[Sermon delivered at St. Mary's Episcopal Church, Phoenix, Arizona, on the First Sunday of Advent (Conventional)/Fourth Sunday of Advent (Ancient/Extended), November 28, 2021 (https://stmarysphoenix.org)]
✠ In the name of the Father, the Son, and the Holy Spirit. Amen
“O Root of Jesse, which standest for an ensign of the people, at whom kings shall shut their mouths, to whom the Gentiles shall seek: Come and deliver us, and tarry not.”[1]
The very ancient O antiphons, the hymns that bracket the Magnificat in the Western rite Vespers office, are rich compilations of Christological doctrine, full to bursting with Scriptural references, and they have shaped our language of Advent profoundly.
But what does it all mean?
In the interest of time and of self-preservation, I wish only to focus on the fourth antiphon, O Radix Jesse, as that is the one which we are featuring today.
In an article written for the Arlington Catholic Herald in 2003, Fr. William Saunders gave a concise introduction to the antiphons in structure and content.[2] According to him (and others), an O antiphon has a title of Christ, an explanation of the title’s significance, and a petition based on that title. All these parts have Scriptural roots whose branches run through the Bible to form a part of the Church’s Holy Tradition.
In O Radix Jesse, we have the title “Root of Jesse” which to our mind is a bit arcane. The title comes from the Prophet Isaiah, where he writes,
“There shall come forth a shoot from the stump of Jesse, and a branch shall grow out of his roots. 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 piety; and he shall be full of the spirit of the fear of the Lord.”[3]
Isaiah also writes,
“In that day the root of Jesse shall stand as an ensign to the peoples; him shall the nations seek, and his dwellings shall be glorious.”[4]
Isaiah was very popular with the post-exile Jewish community, and that importance passed to the (heavily Jewish) Christian Church. The terminology would be very close to the surface of Christian consciousness, so when the Book of Revelation started to circulate, these statements would have immediately rung a bell:
“And to the angel of the church in Sardis write: ‘The words of him who has the seven spirits of God and the seven stars.’”[5]
and,
“Then one of the elders said to me, ‘Weep not; lo, the Lion of the tribe of Judah, the Root of David, has conquered, so that he can open the scroll and its seven seals.’”[6]
In these passages, we have the image of a root, a stump, a person of the line of Jesse and David. The fact facing the post-exilic Jewish communities was that the heritage of Israel, the Kingdom of God, appeared to be a ravaged stump, that the tree of God’s heritage on earth was in ruins.[7] In these passages, however, the implication is that the heritage of Israel, the Kingdom of God, would flourish again, and do so through the agency of the House of David, which bore a divine promise never to fail.[8] As Jesus Christ is of the line of David, the Early Church saw in Our Lord the root whence would grow the Kingdom of God. As some trees grow from a hacked stump or a buried root, so also the Kingdom grow from the crucified and risen Lord.[9]
This Root of Jesse in Isaiah is more than just the restoration of Israel. First, we see that the Seven Spirits of God rest upon Him. Second, we see him as an ensign, a rallying point, or in a broader sense the unifier of not just Israel, but also the nations. These Spirits are divine attributes, called out in Isaiah and explicitly linked to Our Lord in Revelation. In typical fashion of the Gospel of St. John and the Epistles of St. John, Revelation brings a focus on this Divine Nature of Our Lord, in this case taking the divine attributes ascribed to the Root of Jesse and applying them to Jesus. Also, to our second point, later in the book, the writer explicitly refers to the Root as conqueror, ostensibly over the common enemy of God and Humanity.
