O Holy Night

The First Noel, Hark! The Herald Angels Sing…and this week O Holy Night. We’ll look at Joy to the World and Silent Night on Christmas Eve.

It’s been really neat to dig into these songs and see their history, the authors and the meaning of the songs. My hope is that as you sing these songs in the future, you’ll see how these songs point the world to Jesus and the miracle of his coming.

You ever get frustrated with this phenomenon that we see called cancel culture? Someone is unknown and they take a silly photo or say something stupid....let me just say that I am glad I did not have social media when I was a teen. Can you imagine? It is crazy to me what our young people have to deal with these days. Anyway, someone does something stupid when their younger and then when they are more popular later, someone digs that stupid up and the person gets cancelled.

I’m all for people being held accountable, but we should also extend grace and second chances. I can’t imagine where I would be without grace and second and third and fourth chances.

I mention cancel culture of today because it is really not anything new. Really, cancel culture has been around a long time. The pharisees tried to cancel Jesus. Going back to nearly the beginning....Cain cancelled Abel because he was jealous. Today’s song almost was a victim of cancel culture in the mid 1850’s. Let me tell you that story.

In 1843, a Catholic priest, Father Petitjean approached a poet, Placide Cappeau, and asked him to write a poem for Christmas to celebrate the renovation of the church’s organ. The resulting poem, a ‘Cantique de Noel’, drew inspiration from the birth of Jesus in Luke as well as the truths of what Jesus came to do.

A few years later in 1847, a local opera singer, Emily Laurie loved the poem and asked a composer she knew, Adolphe Charles Adams, to set it to music, which he did.

The result was a beautiful song first sung by Emily at midnight mass on Christmas Eve 1847. The people immediately loved the song and it spread quickly.

What I didn’t tell you…Placide was a known and professing atheist and the composer Adolphe was Jewish. As soon as other leaders in the Catholic church heard about the author and composer, they banned the song from being sung in church.

That didn’t stop people who first heard the song to continue to sing it at Christmas time in the years that followed, but it was not sung in the church.

In 1855, 8 years later, during a time when our country was dividing over slavery, John Sullivan Dwight, an ordained minister and music critic in Boston translated the French song into English.

I mention slavery because of these lines in the third verse:

Verse 3

Truly He taught us to love one another His law is love and His gospel is peace Chains shall He break for the slave is our brother And in His name all oppression shall cease

It is because of these lines that it is believed that the song became very popular in the North as it resonated with those who wanted to abolish slavery.

One more fun story about the song. This story may or may not be true. There are some conflicting reports about it.

In the early 1900’s, inventors were at work trying to improve on the Morse communication system. It was theorized that it was possible to transmit actual human voice and sound over radio waves, but had not yet been accomplished. In 1906, Reginald Fessenden, a former chemist for Thomas Edison, came up with a generator that made it possible to transmit the human voice over the air to the same receivers that normally only received Morse code.

He would later claim that on December 24, 1906, Christmas Eve, he transmitted the very first entertainment radio broadcast. This broadcast consisted of the reading of the Christmas story starting in Luke and included Fessenden playing a sing Christmas hymn on his violin. That song - O Holy Night.

To date, this song has become one of the most recorded Christmas songs of all time with 48,665 different recordings known. Any guess on the most recorded Christmas song? It’s Silent Night with 137,315 known recordings. We’ll talk about that song on Christmas Eve.

I want to take a moment and just read through the song as if it were just the poem.

Verse 1

O holy night the stars are brightly shining It is the night of the dear Savior's birth Long lay the world in sin and error pining Till He appeared and the soul felt its worth A thrill of hope the weary world rejoices For yonder breaks a new and glorious morn

Chorus 1

Fall on your knees , O hear the angel voices O night divine O night when Christ was born O night, O holy night, O night divine

Verse 2

Led by the light of faith serenely beaming With glowing hearts by His cradle we stand So led by light of a star sweetly gleaming Here came the wise men from Orient land The King of kings lay thus in lowly manger In all our trials born to be our Friend

Chorus 2

He knows our need, To weakness is no stranger Behold your King, before Him lowly bend Behold your King, before Him lowly bend

Verse 3

Truly He taught us to love one another His law is love and His gospel is peace Chains shall He break for the slave is our brother And in His name all oppression shall cease Sweet hymns of joy in grateful chorus raise we Let all within us praise His holy name

Chorus 3

Christ is the Lord, O praise His name forever His power and glory evermore proclaim His power and glory evermore proclaim

There are two lines in this song that stick out to above the rest. They are in the middle of the first Verse and they sum up the Gospel message so well...

Long lay the world in sin and error pining Till He appeared and the soul felt its worth

The first line says that for a long time, the world is in a certain state. It’s laying there. It’s not moving forward in any meaningful way and it’s been there a while.

The world is pining in sin and error. Sin and error cause pining. I looked up that word pining. It means to feel sad and wish for something else. The online dictionary says that someone who is pining is suffering mental and physical decline as a result of something missing.

That something missing is because of sin and error. Adam and Eve had it all in the garden…as a result of sin and error on their part, they were removed from the garden and from relationship with God. The result was the eventual decline of their physical body and then death. From the moment they were banished, they began their pining.

I would offer that now, the world in general does not understand their pining. I know I didn’t. To use a word from the second line, I questioned my worth. I think that’s a question people often ask…”am I worth something?” And then to answer that question, we find worth in our families, in our work, in our titles…and ultimately our souls still pine for worth because none of that works.

Turn with me to Ephesians 2. In this letter by Paul, he writes about this very issue and where the root of it comes from.

Ephesians 2:1–3 NIV

As for you, you were dead in your transgressions and sins, in which you used to live when you followed the ways of this world and of the ruler of the kingdom of the air, the spirit who is now at work in those who are disobedient. All of us also lived among them at one time, gratifying the cravings of our flesh and following its desires and thoughts. Like the rest, we were by nature deserving of wrath.

Can you see where the world is pining because of sin and error? Paul says that we by that nature and because of those actions, we deserve wrath. We are not worthy of anything else.

I think we mistakenly equate our lack of being worthy with our worth. These are two different things. Our sin nature makes us unworthy, but that’s not the end of the story...

Ephesians 2:4–5 NIV

But because of his great love for us, God, who is rich in mercy, made us alive with Christ even when we were dead in transgressions—it is by grace you have been saved.

We may not be worthy because of our sin and error, but God demonstrates our worth by the what He was willing to give for us - Jesus. Paul continues...

Ephesians 2:6–9 NIV

And God raised us up with Christ and seated us with him in the heavenly realms in Christ Jesus, in order that in the coming ages he might show the incomparable riches of his grace, expressed in his kindness to us in Christ Jesus. For it is by grace you have been saved, through faith—and this is not from yourselves, it is the gift of God—not by works, so that no one can boast.

Before we read further, it’s important to stop here. There are a lot of people trying to prove their worth by good works. The good news is that salvation is by faith. And by that faith alone. It is God’s grace to us. We deserve punishment, verse 3 said wrath, but God gives us a gift through faith…not works.

Yet, the passage ends with this...

Ephesians 2:10 NIV

For we are God’s handiwork, created in Christ Jesus to do good works, which God prepared in advance for us to do.

Our worth is found in who created us. Jesus coming allows our soul to find its worth.

Let’s read that section from the first verse again...

Long lay the world in sin and error pining Till He appeared and the soul felt its worth