Easter Sunday: Jesus the King and Cultivator of the Garden of God
St. Ephrem the Syrian's Second Hymn on the Resurrection
CONTENT
Introduction
Good morning dear friends. The Lord is risen! This is our second year of hearing a homily from the ancient church. One of our values at this church is to live out the church’s tradition. We do this in the way we use the Book of Common Prayer, sometimes we’ll do a study, and this morning we will hear an ancient teaching-hymn, called a madrasha, from St. Ephrem the Syrian. The female choirs would have sung this as a form of teaching to build up the church.
Who is St. Ephrem?
St. Ephrem was born in the 300s in a town called Nisibis, which is modern Nusaybin in Turkey. This was a border town which went back and forth in its allegiance to either Rome or Persia. He lived there until Persia took it in 363 and forced out the Christian population. Ephrem and others headed west to the city of Edessa, or modern Şanli Urfa, in Turkey. He lived there for 10 years and died in 373.[1] He was a deacon and catechetical teacher under four amazing bishops.
Our Hymn
Ephrem sees two books of revelation: the Scriptures are one, and the natural world is a second book to learn and study. There are two dimensions for him: spiritual and earthly. The spiritual dimension is pictured through the lens of the Garden of Eden. The two dimensions, of paradise and physical earth, exist side-by-side, overlap, and interlock. The natural world then becomes a tapestry of divine gestures to help us adore the mystery of God. Because of this theology, Ephrem’s poems are filled with natural and biblical imagery. Ephrem’s second hymn on the resurrection, which we will read this morning, is about the celebration of Easter. I made my own translation, but then realized the other day that the amazing Sebastian Brock had also made a translation back in 2006 in a book of assorted Syriac writings.[2] I’ll put a link online to where you can find his translation. This morning I’ll read my translation for us. There are twelve stanzas to this hymn. We are invited to meditate on the Scripture and the cross through the spiritual Garden. It’s as though we see Eden’s realities as we look at earth’s realities. Paradise is filled with blooming flowers, but then as we zoom back out at earth, these blooms find their counterparts in the people of God and their praises. We are all flower arrangers in the garden of paradise through the resurrection. Stanza 2 invites us into the celebration of the Easter festival, much like we are doing this morning. Everyone has a part to play in the worship of the resurrected Lord. The reference to chaste women are the female choirs. There are children singing, lay people offering righteous lives, and clergy fulfilling their functions in the church. All of this is compared to flowers in paradise.
Ephrem mentions Nisan, which corresponds to our month of April; Passover occurs in Nisan, which is when Christians celebrate Easter, or Pascha. I was excited for some thunderstorms today because the month of Nisan and its thunderstorms form a counterpart to the thunderous praises of God’s people celebrating Easter. As thunders produce earthly flowers, praises produce the spiritual flowers of love and good deeds. In stanzas 6-8, he moves to the interweaving of the flowers of paradise into crowns that will be set on the heads of those who enter paradise. Ephrem, in entering worship, is given a crown; the donkey from the triumphal entry is crowned with them; every person in the worshiping assembly is crowned with them. But the flowers are not just flowers, they are the beauties of the obedience of the disciples of Jesus from every age and stage woven together into a celebration of God’s paradise in the lives of the saints (stanzas 9-10). The poem ends in stanzas 11 and 12 with a contrast of the victorious and resurrected King Jesus with all the kings of the earth. Jesus is the great king of flowers and his crown is perfect in its beauty, which feels redemptive as he has now traded his crown of thorns with the flowers of paradise. He has commissioned God’s people to weave the crown. The final stanza is a prayer for our king to accept the crown we weave and to “give peace to the lands that were destroyed,” and to “rebuild the churches which were burnt...” This likely means that this madrasha was composed in Nisibis in a period following one of the devastating raids of the Persians. God can make the barren places fruitful again. It is true in the war-torn and oppressive regions of the world, and it is true in the places of the human heart that have been ravaged by sin and death. We long for Christ in his resurrection to make all things new and to give us flowers that we can continue to weave into a crown for his glory.
None of us will fully grasp this hymn on the first read through. Don’t worry. I’ll put the whole transcript online when we post the audio. Here’s the hymn:
Ephrem Hymn on the Resurrection II[3]
1) Your law was my chariot
which revealed paradise.
And your cross was my key
which opened paradise.
I gathered fruit from the garden of delights;[4]
I came from paradise and amassed
roses and eloquent blooms
which are scattered throughout your festival,
in the songs, over the people.
Blessed is He who crowns and was crowned
2) Behold, the joyous festival
which consists entirely of mouths and voices.
The chaste women and men were in it
like trumpets and horns.
Infant girls and boys were in it
like harps and lyres.
Their voices were woven together and they ascended,
and all of them reached heaven.
They gave glory to the Lord of glory.
Blessed is He for whom the silent have thundered.
