DEW ON THE ROSES [Sa, 1-11-25]

BEYOND WINTER: The Irrelevant Musings of An Old Man—DEW ON THE ROSES [Sa, 1-11-25]

 

There is no dew on roses in the days of winter.

 

In seminary, we made fun of C. Austin Miles’ 1912 song, “In the Garden.” We laughed and called it “Andy.” “Andy walks with me, Andy talks with me, Andy tells me I am his own.”

Someone told us that it had been composed as a popular love song but had not made it, so the composer went to the religious market with it, where it became one of the great all-time hits. That was not true, but truth has little weight when we want to ridicule something. 

I enjoyed making fun of the hymn, in the same way children enjoy making fun of the odd kid at school. It was a love song, not a theological song. It was romantic. It carried nothing of the realism and suffering and sacrifice and scandal of the real Gospel. I was convinced that Christian faith was about blood on a cross, not dew on roses.

Back then, I thought that faith was verified through misery. I had not yet suffered enough to realize that faith is verified through joy.

But in seminary, we thought that “In the Garden” was the worst of self-centered Protestant individualism: “The joy we share as we tarry there, none other has ever known.” Talk about exclusive!

Miles intended it as a hymn from the beginning, but it is also clearly a romantic love song. By Miles’ own account, it is a depiction of Jesus and Mary Magdalene, after Jesus’ resurrection, meeting “in the garden,” to share a joy that “none other has ever known.”

 

It is popular, and not unreasonable, to think that the time after the Resurrection was springtime for Jesus. After all, he was going home, to “reign in glory,” and all that. But if you are the savior of the world, can you sit in heaven and be content with the world as it has been for these past two thousand years? No, this is a long hard bitter winter time for Jesus.

In this barren time of our cultural winter, we have removed romance from sexuality. Sex is physical contact, only. It has little, if anything, to do with relationship, with love, with romance. People who look at Jesus and Magdalene assume either that they had a conventionally modern physical relationship, or that Jesus was beyond all that sexuality stuff. They forget about romance. No roses and gardens, just panting and sweat.

One of the great things about “In the Garden” is its romanticism. Considering this long despairing two-thousand-year winter Jesus has had to endure, mostly at the hands of those who invoke his name as savior, I cherish for him that short romantic time with Mary Magdalene in the garden. One remembered moment of true romance, of a time when there was dew on the roses, can sustain a body, even a resurrected one, through the cold of winter.

John Robert McFarland

BONUS OBSERVATION: “Living is like licking honey off a thorn.” [Attributed to both Louis Adamic and Holly Black]