O Holy Night
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Advent Reading & Candle Lighting
The people who walked in darkness have seen a great light; those who dwelt in a land of deep darkness, on them has light shone.
You have multiplied the nation; you have increased its joy; they rejoice before you as with joy at the harvest, as they are glad when they divide the spoil.
For the yoke of his burden, and the staff for his shoulder, the rod of his oppressor, you have broken as on the day of Midian. For every boot of the tramping warrior in battle tumult and every garment rolled in blood will be burned as fuel for the fire.
For to us a child is born, to us a son is given; and the government shall be upon his shoulder, and his name shall be called Wonderful Counselor, Mighty God, Everlasting Father, Prince of Peace.
Of the increase of his government and of peace there will be no end, on the throne of David and over his kingdom, to establish it and to uphold it with justice and with righteousness from this time forth and forevermore. The zeal of the Lord of hosts will do this.
Reading
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. And in the same region there were shepherds out in the field, keeping watch over their flock by night.
And an angel of the Lord appeared to them, and the glory of the Lord shone around them, and they were filled with great fear. And the angel said to them, “Fear not, for behold, I bring you good news of great joy that will be for all the people.
For unto you is born this day in the city of David a Savior, who is Christ the Lord. And this will be a sign for you: you will find a baby wrapped in swaddling cloths and lying in a manger.”
And suddenly there was with the angel a multitude of the heavenly host praising God and saying, “Glory to God in the highest, and on earth peace among those with whom he is pleased!”
When the angels went away from them into heaven, the shepherds said to one another, “Let us go over to Bethlehem and see this thing that has happened, which the Lord has made known to us.” And they went with haste and found Mary and Joseph, and the baby lying in a manger.
And when they saw it, they made known the saying that had been told them concerning this child. And all who heard it wondered at what the shepherds told them.
But Mary treasured up all these things, pondering them in her heart. And the shepherds returned, glorifying and praising God for all they had heard and seen, as it had been told them.
And at the end of eight days, when he was circumcised, he was called Jesus, the name given by the angel before he was conceived in the womb.
O HOLY NIGHT
The strange and fascinating story of “O Holy Night” began in France, yet eventually made its way around the world. This seemingly simple song, inspired by a request from a clergyman, would not only become one of the most beloved anthems of all time, it would mark a technological revolution that would forever change the way people were introduced to music.
“In 1847, Placide Cappeau de Roquemaure was the commissionaire of wines in a small French town. Known more for his poetry than his church attendance, it probably shocked Placide when his parish priest asked the commissionaire to pen a poem for Christmas mass. Nevertheless, the poet was honored to share his talents with the church.
In a dusty coach traveling down a bumpy road to France’s capitol city, Cappeau considered the priest’s request. The poem obviously had to be religious, focus on Christmas, and be based on Scripture. Using the gospel of Luke as his guide, Cappeau imagined witnessing the birth of Jesus in Bethlehem. Thoughts of being present on the blessed night inspired him. By the time the commissionaire arrived in Paris, the poem “Cantique de Noel” had been completed.
Moved by his own work, Cappeau determined that his “Cantique de Noel” was not just a poem, but a song in need of a master musician’s hand. Not musically inclined himself, the poet turned to one of his friends, Adolphe Charles Adams, for help.
Adolphe, born in 1803, was five years older than Cappeau. The son of a well-known classical musician, Adolphe had studied at the Paris Conservatoire. By 1829 he had produced his first one-act opera, Pierre et Catherine. He followed this success with Richard en Palestine. Adams then scored acclaim with ballets such as Faust, La Fille du Danube, and La Jolie Fille de Gand. His talent and fame brought requests to write works for orchestras and ballets all around the world. Yet the lyrics that his friend Cappeau gave him must have challenged the composer in a fashion unlike anything he had received from London, Berlin, or St. Petersburg.
As Adolphe studied “Cantique de Noel,” he couldn’t help but note its overtly spiritual lyrics embracing the birth of a Savior. A man of Jewish ancestry, these words represented a holiday he didn’t celebrate and a man he did not view as the Son of God. Nevertheless, moved by more than friendship, Adams quickly and diligently went to work, attempting to marry an original score to Cappeau’s beautiful words. Adams’s finished work pleased both poet and priest. It was performed just three weeks later at a midnight mass on Christmas Eve. Neither the wine commissionaire nor the composer was prepared for what happened next.