3) Behold, earth thundered below
and heaven thundered above.
Nisan mixed together the [thunderous] sounds
above and below.
The voices of the holy Church mixed
with the thunder-peals of Divinity.
And amidst the glow of her torches,
the flashes of lightning mix;
the tears of sorrow were with the rain
and the Paschal fast was with the new growth.
4) In the ark shouted
all the voices from every mouth.
Outside of it were strong waves,
while inside were pleasant voices.
Voices, according to each pair,
sang in it together in purity;
Our festival is a type of this,
in which the unmarried boys and girls
have sung in a holy way.
Glory to the Lord of the Ark.
5) In this festival, which each person offers
his victories as his offerings,
it grieves me, my Lord, to see
that I stand here empty-handed.
But my mind has been soaked by your dew
and it experienced a second Nisan.
Its flowers became offerings for me:
braided together into all kinds of wreaths,
and placed over the door of the ear.
Blessed be the cloud which rained down upon me.
6) Who has seen flowers being collected
from the Scriptures as though from hills?
With them the chaste women fill
the spacious recesses of the mind.[5]
The sound [of the songs], like a servant,
scattered holy blooms over the assemblies.
The flowers are holy;
receive them into your senses
as our Lord [received] the anointing of Mary.[6]
Blessed be the One who was crowned by his handmaids.
7) Flowers, beautiful and eloquent,
children have scattered before the King.
The colt was crowned with them,
the path was filled with them.
They scattered praises like flowers
and hymns like lilies.
Even now in the midst of the festival
the assembly of the children have scattered for you, my Lord,
hallelujahs like flowers.
Blessed is He who was praised by the children.[7]
8) Behold, our hearing is like an armful,[8]
of the voices of children.
The recesses of our ears, my Lord, are also filled
with the hymns of the chaste women.
Let each one of us gather up all the blooms,
and intermingle them with his own
flowers that bloomed in his own land,
so that for this great festival,
we might weave a great crown for it.
Blessed is He who invited us to weave it.
9) Let the bishop[9] weave into it
his homilies as his flowers;
the priests, their stories of victory,[10]
the deacons, their readings,
the young men, their alleluias,
the boys, their psalms,
the chaste women, their hymns,
the leaders, their charitable deeds,
and the laity, their manner of life.
Blessed is He who has multiplied victories for us.
10) Let us prepare to recount the victorious ones:
the martyrs, apostles, and prophets,
whose flowers are like them,
their blooms are shining,
their roses are abundant,
the fragrance of their lilies is sweet.
They gathered from the Garden of Delights
and brought the choicest of flowers
to crown our beautiful festival.[11]
Glory to You from the blessed ones!
11) The crowns of kings appear poor
before the wealth of Your crown.
Into which purity is interwoven,
in which faith shines,
in which humility emanates,
into which holiness is mixed,
in which great love shines forth.
Great King of flowers,
how perfect is the beauty of Your crown?
Blessed is the One who has commissioned us to weave.
12) Our King, accept our offering
and grant us salvation in return.
Give peace to the lands that were devastated,
rebuild the churches which were burnt,
so that when great peace comes,
we might weave together a great crown for You,
as flowers and those who weave them
come from all sides
that the Lord of peace might be crowned.
Blessed is he who has acted and is able to act.
[1] Reader more at https://gedsh.bethmardutho.org/entry/Ephrem
[2] Ephraem, et al. Select Poems. 1. ed, Brigham Young University Press, 2006. Eastern Christian Texts 2. Pages 169-179.
[3] TJ Lamy, Sancti Ephraem Syri hymni et sermones quos e codicibus Londinensibus, Parisiensibus et Oxoniensibus descriptos edidit, Latinitate donavit, variis lectionibus instruxit, notis et prolegomenis illustravit. Volume 2 of 4. Pages 750-756. Hymn 19 <https://archive.org/details/sanctiephraemsy02lamygoog/page/n405/mode/1up>
[4] A play on words with the garden of Eden. ‘edne (delights) sounds like ‘den (Eden).
[5] A reference to the madrashe sung by the women’s choirs for the instruction of the people.
[6] John 12:1-3
[7] Matt 21:15-16
[8] The idea is like having an armful of flowers.
[9] i.e., the chief shepherd
[10] A type of homily like an encomium or panygeric. This may also refer to a successful life of ministry as a priest.
[11] The word ܟܘܠܠܐ refers to the crowning that happens when someone is victorious. It is a short-hand way of referring to martyrdom “Receiving the crown”. The festival of receiving the crown is attested elsewhere as a commemoration of a martyrdom. In this stanza, the idea is that the martyrs, prophets, and apostles are the ones who frame the festivities. It is their lives and deeds that frame the work of the church and how this festival calls them to the same works as the saints of old, whose deeds are pictured as flowers blooming from Eden.