Not letting the compact imagery rest there, O Radix Jesse expands on this image of ensign. In Isaiah’s depiction of the suffering servant, we read,
“As many were astonished at him—his appearance was so marred, beyond human semblance, and his form beyond that of the sons of men—so shall he startle many nations; kings shall shut their mouths because of him; for that which has not been told them they shall see, and that which they have not heard they shall understand.”[10]
Here the hymn explicitly links the Root of Jesse to the suffering servant, and in seeing Him the nations and their leaders shall suddenly understand the implications of Our Lord’s sacrifice on the Cross. It is at this revealing that objections suddenly die away, sudden realization will quell all arguments, and doubts clear away. Also, this suffering servant, the Messiah, the Lord Jesus Christ, who is revealed to the nations, not only shall silence objectors, but as St. Paul comments,
“The root of Jesse shall come, he who rises to rule the Gentiles; in him shall the Gentiles hope.”[11]
Now that we have named Our Lord the Root of Jesse, the hope of the nations, and the silencer of objectors, in this hymn we make a request of Him. All the O antiphons start out the petition, “Come,” praying that the Lord appear among his people to grant their request. It is echoed in the closing chapter of Revelation when the writer sums up the vision with the phrase,
“He who testifies to these things says, “‘Surely I am coming soon!’ Amen! Come, Lord Jesus!”[12]
In O Radix Jesse, we pray that Our Lord, the Root of the Kingdom of God, the unifier of the nations, come and deliver us, and that right soon.
Deliver us from what? Simply put, the last petition of the Lord’s Prayer makes it clear:
“Deliver us from [the] Evil [One].”[13]
You will note I make use of the Eastern rendition of the petition, which implies that evil in and of itself is not an entity or thing, but a negative characteristic of an act of will on the part of some other being possessing said will. Whether it is Satan, or another human, or another spirit at enmity with God and Humanity, the petition asks for deliverance from them, and thus from the negative effects of their actions. In any case, the Root of David has conquered Evil: Death, Corruption, and the Adversary to deliver us from them. Likewise, we ask for it to happen quickly and not to let us languish under Evil’s sway, and so we come to the last item of O Radix Jesse, to “tarry not” or aligning more with common idiom, “don’t delay.”
This last item echoes a promise made by the writer of the Epistle to the Hebrews:
“For yet a little while, and the coming one shall come and shall not tarry; but my righteous one shall live by faith...”[14]
The writer promises that Jesus Our Lord will come at the right time, not too soon, not too late. It is a promise that the writer took from the Prophet Habakkuk, who himself wrote:
“For still the vision awaits its time; it hastens to the end—it will not lie. If it seems slow, wait for it; it will surely come, it will not delay. Behold, he whose soul is not upright in him shall fail, but the righteous shall live by his faith.”[15]
The antiphon O Radix Jesse asks us to wait in faith as we pray for Jesus to return and complete the deliverance He wrought for us in His Passion, Death, and Resurrection. This deliverance He offers to all. This deliverance He won for us at great cost. In this antiphon we acknowledge that from Our Lord comes the blossoming of the Kingdom of God, the unification of Israel and the Nations in Him, and our deliverance from the last enemy, which is Death,[16] and therefore our receiving Life Eternal.[17]
Come, Lord Jesus!
✠ Through the prayers of the Most Holy Theotokos and Ever-Virgin Mary, Saviour save us. Amen.
Jesse Tree, Stained Glass, 12th Century A.D., Chartres Cathedral
[1] O Radix Jesse, Magnificat Antiphon for the Vespers of December 18 (Sarum) or 19 (Tridentine), Roman Rite. [2] https://www.catholiceducation.org/en/culture/catholic-contributions/what-are-the.html [3] Is. 11.1-3a according to the Septuagint. All scriptural references are from the Revised Standard Version unless otherwise noted. [4] Is. 11.10 [5] Rev. 3.1, emphasis mine. [6] Rev. 5.5, emphasis mine. [7] Keil, C.F. and Delitzsch, F., Commentary on the Old Testament in Ten Volumes, “Volume VII: Isaiah,” Wm. B. Eerdmans Publishing Company, Grand Rapids, reprinted 1983, pp. 281-282 [8] 2 Sam. 8.16 [9] Keil and Delitzsch, Op. cit., pp. 282-283 [10] Is. 52.14-15 [11] Rom. 15.12 [12] Rev. 22.20 [13] Mt. 6.13, [14] Heb. 10.37 [15] Hab. 2.3-4 [16] 1 Cor. 15.26 [17] Rom 6.23
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