Initially, “Cantique de Noel” was wholeheartedly accepted by the church in France and the song quickly found its way into various Catholic Christmas services. But when Placide Cappeau walked away from the church and became a part of the socialist movement, and church leaders discovered that Adolphe Adams was a Jew, the song—which had quickly grown to be one of the most beloved Christmas songs in France—was suddenly and uniformly denounced by the church. The heads of the French Catholic church of the time deemed “Cantique de Noel” as unfit for “church services because of its lack of musical taste and “total absence of the spirit of religion.” Yet even as the church tried to bury the Christmas song, the French people continued to sing it, and a decade later a reclusive American writer brought it to a whole new audience halfway around the world.
Born May 13, 1813, in Boston, John Sullivan Dwight was a graduate of Harvard College and Divinity school. He became a Unitarian minister in Northampton, Massachusetts, but for inexplicable reasons grew physically ill each time he had to address his congregation. These panic attacks magnified to such an extent that Dwight often locked himself in his home, scared to venture out in public. It soon became obvious he would be unable to continue in the ministry.
Gifted and bright, Dwight sought other ways to use his talent. An accomplished writer, he used his skills to found Dwight’s Journal of Music. For three decades he quietly edited the publication. Although he couldn’t face crowds of people, some of the most gifted musicians and music lovers in the Northeast were inspired by his confident writing. As he looked for new material to review, Dwight read “Cantique de Noel” in French. The former minister quickly fell in love with the carol’s haunting lyrics.
Not only did Dwight feel that this wonderful Christmas song needed to be introduced to America, he saw something else in the song that moved him beyond the story of the birth of Christ. An ardent abolitionist, Dwight strongly identified with the lines, “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!” The text supported Dwight’s own view of slavery in the South. The writer believed that Christ came to free all men, and in this song all men would be confronted with the fact.
Keeping the original meaning intact, Dwight translated the lyrics into a hauntingly beautiful English text. Published in his magazine and in several songbooks of the period, “O Holy Night” quickly found favor in America, especially in the North during the Civil War.
Back in France, even though the song had been banned from the church for almost two decades, many commoners still sang “Cantique de Noel” at home. Legend has it that on Christmas Eve 1871, in the midst of fierce fighting between the armies of Germany and France during the Franco-Prussian War, a French soldier suddenly jumped out of his muddy trench. Both sides stared at the seemingly crazed man. Boldly standing with no weapon in his hands or at his side, he lifted his eyes to the heavens and sang, “Minuit, chrétiens, C’est l’heure solennelle Où l’Homme Dieu descendit jusqu’à nous,” the beginning of “Cantique de Noel.”
After completing all three verses, a German infantryman climbed out of his hiding place and answered with, “Vom Himmel hoch, da komm’ ich her. Ich bring’ euch gute neue Mär, Der guten Mär bring’ ich so viel, Davon ich sing’n und sagen will, the beginning of Martin Luther’s robust “From Heaven above to Earth I Come.”
The story goes that the fighting stopped for the next twenty-four hours while the men on both sides observed a temporary peace in honor of Christmas day. Perhaps this story had a part in the French church once again embracing “Cantique de Noel” as being worthy of inclusion in holiday services.
Adams had been dead for many years and Cappeau and Dwight were old men when on Christmas Eve 1906, Reginald Fessenden—a thirty-three-year-old university professor in Pittsburgh and former chief chemist for Thomas Edison—did something long thought impossible. Using a new type of generator, Fessenden spoke into a microphone and, for the first time in history, a man’s voice was broadcast over the airwaves: “And it came to pass in those days, that there went out a decree from Caesar Augustus, that all the world should be taxed,” he began in a clear, strong voice, hoping he was reaching across the distances he supposed he would.
“Shocked radio operators on ships and astonished wireless owners at newspapers sat slack-jawed as their normal, coded impulses, heard over tiny speakers, were interrupted by a professor reading from the gospel of Luke. To the few who caught this broadcast, it must have seemed like a miracle—hearing a voice somehow turned into electrical waves and transmitted to those far away. Some might have believed they were hearing the voice of an angel.
Fessenden was probably unaware of the sensation he was causing on ships and in offices; he couldn’t know that men and women were rushing to their wireless units to catch this Christmas Eve miracle. Yet after finishing his recitation of the birth of Christ, Fessenden picked up his violin and played “O Holy Night,” the first song ever sent “through the air via radio waves. When the carol ended, so did the broadcast—but not before music had found a new medium that would take it around the world.
