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Silent Night. Holy Night. All is Calm. All is Bright.
I suspect you know these words. You might even know the story behind them. That they were written in 1816 by a young priest – Joseph Mohr - and given to his music director on Christmas Eve in 1818 because the organ wasn’t working, and the priest thought these words might work well with vocal and guitar. Hans Gruber, the organist, wrote the music, and now it’s hard to imagine Christmas without this carol.
Of course, these words were aspirational, not factual. The organ hadn’t just malfunctioned, the church, the town, had flooded.[1]
Flooded. Which, as you know, isn’t a simple matter of water in water out. It’s mud and muck and so much more.
Things were not peaceful and serene in the town of Oberndorf.
And maybe Silent Night makes less sense given this context, or maybe it makes more.
It wasn’t the way things were, it was the hope onto which people were holding.
This also describes the world about which this carol is written- on the first Christmas, which was no silent night, either.
Childbirth is many things, but silent is not one of them.
When I went to the hospital in active labor, more than 19 years ago, almost 24 hours before giving birth, I had no idea how not-silent it would be. How little did I understand? I took a book with me to the hospital, thinking I would have time to read. I still have not finished that book.
And it was likely even less silent for Mary. There was no room in the inn, but Mary and Joseph were likely taken to the central room for the family’s life. Where animals would have been nearby. And relatives. Cousins. Aunts. Uncles. It was a census, after all, people were gathering. There was likely a midwife too. Later the shepherds would arrive.
That night was many things, but silent was likely not one of them.
Maybe Silent Night makes less sense given all that Mary, Joseph, and Jesus were experiencing, or maybe it makes more.
Their night might not have been silent, but what was happening was hope being born. Love being made manifest. Grace personified.
For real people, hungry for hope, leaning on faith, the faith that is the keep that keeps us upright and sometimes is the thread by which we are hanging on.
And tonight we remember - we celebrate- that this happened not in an imaginary realm but in a real one. This one. In real lives. Mary. Joseph. Shepherds. Real people with worries and doubts and hopes. Real lives. Like mine. Like yours.
Jesus is present in the life you show the world, but he’s in love with the one you aren’t as comfortable showing, and aren’t sure what to do with.
You know, the life where your dad has cancer, you finally call the therapist, and the ambulance is going as fast as it can when you sit in the front pew at the funeral. That life.[2]
The good life, too, God’s in love with those moments, too.
When “no cancer detectable” is the proclamation, You meet God in a sunrise at the edge of the sea. You get to see the marching band on the field at half time and you aren’t even taking pictures.
The real you is the one God prefers, the one God calls.
And that realness is what tonight is all about, where we are invited to rest, where our focus lies.
The ordinariness and extraordinariness of that first not-so-silent night, where there is no more pretense or pretending – only grace. And we call it faith.
It makes all the difference. Because tonight we proclaim that the first Silent Night was not the last Silent Night.
Sarah Thebarge[3] tells a powerful story of the most memorable Christmas she ever experienced. It was when she was a college student, home for break. It was late, but she was still up, and her dad, a pastor, got a call:
a mentally ill man from our congregation had been taken to the emergency room because he was threatening to hurt himself and other people.
“Sunshine, do you want to go with me?” my dad asked.
I threw on my coat and boots, and we drove to the hospital. While the doctors were trying to complete the paperwork it would take to admit the man to the psychiatric ward against his will, the man took off and ran into the night.
The doctors called the police, who were dispatched to find the man and bring him back to the hospital.
I thought that was the end of it…. It was after 2 a.m., and the temperature was below freezing, and I was ready to go back home… But instead…, my dad went the opposite way.
“Dad, where are we going?” I asked.
“We’re going after him,” my dad said. Not in a let’s-form-a-posse kind of way, but the way the widow hunted for the lost coin; the way the shepherd pursued the one lost sheep, even though he already had 99 who were found.
And so we cruised the streets of the small town until finally, we spotted the man shuffling down the shoulder of an unlit back road.” And we stayed with him until help arrived until he got the help he needed.
“Most years I see Christmas from the perspective of the people who were involved, like Mary and Joseph and the shepherds and the wise men.
But this year, I can see it from God’s perspective.
I can see God up in heaven, his heart breaking as he sees his children sick and lost and suffering. And the night before Christmas, I imagine God telling Jesus, “Get in the car, son. We’re going after them.”
This is the God we know, the faith we proclaim, even when we aren’t sure, that takes our breath away like the cold air that will greet us when we leave this place. That Jesus was born for us and lived for us and was willing to die rather than show us anything but love.
That God refuses to give up on us, well, it also means we can’t give up on one another.
Even when things are hard. Especially when things are hard. We stretch and reach and laugh and cry and practice grace. But we do not give up on one another.
Because that first Silent Night was not the last, and we have every reason to believe that we can welcome the kingdom of God in the here and now, where the miraculous and the mundane are still found in this place, together.
Silent night, holy night! Son of God, love’s pure light
radiant beams from thy holy face,
with the dawn of redeeming grace,
with the angels let us sing Alleluia to our King;
Christ the Savior is born; Christ the Savior is born.
Yes. Amen. Alleluia. Merry Christmas.
[1] https://www.baltimoresun.com/news/bs-xpm-2000-12-24-0012260315-story.html
[2] While not quoted directly, significant portions of this sermon are inspired by and framed as a result of the Rev. Rebecca Gillespie Messman’s Christmas Eve Sermon, 2022, based on the 100th Anniversary of the Velveteen Rabbit.
[3] http://sarahthebarge.com/2013/12/the-night-before-christmas/
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