"A shoot shall come"-Sermon for Advent 4, Lessons and Carols:
Two Saturday’s ago, Ashley and I were downtown on South Congress about to begin a morning walk on the trail around Lady Bird Lake when we ran into an unexpected surprise. It was a religious parade led by our Catholic siblings in honor of the Feast Day of Our Lady of Guadalupe, the Patron Saint of Mexico and the Americas, which is celebrated each year on Dec 12th. The procession was led by an almost life-sized painting of the Virgin of Guadalupe that I believe hangs in the Roman Catholic Cathedral downtown. It was full of festive revelers and worshippers of all ages, many dressed in Native American attire dancing to rhythmic drum beats. It was a moving moment for us and a truly unexpected gift in this season of gift giving…to see such a powerful public witness to the faith we share…and I was so grateful to our Catholic siblings for their offering. Perhaps you know the story, but in 1531 an indigenous man, named at his Baptism, Juan Diego, received a vision of Mary while walking in the winter by a hill near Mexico City. She took on the appearance of an Aztec princess with indigenous features, wearing a blue-starred robe and standing on a crescent moon. She has become a powerful symbol of hope for migrants, refugees, Latinos and marginalized people in the US, Latin America and really around the entirety of the world.
And, as the procession was passing alongside us, I heard Ashley say quietly, with a devotional tone in her voice, “Lo, How a Rose E’er Blooming”, which, as you perhaps know, is a Christmas Carol also written in the 1500’s but on the other side of the world in Germany…likely by a Lutheran…though its origin is mainly lost to history. Though not as well-known as some of the other carols that get more air time on the radio and in our Christmas services, this profoundly beautiful and haunting hymn is included in our Episcopal Hymnal and most Anglican Hymnals and is very much a favorite in my family…we’ll get to hear it today in our service of Lessons and Carols in just a bit. So, I asked Ashley what brought this particular carol to mind in the midst of this particular procession, and she reminded me that on the same hill where Our Lady of Guadalupe appeared to Juan Diego, he also discovered a field of Castilian roses that were not native to Mexico…but Spain. And, he collected those roses to share with the Bishop of Mexico, when pressed for proof that the miracle he witnessed was real. Roses that did not live in Mexico, blooming in the dead of winter when they would not flower even if they had existed in Mexico. Roses thriving on a barren dessert like hilltop where they would not thrive even if not in the dead of winter. And, yet, in Mary’s presence, they bloomed…their vibrant colors and perfumed scents…filling the chilled air and barren landscape.
And, in the hymn, “Lo, How a Rose E’re Blooming”, the author similarly writes, “It came, a flower bright. Amid the cold of winter. When half-gone was the night…. Isaiah 'twas foretold it. The Rose I have in mind. With Mary we behold it. The virgin mother…kind.” Now, with the hymn, there is some debate over whether the rose that blooms in the dead of winter and when half-gone was the night is a refence to Mary or Jesus…the one born through Mary into the dark and cold night of our sorely divided and broken world. But, I think the best answer is that the Rose is both…both Mary whose warm body bore the child who would flower from her womb at Christmas…and…and the child, Jesus, from whom unending love and eternal life would bud and blossom…as he is birthed a second time, at Easter, from the dark hold of sin and death…claiming victory over both for all time and for all people…even you, even me.
The fossil record suggests that roses have existed on earth for over 35 million years. Humans have cultivated them for at least the past 5000 of those years for perfume, medicine, decorations, ceremonies, food flavoring, and, perhaps most of all, as expressions of human love…as they are given and received. They are perhaps THE universal symbol of love. Though in our time they are more connected to Valentine’s Day than Christmas, given what they have meant to and represented for millennia and across almost all cultures, it is no wonder why they might show up in poetic images of Christmas or be symbolically connected to Mary through whom love incarnate buds and blossoms into our world. But, friends, the “go tell it on a mountain” wonder of the roses…showing up on that hilltop in Mexico and in that ancient German carol…is that the roses bloom when and where it is not expected…where they did not previously exist…in parched and barren landscapes…in the cold of winter…and when the world is covered in great darkness…only half way through the night. For that is the promise of Christmas that comes again soon and very soon. That God’s love arrives, most especially, when and where it is needed the most.
Behold…how a Rose ever blooms…in vulnerable lives…like those of a new born baby entirely dependent on the care and nurture of others. Behold…how a Rose ever blooms…in dry and parched lives…like those who have left places of poverty and violence…left family and the familiar…to seek a better sort of future in a new and uncertain home. Behold…how a Rose ever blooms…in lives left cold and frozen by fear, confusion and warfare that this broken world had heaped upon their shoulders. Behold…how a Rose ever blooms…in lives lost in the darkness of unwanted diagnosis or grief or the nighttime of mental illness or addiction. Behold…how a Rose ever blooms…in our own lives, whether in times of great trial and challenge or triumph and joy. For God’s never-ending love come down at Christmas…birthed in a vulnerable baby, through the womb of his teenage mother, promises that love is ever blooming…wherever and whenever it is needed most…a flower bright…amid the cold of winter…when half gone was the night. Amen.