Since that first rendition at a small Christmas mass in 1847, “O Holy Night” has been sung millions of times in churches in every corner of the world. And since the moment a handful of people first heard it played over the radio, the carol has gone on to become one of the entertainment industry’s most recorded and played spiritual songs. Total sales for the thousands of different versions of the carol are in the tens of millions. This incredible work—requested by a forgotten parish priest, written by a poet who would later split from the church, given soaring music by a Jewish composer, and brought to Americans to serve as much as a tool to spotlight the sinful nature of slavery as tell the story of the birth of a Savior—has grown to become one of the most beautiful, inspired pieces of music ever created.
Romans 14:11 says,
For it is written, “As I live, says the Lord, every knee shall bow to me, and every tongue shall give praise to God.”
From the Holy Night of when Jesus was born, to the Holy Night of Christmas Eve 1847, to the Holy Night of Christmas Eve 1906 , to this Holy Night of Christmas Eve 2023, glory and praise has been given to God. Knees have bowed, bow, and will bow each Holy Night and until that Holy Day when Christ will return to claim and invoke His Kingdom and Kingdom Rule. For the Word of God, the Messiah, came in a cradle, will return with a crown, and robed in righteousness (Rev. 19: 12-16).
Will we be rieady, will you be ready for His return? That Holy Night when Christ was born, in a lowly manger, to a poor family, to powerless shepherds, pursued by royal honoring wisemen. Will you be ready for this baby king’s royal return? Will you have an invitation to the royal marriage supper of the Lamb, whom born in meagerly manger, who will return as King and sit on His throne (Rev. 9:9)? That day will be fircely holy as He calls His to Him and invokes the Holy judgment and holy wrath of God the Father (Rev. 19:15).
This Holy Night, and those of the past, have been the Good News that a Messiah was born to bring peace to the earth, to restore man to God, and bring an end to tears, torment, pain, and misery. Man will no longer rule as he sees fit, but Jesus will rule as the Father sees fit, with love, peace, justice, and righteousness. All humanity will receive their due, every knee will bow, and every tongue confess, that Jesus is LORD! What began in the cradle as a baby throne, culminated in a crucifixion, will crusindo in the return of the King in all His righteousness and glory. It will not be a silent night, it will be in glorious day of angelic shouts of praise and glory to a Baby King returned in royal, divine authority, and sonship (Rev 19:6-8). The Prince of Peace will return in splendor with sword to claim His throne, not with a rattle and unintelligible words. You will know that He, Jesus, is King, Creator, and Ruler of the earth, and all things in and of the earth.
He has been a long time coming, a long time waiting. So much so, that His creation has become lazy, cruel, and corrupt with their own desires, wants, and kingdoms. The Parable of the Wicked Tenants is being fulfilled, the Landowner’s return is close at hand. So the Landowner says, “Repent!” from your sin, receive the gift of Jesus, follow Him, receive the Kingdom and be saved. For their is found under heaven and earth no other name, no other person, no other Messiah, by which one can be, will be saved rather than in and by Jesus Christ, the Son of God, the Baby King, who will return to claim His throne over this world, and all creation. Will you accept the invitation to His wedding banquet? If so, simply repent, change your ways, to follow Him, confess your shortcomings, your sin to Him, and receive gift of Jesus salvation, love, and forgiveness. Acts 4:12
And there is salvation in no one else, for there is no other name under heaven given among men by which we must be saved.”
“For God so loved the world, that he gave his only Son, that whoever believes in him should not perish but have eternal life. For God did not send his Son into the world to condemn the world, but in order that the world might be saved through him.
Whoever believes in him is not condemned, but whoever does not believe is condemned already, because he has not believed in the name of the only Son of God.
And this is the judgment: the light has come into the world, and people loved the darkness rather than the light because their works were evil.
Be saved! Repent! Turn back to God, receive Jesus, and be redeemed for that Holy Day to come, began on that Holy Night where a baby, the Baby King, was born in a manger, to free humanity from sin and death, to receive eternal life, from a loving, holy Father, full of righteous and grace. Be reconciled to God, through the Son, so that you may partake in the Wedding Feast of the coming New Day, New Kingdom, New Life. Can you, will you, hear His call? On that Holy Night, over 2000 years ago, Jesus was born to die, to be resurrection, to make you and I whole. He was born to die to rise to restore men to life and no longer be enslaved to death. Will you give Him the glory He deserves? Amen.