Ernest Hemmingway wrote about the experience of
Mungo Park, who, on one of his travel adventures, got lost in
the vast wilderness of an African desert. He was all alone,
and so dead tired he could not go on. His legs were numbed,
and he gave up, and laid down to die. He opened his eyes,
and right by his face was a small wild flower of extra
ordinary beauty. The whole plant was no bigger than his
finger, but it forced new thoughts into his hopeless mind. He
said, "I could not contemplate the delicate conformation of
its roots, leaves, and capsules without admiration."
He went on to reflect, "Can the Being who planted,
watered, and brought to perfection in this obscure part of
the world, a thing which appears of so small importance,
look with unconcern upon the situation and suffering of
creatures formed after His own image?" He concluded,
surely not, and then thoughts generated by that little wild
flower brought him out of his despair. He got the adrenaline
flowing in his veins again, and with new hope he traveled
forward, and found relief, and his life was spared. He was
saved by a flower. Here was one man who believed in flower
power.
Jesus Christ also believed in flower power, and He used
flowers to encourage His followers to positive thinking.
"Behold the lilies of the field," he said, "They do not
toil or spin, yet Solomon in all his glory was not arrayed like
one of these." Jesus was saying, if God so cares for the
flowers, which so quickly pass away, how much more
does He care for you, who are His children, and who will live
forever. Do not worry about clothing, but let flowers keep
you ever conscious that there is never a lack of beautiful
clothing in the kingdom of God. Jesus said flower power is a
part of God's plan. Someone wrote,
“Our outward life requires them not, then, wherefore had
they birth?
To minister delight to man, to beautify the earth,
To comfort man-to whisper hope, when'er his faith is dim,
For He who careth for the flowers, will care much more for
him.”
It is no wonder that our Lord is identified with flowers.
He is called the Rose of Sharon, and the Lily of the Valley.
He is a saving flower who gives encouragement and strength
to all who behold Him, and He adds beauty to all of
life's deserts. The land where Jesus grew up was the land
filled with flowers. A British botanist recognized
500 species in Israel, common to that native soil, and almost
another half a thousand that are unknown beyond Bible
lands. Flowers blossomed on a variety of trees, and
there images were craved in many places in the Temple. In
spite of all the flowers, only three garden varieties are
mentioned in the Bible: The rose, the lily and the
henna blossom. It is of interest that all three are in this
context. The rose and the lily in verse 1 of chapter 2, and the
other in verse 14 of chapter 1. This song of love is also the
song of flowers, because flowers and love are closely linked.
We want to examine the most popular of all flowers, the rose.
We want to see it in the light of its romantic and religious
significance.
I. THE ROMANTIC USE OF THE ROSE.
It would be easy to spend all of our time looking at the
romantic us of roses. This has been the flower of romance all
through history. Botanists speculate much about the
Biblical rose. Some feel it was the tulip, or some other
flower, but most refer to it as the rose. There is hardly a
people of the past who have not used roses to represent love.
If you rearrange the letters of rose by taking the e off the
end, and putting it on the beginning, you get eros, which is
the Greek word for romantic love.
The rose can be a symbol of either the male or female
lover. The ancient Greeks called it The King of Flowers.
But Sappho, The Greek poetess, urged that it be
called the Queen of Flowers. The fight for equality has been
a long battle. In a sense she won, in that many women are
named Rose, but seldom or never does a man bare that
name. In her ode to the rose, which she wrote in 600 B. C.,
she said,
Would Jove a Queen of Flowers ordain,
The Rose, the Queen of Flowers, should reign.
What flower is half so lovely found,
As when, with full-blown beauties crown.
The fame magnificent will all agree,
The Rose, the Queen of Flowers should be.
Shakespeare said, "Fair ladies masked are roses in their
bud." The beauty of the rose cause men to use it to identify
with the beauty of the one they adore. Volumes of poetry
and songs could be filled with the references to roses and
love.
Is it the beauty of the rose
Unfolding to my view,
That stirs again this heart of mine
To gentle thoughts of you.
Along the garden ways just now,
I heard the flowers speak:
The white rose told me of your brow,
The red rose of your cheek.
Roses became a part of marriage customs all over the
world, including those of the American Indian. We cannot
take the time to elaborate, except to say, more things are
done with roses than most men ever dreamed of. A partial
list would include rose wine, rose jelly, rose pudding, rose
oil, rose water, and you name it. You can eat them, smell
them, sleep on them, decorate with them, and do many
things to make a more pleasant environment. Almost
everyone agrees, however, that Cleopatra over did it when
she received Mark Anthony. Among other extravagant
things, she had the floor of the banquet hall strewn with rose
pedals eighteen inches deep. Nero was also a great user of
roses. In that period of history the rose was so popular that
some feared there would be no land left for raising crops.
It is of interest to note that the rose was never used in
black magic, but only in white magic. That is, it was used to
make love potions to insight romance, or rekindle the love of
a mate. It was not used for curses. It became so popular as
a potion that it was believed to be good medicine. If it helps
love sickness, why not all sickness?
When pain afflicts and sickness grieves,
Its roses' juice the drooping heart relieves.
