Silent Night Series

“In those days a decree went out from Caesar Augustus that all the world should be registered. This was the first registration when Quirinius was governor of Syria. And all went to be registered, each to his own town. And Joseph also went up from Galilee, from the town of Nazareth, to Judea, to the city of David, which is called Bethlehem, because he was of the house and lineage of David, to be registered with Mary, his betrothed, who was with child. And while they were there, the time came for her to give birth. And she gave birth to her firstborn son and wrapped him in swaddling cloths and laid him in a manger, because there was no place for them in the inn.” [1]

Sometime, just over two thousand years ago, contrary to the song we sing so often throughout each Christmas season, it was not a silent night. In Bethlehem, a teenage girl gave birth to a child. Though it would not have been unusual for a teenage girl to have a child in that culture, this girl was bearing a child which had been conceived before a formal marriage had been consummated with the man whom her parents had chosen to be her husband. The girl was perhaps no more than fourteen years of age, and her husband likely was no more than sixteen years old. They were children according to our modern standards. After a hurried marriage to a husband who had at first been understandably reluctant to take her as his wife, the government compelled the young couple to make a trek of some one hundred fifty kilometers (ninety miles). Undoubtedly, the young woman had walked the entire distance with her husband.

Then came the night that the child that she was carrying would make His entrance into this darkened world. No midwife was present to help the child deliver her baby, no physician attended in case there were complications, no one except for her husband to whom she was betrothed was present that night. She gave birth in a sheep cote; there was no sterile hospital room. The story went precisely as one would expect a story to go if the one telling the story did not wish the story to be taken seriously.

The first people who knew of this birth, and the first to witness that a child had been born under these less than auspicious conditions, were shepherds. Shepherds were rough men, made that way by the conditions under which they worked. They were so lowly in the eyes of those living in that society that their testimony would be inadmissible in a court of law. The father of that child fell out of the historic record, and was not heard from again. Imperial forces would seek to exterminate the baby’s earthly bloodline, eventually killing in the most brutal fashion imaginable even the child that was born.

Two of the child’s brothers, James and Jude, would write books that would be canonised as part of the New Testament record. This knowledge makes it all the more ironic that these same brothers rejected their elder brother during His life. They had been so disgusted with the claims their brother made that they refused even to be present at His execution where they could have consoled their mother as her eldest son was brutally killed in one of the most degrading fashions imaginable. Despite denying Jesus, James and Jude became leaders in the Faith during the early days. Their faith would eventually be proven as they died while proclaiming that their brother was in fact the Living God.

Without doubt, the child that was born would transform the world. There is no neutrality concerning Him; merely mentioning His Name can precipitate intense and violent reaction from many in our world. Those who know Him, love Him. Those who do not know Him, hate Him. Because they can’t actually hurt Him, they are prepared to destroy those whom He loves. Thus, the people that are called Christians have suffered, and continue to suffer, the most violent persecution throughout the world to this day.

So, on the night the child was born, it was not a silent night at all. It was a night filled with pain, a night that was anything but calm. Yet, because of that night, hope was born—hope that burns brightly in the heart of anyone bold enough to embrace this child as Lord of their own life.

It is likely that you grew up believing that Christians co-opted a Roman holiday so they could celebrate Christ's birth. However, there is considerable archeological evidence suggesting that Emperor Aurelian aligned Sol Invictus on December 25th to stop the growth of an irascible atheist cult springing up in the empire. That “atheist cult” was Christianity. Roman culture saw the Christians as “atheist” because they claimed to worship a God Who was alive. Everyone knew that someone had to die to become a god. There was no argument! Everyone knew how this worked! So, the Christians were enemies of Rome, and this strange religion would have to be stamped out. However, the more Christians were persecuted, the faster this strange religion grew.