Silent night, holy night!
All is calm, all is bright round yon virgin mother and child.
Holy infant, so tender and mild,
sleep in heavenly peace,
sleep in heavenly peace.
Whenever Christmas carols are sung, this hymn is sure to be among them, for it has long been one of the best loved. For me, as I’m sure for many of you, it just doesn’t seem like Christmas Eve until we sing Silent Night.
One of the many LEGENDS about the origin of this Christmas carol has it being created out of a catastrophe! The folk tale has it that it was Christmas Eve in the snowy hills of Austria when the assistant minister named Joseph Mohr of a small church near Salzburg discovered that his church’s organ had broken down. Without the organ, how would the choir sing its special anthems? How would the congregation be able to sing their favorite carols? The Christmas Eve service would be a disaster without music! Mohr turned for help to his choirmaster and organist, Franz Gruber. Together, with Mohr creating the words and Gruber composing the lovely music, they created a special song for Christmas Eve that could be played on a guitar. The choir taught the song to the congregation, and a Christmas tradition was born!
One of the reasons I believe this hymn is so beloved is because it pictures a "perfect" Christmas! The kind of Christmas we all say we want but often never get. Recently, on a December 6th, between morning services, two adult classes sat together around a little Christmas tree in a fellowship hall and listed what would be for them the "perfect" Christmas. There were many smiles and laughs when one after another spoke of wanting perfectly behaved children….. disaster-proof meals which cleaned themselves up…… piles of fresh white snow that magically caused no delays in travel……gifts unwrapped in an orderly and neat fashion……. and church services filled with favorite carols and a very short but meaningful sermon. Sounds ideal doesn’t it? Or maybe idealistic?
We all know the reality of Christmas is often far from the ideal. Children get cranky. Dishes pile up. Part D doesn’t seem to fit into Slot A the way it is shown in the instructions. The soloist for the Christmas Eve service comes down with laryngitis. Then there’s that last minute dash to buy a present for an unexpected guest, while closed roads keep Aunt Sue, Uncle Al and their 5 children from coming home for Christmas. Sound more familiar?
Silent night, holy night, all is calm, all is bright...
Reading the birth narrative in Luke’s Gospel, makes me wonder if this hymn really does describes that first Christmas Eve?....... Caesar Augustus had declared that everyone must return to their hometown for a census of the Empire. Can you imagine the disruption that caused?........ Picture how crowded the highways, railroads and airports would be if such a requirement had been placed on our 2000 census! Paintings and movies often show Mary and Joseph traveling to Bethlehem through an empty wilderness……. It was probably more like I-55 or I-39 on the Friday night of Memorial Day weekend! The route from Nazareth to Bethlehem would have been jammed with travelers. Travel would have been even more difficult for a 9 months pregnant woman in that crowd.
When they finally reached Bethlehem, Joseph & Mary would have found it packed to the rafters with earlier arrivals. Whole families would have arrived with children and servants. As not everyone could fit in the available rooms, courtyards would be bustling with fires and cooks as well as people trying to sleep. Peace and quiet would be the last thing one would find in Bethlehem that night!
Stables would have been filled with the caravan animals of all these travelers. The space available for a young couple expected their first child would have been limited. And once Mary went into labor, calm and peace would completely disappear. Since men rarely helped with such events, Joseph probably got one of the older servant women from the inn’s courtyard to assist Mary. She would not have come alone but brought other women with her. First Mary’s birthing cries, then a newborn’s cry and finally the trilling songs of women celebrating a successful birth would have broken through whatever peace and quiet existed in Bethlehem that evening. According to custom, the baby would have been washed, rubbed with salt and then wrapped tightly, like a mummy, with long strips of cloth. The manger he was placed in would have been a rough-hewn ledge of stone perhaps softened a bit by hay and grain. Joseph would have been waiting at the courtyard fire with the other men for news of the successful birth. There would have been much celebrating and shouts of congratulations to Joseph on the birth of a first-born son. There would have been little rest for either Mary or Joseph or baby Jesus that evening.
Silent night, holy night! Shepherds quake at the sight…....
In the fields outside of Bethlehem, it would have been a comfortable night. The shepherds were guarding their flocks left out in the open countryside. As they gathered round an open fire, some talking to stay awake, others trying to sleep, they would have heard not far off the sounds of sheep rustling and calling occasionally in the night. The streams of travelers heading for Bethlehem would have finally slowly trickled to a halt.
Suddenly, whatever quiet and rest these shepherds were enjoying would have been shattered by the appearance of an angel of God. Its appearance was terrifying. Brilliant light! Surrounded by the glory of God. Strange and overwhelming. The shepherds would have cowered as their flocks scattered across the countryside in fear. So much for peaceful! Add an angelic choir into this mix singing praises to God on High and I doubt all thoughts of sleep vanished from their minds. Rather than running after their frightened flocks, these shepherds hurried instead to the over-crowded village of Bethlehem as instructed by the angel. After much searching, they finally found the newborn and his family cramped in a packed stable, surrounded by women and men celebrating his birth. The shepherds added to the confusion, sharing the Good news the angel had told them concerning this child. And all who heard it were amazed -- not just by the message……. but that God had chosen these shepherds to be the bearers of such a message!............. In the midst of all this turmoil, only Mary we are told found a moment of peace, treasuring these words and pondering them in her heart. After a period of celebration, the shepherds returned to the fields as energetically as they first came.
Silent night, holy night!
Son of God,
love’s pure light radiant beams from your holy face,
with the dawn of redeeming grace,
Jesus, Lord, at your birth,
Jesus, Lord, at your birth.
We all want a "perfect" Christmas. We rarely get it. Not even that first Christmas was perfect.
The Good News is: Christmas doesn’t need to be "perfect" to be Christmas!
God doesn’t wait for perfection to bestow grace and love! God’s Son, love’s pure light, comes regardless of and in the very midst of our catastrophes…. our squabbles…. our confusion and our everyday life. Children cry through the candlelight service. A newborn baby fussed and cried in a cold manager. Tempers get short. Side dishes get burnt. Carefully decorated homes look like disaster areas after a morning of unwrapping gifts. Bethlehem is overcrowded. A baby will be born regardless of the housing conditions. Shepherds leave their flocks defenseless and search through the confusion for a newborn………. We seek the special….the peaceful….and the calmly prepared moments to look for God. God instead comes to us in the ordinary distractions of life…. the busy-ness….. the moments of tension and in the midst of our problems and mistakes --and brings us peace.
There is another story involving the hymn Silent Night. It is said that during World War I on a battlefield somewhere in Europe on Christmas Eve, during a lull in the battle -- someone in one of the trenches began in a clear tenor voice to sing "Silent Night." The soldiers on the English side paused to breathe and to listen to this grace-filled hymn….. How far from a perfect world they were that night!.... How far from a joy-filled and perfect Christmas these trenches were! Quietly, over the pock-marked no-man’s land, the barbed wire fences and the cold winter ground, came a
distant bass voice echoing back the hymn – only this time the words that were sung back were "Steelay Nock!" (German for Silent Night)
God comes regardless of our circumstances, and only by and through that coming can we have peace……..May the Prince of Peace enter your hearts and homes this Christmas bringing you the gift of love and grace. Amen.