History has kept this belief alive, and roses have been
consumed by millions for medicine. When William Penn
came from London, he brought 18 roses to Pennsylvania
where he raised them, and wrote recipes for how they could
be used. Here is one:
"To comfort ye brains, and for ye palsy, and for ye giddiness
of the head. Take a hand full of rose flowers, clover, nutmeg,
all in a powder, quilt in a little bag and sprinkle with rose
water....and lay it in ye nod of ye neck."
We might laugh at such a use of the rose, but in 1856 it
was discovered that the rose does have food value and
minerals. During World War II, when citrus fruit was
scarce, British chemist discovered that rose hips have 400%
more vitamin C than oranges. In 1941 the greatest
medicinal use of roses in modern times began, as hundreds
of tons of rose hips were converted into syrup. This
fascinating side line could be pursued, but it would take us
far afield. Its value is in the fact that it reveals how anything
that God makes has many values. The healing value of the
rose only adds to its value as a symbol of the Great
Physician.
We cannot even mention the numerous love stories and
operas that use the rose as their theme. Before we look at
the religious use of the rose, however, let me share
one more romantic use. Swedish folklore says, if two lovers
are buried in the same grave a rose will grow from the
mouth of each. There are many stories of this type of
thing being found. The grave tree is what it is called. Oscar
Wilde's famous poem of a burial of a prisoner in a prison
yard suggests it is God's way of revealing something.
He wrote,
Out of his mouth a red, red rose!
Out of his heart a white!
For who can say by what strange way,
Christ brings His will to light.
The best known example of this belief is the ballad of
William and Margaret.
Margaret was buried in the lower chancel,
And William in the higher;
Out of her breast there sprang a rose,
And out of his a briar.
They grew till they grew up to the church top,
And then they could grow no higher;
And there they tied a true lovers knot
Which made all the people admire.
Strange as it sounds, there are even stranger ideas
connected with the rose and romance. Song of Songs would
have been lacking a universal concept had it left out
all reference to the rose. There is much debate as to whether
this first verse is a reference to Christ, or to the Shulamite
girl. Is it the male or the female speaking? The ancient
commentators said it is the male, and modern commentators
tend to think it is the female. I am convinced the modern
interpreters see the story more accurately, but one does not
need, therefore, to forsake the insights of the old view.
The Shepherd girl is really putting herself down here.
She is saying, I am a mere flower of the plain, and a common
flower of the valley, I am not to be compared with
the beauties of Solomon's court. I am a wild flower, not one
of these frail and delicate hot-house blooms. Her lover
responds with a great compliment to knock that nonsense
out of her pretty head. He says that she is such a beautiful
flower that she makes all the beauties of the court look like
thorns in comparison. Neither of the lovers magnify
themselves, but each is magnified and adored by the other.
So it is to be with Christ and His Bride, the church. The
rose, then, is a reference to the girl, and so also the lily, but
for centuries the rose was symbolic of Christ, and it has
developed a vast amount of symbolic significance, and so we
want to look at-
II. THE RELIGIOUS USE OF THE ROSE.
Let us keep in mind that the rose already had a strong place
in religion before Jesus came into history. There is hardly a god,
goddess, or great person of antiquity, who is not in some way
identified with the rose. Greeks have dozens of stories, and
the Mohammedens tell of how their great prophet
once rode swiftly to Jerusalem on his sacred steed Al Barak.
Both he and the horse were sweating profusely, and
perspiration falling to the earth from his forehead brought
forth white roses, and that from his horse brought forth
yellow roses.
Numerous are the legends of how the rose became red.
Most of them involved blood. For example: Venus, the
goddess of love, was weeping over the slain Adonis,
and she turned and stumbled:
Her naked foot a rude thorn tore,
From sting of briar it bleed,
And where the blood ran evermore,
It dyed the roses red.
The point is, the whole ancient world was full of stories,
songs, and poems of roses, and they were a part of the
religious rites of most all pagans. Therefore, the hierarchy
of the Christian church rejected any use of the rose as a
Christian symbol. Clement of Alexandria felt it was
abhorrent for a Christian to use roses or lilies. In his culture
they were used constantly to beautify the immorality of the
pagan religions. It seemed the best approach to reject the
use of the rose.
The church soon learned a lesson, however, we all must
learn. You cannot cease to use a beautiful gift of God just
because others abuse it. Christians loved roses, and felt they
were a beautiful part of God's creation. They felt they were
worthy of a place in Christian symbolism. The totally
negative approach had to be forsaken. If you can praise
God for anything, and use it properly, you should do so.
The Christian does not stop taking medicine with alcohol in
it just because millions make fools of themselves
with alcohol.
If some mad scientist is caught using soar milk
to develop a bacteria to wipe out the human race, I do not
have to give up eating cottage cheese. The evil abuse of
something is no valid reason for abandoning the proper use
of it. Such logic finally persuaded the church to use the rose
as a symbol. A rose crown was given to martyrs, and numerous
churches were built with rose symbolism. Roses
became the symbol of heavenly joy. Artists painted both
angels and the redeemed wearing roses in heaven. The rose
came to represent divine love, and stories of saints and roses
became numerous. Theodore Parker said, "Every rose is an
autograph from the hand of God on His world about us."
