. The Word is made flesh, and there are no words. How shall we give thanks for the ineffable? What shall we bring him, poor as we are? Let us sing and deck the halls. Let us feast. Yes, these are the symbolic days where all around us we see glimpses of glory, hear hints of heaven, and taste again the sweetness of salvation. Taking our cue from the incarnation, we imbue the mundane with all things mystical.

Among all the sights, sounds, and symbols of the season, there is one that remains the perfect embodiment of Christmas: the rose. Throughout God’s creation we find endless expressions of his character and attributes. If we were to search his universe, we would not find a more perfect symbol for the incarnation than the rose. The delicacy, beauty, and fragrance of this “queen of flowers” have always elicited comparisons to the infant King.

In Greco-Roman culture, the rose’s qualities represented beauty, spring, and love. It also spoke of the fleetness of life, and therefore of death. In Rome the feast called “Rosalia” was a feast of the dead: thus the flower referred to the next world.

Would you appoint some flower to reign
In matchless beauty on the plain,
The Rose (mankind will all agree),
The Rose the Queen of Flowers should be.
– Sappho, ca. 600 B.C.

Saint Ambrose (3rd cent.) believed that there were thornless roses in the Garden of Eden. These, he said, grew thorns after the fall, and so the rose came to symbolize both paradise and original sin. During the Middle Ages, the rose was cultivated in monastery gardens and used for medicinal purposes. It became a regular symbol in religious writing and iconography. The rose appears in Dante’s Divine Comedy, where it represents God’s love. By the twelfth century, the red rose had come to represent Christ’s passion, and the blood of the martyrs. In Catholic traditions, Mary came to be known has “the mystic Rose,” hence the prayer to her is called the Rosary. Many cathedrals include an ornate rose window, often strategically placed to be illuminated by sunlight. By the early Renaissance, the rose came to embody both the virgin mother and her child. Some early paintings depict Mary holding not a baby, but a rose.

There is no rose of such virtue
As is the rose that bare Jesu;
Alleluia.
For in this rose contained was
Heaven and earth in little space;
Res miranda (wonderful thing)
By that rose we may well see
That he is God in persons three,
Pari forma (equal in form)
The angels sungen the shepherds to:
Gloria in excelsis deo:
Gaudeamus (let us rejoice)
Leave we all this worldly mirth,
And follow we this joyful birth;
Transeamus (let us follow or turn)
Alleluia, res miranda,
Pares forma, gaudeamus,
Transeamus.

– Traditional English Carol, c. 1420, Attr. John Dunstable (1390-1453)

The enduring allure of the rose has survived even the onslaught of reason and enlightenment in the modern era. However, it is no longer a “spotless rose,” but stained with sin. Here is William Blake (1757-1827):

O Rose thou art sick.
The invisible worm,
That flies in the night
In the howling storm:
Has found out thy bed
Of crimson joy:
And his dark secret love
Does thy life destroy.

This last sentiment may express what we are feeling this Advent season. Christmas has not bloomed in full this year. Some of its petals are fallen off, and our hearts are shriveled. Fewer loved ones around the table, and fewer presents under the tree. All because there is a sickness in the garden, and it has threatened our crimson joy. But Mr. Blake does not have the final say. For that we turn to the powerful poetry of the prophet Isaiah. There we find a litany of symbolism and Christmas hope that does not wither or fade.

“There shall come forth a shoot from the stump of Jesse,
and a branch from his roots shall bear fruit.
And the Spirit of the Lord shall rest upon him,
the Spirit of wisdom and understanding,
the Spirit of counsel and might,
the Spirit of knowledge and the fear of the Lord.
And his delight shall be in the fear of the Lord.
He shall not judge by what his eyes see,
or decide disputes by what his ears hear,
but with righteousness he shall judge the poor,
and decide with equity for the meek of the earth;
and he shall strike the earth with the rod of his mouth,
and with the breath of his lips he shall kill the wicked.
Righteousness shall be the belt of his waist,
and faithfulness the belt of his loins.
The wolf shall dwell with the lamb,
and the leopard shall lie down with the young goat,
and the calf and the lion and the fattened calf 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 cobra,
and the weaned child shall put his hand on the adder’s den.
They shall not hurt or destroy
in all my holy mountain;
for the earth shall be full of the knowledge of the Lord
as the waters cover the sea.
In that day the root of Jesse, who shall stand as a signal for the peoples—of him shall the nations inquire, and his resting place shall be glorious.”
– Isaiah 11:1-10

Lo, How a Rose E’er Blooming
Text: anonymous 15th cent. German, tr. by Theodore Baker (1851-1934)
Music: German Hymn “Es Ist Ein Ros” (ca. 1500); harm. Michael Praetorius (1571-1621)

From Hymnary.org:

“This hymn may date back as far as the fifteenth century, though the earliest manuscript was found in St. Alban’s Carthusian monastery in Trier and was dated around 1580. It was first published with a whopping twenty-three stanzas in Alte Catholische Geistliche Kirchengesange in 1599.

Originally written in German and titled “Es ist ein Ros ensprungen,” the text combines the story of Christ’s birth with the prophecies in Isaiah about the “rose” from the “stem of Jesse.” The second verse originally interpreted “rose” to mean Mary, the mother of Jesus, but in 1609, Michael Praetorius changed the interpretation to point to Christ, thus fitting with the actual Biblical imagery. He then published the hymn with only stanzas one and two and added a harmonization. The first two verses were translated into English by Theodore Baker around 1894.”

The famous composer Michael Praetorius (1571-1621) helped the popularity of this tune immensely by harmonizing it in his collection Musae Sioniae (Zion’s Music) in 1609. His harmonization of this German tune, or adaptations of it, may be found in most hymnals. This is a beautiful and peaceful hymn, but there is just a touch of melancholy in the tune. Even in the arrangement the composer was able to convey the tension amidst our celebration, the sorrow that must lie within our rejoicing, if only for a moment.

Brothers and Sisters, our hearts have been tilled by struggle and sorrow this year. Now they are ready for planting. Christ’s birth is the seed. May he take root and be born in us today. Good Christian Friends, rejoice! Our 2020 Christmas bouquet may be weak and withered, but someday these bruised, battered, and broken bodies will blossom again in paradise. Each rose will lose its thorn, and we shall be “a planting of the Lord, for the display of his splendor” (Is. 61:3).

Lo, how a Rose e’er blooming
from tender stem hath sprung!
Of Jesse’s lineage coming,
as those of old have sung.
It came, a flow’ret bright,
amid the cold of winter
when half spent was the night.

This Flower, whose fragrance tender
With sweetness fills the air,
Dispels with glorious splendor
The darkness everywhere.
True man, yet very God,
From sin and death He saves us
And lightens every load.

– Recording