Ruth Greenaway-Robbins

“Come and deliver us, and delay no longer”

O Root of Jesse, standing as a sign among the peoples;
before you kings will shut their mouths;
to you the nations will make their prayer:
Come and deliver us, and delay no longer.

Roots are usually hidden.
They work quietly beneath the surface – anchoring, feeding, holding fast. We tend to notice the visible parts of life: branches heavy with fruit, leaves catching the light, flowers opening in season. But without roots, nothing endures. Nothing grows.

To call Christ the Root of Jesse is a strong and unsettling image. Jesse, the father of King David, represents a royal line that once flourished and then failed. By the time Isaiah speaks of a root emerging, the great tree of David’s kingdom has been cut down to a stump. What remains looks lifeless. Power has been lost. Hope feels unrealistic.

And yet Isaiah insists: from that stump, something new will grow.

This antiphon does not imagine salvation arriving through strength or success, but through what looks small, buried, and overlooked. A root pushing its way through hard soil. Life beginning again where history appears to have ended. This is a wild promise – a God who reveals the kingdom not by erasing loss, but by working within it.

Advent is honest in this way. It does not pretend the world is fine. It acknowledges broken systems, exhausted leaders, and promises that have not been kept. Advent does the messy stuff of life well. We pray O Radix Jesse not from a place of triumph, but from the ache of waiting – waiting for something real to take root again.

For me, the image of the root also echoes my experience of time spent in therapy. Therapy is rarely about quick fixes. It involves slowing down, digging beneath what is visible, and allowing things long buried to be gently – and sometimes painfully -unearthed. There is an inevitable season of disturbance: soil turned over, roots exposed, familiar ground unsettled. It can feel worse before it feels better. And yet, without that unearthing, there can be no deep healing, no lasting growth.

The work happens quietly. Often invisibly to most, only visible to the client, therapist, and of course, God. You perhaps leave a session feeling no immediate change, no dramatic resolution – and yet something is shifting beneath the surface. Strength is being re-formed at the root.

This feels deeply resonant with O Radix Jesse. God’s deliverance does not bypass the hard ground of our lives. It enters it. Redemption grows not despite the disturbance, but through it.

The antiphon continues: “standing as a sign among the peoples; before you kings will shut their mouths.” This is not the language of domination, but of truth. Kings fall silent not because they are crushed, but because their authority is revealed as limited. The Root of Jesse does not shout louder than the powerful; it renders them speechless by unveiling a different kind of power altogether. What an image for our loud world.

And this sign is not only for Israel. “To you the nations will make their prayer.” From the beginning, this hope is expansive. What grows from Jesse’s root is not a private salvation, but a gathering place — where diverse peoples find safety, meaning, and belonging.

This matters deeply in Advent.

We are waiting for a child born into a particular story – Jewish, rooted, specific – and yet whose life reaches far beyond any one people. Paul will later echo Isaiah, naming Christ as the hope of the Gentiles. The root holds together memory and promise, heritage and future, local story and global longing.

The final plea of the antiphon is urgent: “Come and deliver us, and delay no longer.” There is impatience here, even desperation. This is not polite prayer. It is the cry of those who know the ground is fragile and time matters — those who cannot afford for justice to be postponed yet again.

And perhaps this is where the antiphon meets us most honestly.

We long for things to change – in our world, our communities, our own lives – and we grow weary of waiting. We want transformation now, not eventually. Yet Advent teaches us to look for deliverance that begins underground: unseen, slow, and therefore resilient.

I remember an Advent not so long ago, a season of darkness no one should have to endure. Praying the Office on this day, I wept over the words “Come and deliver me, and delay no longer.” My roots felt exposed; I wanted justice and hope immediately. What I did not yet know was that the roots of who I am today were already being strengthened. Growth was happening quietly, patiently, beneath the surface.

Like the Root of Jesse, flourishing came not from escape. Instead from the roots of hope deep within me and within those who prayed for me.

The Root of Jesse does not arrive with spectacle.
It grows.
It holds.
It endures.

To pray this antiphon is to place our hope not in quick fixes or loud saviours, but in the deep, patient work of God – life rising where we thought only stumps remained.

And so, we pray, not because everything is ready, but because God is already at work beneath our feet.

Today I share with you a piece quite new to me, by the composer Miškinis – O Radix Jesse from his setting of the 7 antiphons. It’s a deeply peaceful and hope-filled piece of music. It allows one to breathe and root ourselves in the midst of this busy season.

Closing Prayer 

O Root of Jesse,
hidden source of life and hope,
take root again in our world.
Grow where all seems cut back or worn down.
Gather the nations in justice and peace,
and bring your deliverance without delay.

We wait for you,
Lord of deep and faithful promise.
Amen.