In England, the Order of the Rose had its knights where
three rose pedals on their sleeves as symbolic of the Trinity.
Coins and jewelry also bore the image of the rose. From the
cradle to the cross stories developed about Jesus and the
rose. One popular story was that of the Shepherd girl
Madelon who followed the shepherds to Bethlehem,
and stood outside weeping. The angel Gabriel asked her
why, and she said because she had no gift for the Christ
child. Whereupon, Gabriel touched the ground and there
appeared a bouquet of Christmas roses, and these were the
first gift of a female to Jesus.
Christians told of how the thorn crown on the brow of
Christ on the cross burst into beautiful roses after He died.
The rose became symbolic of both the beauty and the
horror of the cross. Its thorns remind us of the suffering He
endured, and the blossoms of the beautiful salvation he
purchased by that suffering. The rose is an excellent flower
to symbolize what Jesus did on the cross.
Men saw the thorns on Jesus's brow, But angels saw the roses.
Men could see the roses later, however, and they
interpreted the five petals of the red rose as symbolic of the
five wounds of Christ. Rutherford spoke frequently
of Christ as God's rose. "Christ is His Father's Noble Rose
casting a sweet smell though heaven and earth. He is a Rose
that beautifieth all the upper Garden of God." Whatever
Jesus is, He is the best of it, and Isaac Watts sang,
Is He a Rose? Not Sharon yields
Such fragrancy in all her fields;
Or if the Lily He assume,
The valleys bless the rich perfume.
Hans Christian Anderson, one of the great story tellers of
all time, has a deeply symbolic tale called The Loveliest Rose
In The World. It is about a Queen who loved flowers and
had a glorious garden full of them. Some grew so high they
began to creep through the windows of her chamber where
she lay dying. The wise men said there is one thing that can
save her. Bring her the loveliest rose in the world, a
symbol of the purest, brightest love, and she will not die.
Young and old alike search the hills and valleys looking for
such a rose. After many failures, one day her little
son came into the room and said, "Look at what I have
read," and he read to her of one who suffered on a cross. A
glow came into the Queen's cheeks, and a rose
blossomed from the leaves of the Bible. It grew out of the
passage dealing with the blood shed for sin. The Queen said,
"Now I see. He who beholds this, the loveliest rose on earth,
will live and never die."
No preacher ever preached more eloquently about Jesus,
as the loveliest rose in the world, then Charles Hadden
Spurgeon. We don't have time to quote him as much as he
should be heard, but this one paragraph gives you a good
taste. "....Christ is lovely to all our spiritual senses. The rose
is delightful to the eye, but it is also refreshing to the
nostril.....So is Jesus. All the senses of the soul are ravished
and satisfied with Him, whether it be the taste or feeling, the
hearing, the sight, or the spiritual smell, all charms are in
Jesus."
None among the sons of men,
None among the heavenly train,
Can with Sharon's rose compare,
None so sweet none so fair.
All of this eloquence and poetry may sound far removed
from practical everyday living, but this is not so. Flowers
are not only beautiful, they are practical, because their
beauty and aroma have a positive effect on the mind, and
nothing is so practical as a positive mind. That is why Paul
said, "If there is anything lovely think on it." When Martin
Luther was engaged in his great controversy with Eck, the
learned champion of the Catholic church, he kept a bunch of
flowers in his hand. As his adversary denounced him with
fierce arguments, he smelled the flowers and maintained
calmness and confidence with positive thoughts of
God. Flowers can encourage the whole man by means of the
nose. Let the aroma of every rose remind you of Christ, and
a rose can be a wonderful friend.
The Rose that Bethlehem saw bloom
Out of a heart all full of grace,
Gave never forth its full perfume
Until the cross became its vase.
On May 20, 1918 the best American aviator in France
was shot down by a German plane. Major Lufbery had won
18 battles with the German planes, and he was a great hero
in France. The funeral procession included 200 American
and French officers. As this large group stood around the
grave, one American plane after an- other flew over, shut off
the engine, and as they glided by, threw out bunches of red
roses. They floated down over the coffin, and the bowed
heads of the crowd. These roses from heaven were symbols
of their love for this man. The Rose of Sharon is that rose
from heaven that is the symbol of God's love for us. We can
be saved by the power of this flower from God.
Our fellowship with Christ is to bless us, but also to make
us a blessing, as the sweet aroma of His Spirit brings forth
in us all of the fruits of that Spirit. A Persian fable tells of
how a potter selected a piece of common clay to work with,
but it smelled so pleasant, he asked it, "O clay where hast
thou thy perfume." The clay responded, "I once was a piece
of common clay, but I was laid for a time in the company of
a rose, and I drank in its fragrance, and now I am scented
clay."
The fragrance of the rose clings to all in its presence.
You may break, you may shatter, the vase if you
will, But the scent of the rose will hang around it still.
May God make us willing to be clay in His hands that
absorbs the fragrance of Christ, that others might see the
beauty of Christ in us, and smell the scent of the
Rose of Sharon.
