Christmas Eve 2024

Silent Night

Christmas Eve 2024

Max Lucado, with his eloquence of words said it well…

An ordinary night with ordinary sheep and ordinary shepherds. And were it not for a God who loves to hook an “extra” on the front of the ordinary, the night would have gone unnoticed. The sheep would have been forgotten, and the shepherds would have slept the night away.

But God dances amidst the common. And that night He did a waltz.

The black sky exploded with brightness. Trees that had been shadows jumped into clarity. Sheep that had been silent became a chorus of curiosity. One minute the shepherd was dead asleep, the next he was rubbing his eyes and staring into the face of an alien.

The night was ordinary no more.

The angel came in the night because that is when lights are best seen and that is when they are most needed. God comes into the common for the same reason. His most powerful tools are the simplest.

The Applause of Heaven by Max Lucado

Welcome to the extra-ordinary night of Christmas Eve, 2024. We have heard the scriptures proclaimed. We have and we continue to celebrate in song. What a magical night.

Over the past few weeks, we have gathered together in preparation for this night. We have sung the songs of the season and we have learned more about the songs we sing. Tonight, we again gather because of an ordinary, silent night that became extraordinary.

In a few moments, we will sing Silent Night together, but before we do that, let us remember how a poem that was forgotten for 2 years by a priest became one of our best-loved songs of Christmas. The legends of the origin of this song abound. Various people have found a variety of stories. What I share with you today is a combination of those stories that have been shared with me.

Joseph Mohr was a young priest in Austria. It was 1816 and he was trying to write the words that would honor his Savior on Christmas Eve. As he sat, trying to write, the words did not seem to flow. He went to warm himself by the fire, snow had begun to fall heavily in the little Alpine village of Northern Austria. Through the heavily falling snow, he could see a figure trudging to his door. As he opened the door, he invited the visitor in to warm herself by the fire. His visitor shared how she had just returned from a friend’s cabin over the mountain. The friend had just had her baby and her husband, the Woodcutter, was anxious to see the Priest. She let him know he didn’t need to go until morning as the snow had begun to fall, but Father Joseph insisted that he go.

After his guest had warmed herself, she went on to her home and the young Father Joseph Mohr prepared for his hike. He dressed warmly, grabbed a heavy cane and headed into the cold night. It was a long cold hike as he trudged through the heavy snow. In the distance he could see the little cabin, smoke rising from the chimney and the warm glow of the lamps illuminating the windows.

As he entered the cabin, the woodcutter stood from beside a crude wooden crib holding his newborn baby and the bed where his glowing wife lay with a smile on her face.

“Father” he said, “I didn’t expect to see you this evening. The snow is getting so deep.” They spoke of the beauty of the child and Father Mohr held the child and prayed over them all. Then, he began the journey back to his own cabin, but this time the trip didn’t seem so long. The snow had stopped falling, but the branches of the pine trees bent low beneath the weight of the snow. As the young priest continued to walk through the snow, he couldn’t help but think of the beauty of the birth of a child, and how the scene he had just witnessed may not have been too unlike the night his Savior was born.

Back in his home, with the fire warming his body, his mind was fast at work. Once his fingers were warm enough, he began to write. The words seemed to flow from the experiences of that night and all that had led up to it.

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.

The words were not used that year at Christmas nor the next. In 1818, Father Joseph Mohr was assigned to the position of Assistant Priest at St. Nicolas Church in Oberndorf, Austria. His job was to make sure the music was fitting for worship. As you might imagine, Christmas at St. Nicolas church was to be a grand affair. But in 1818, it wasn’t nearly as grand as some may have wished. Just a day before worship, Joseph Mohr discovered that the old church organ would not work. He checked stops, he tested bellows, he adjusted keys and pedals, he did everything he could do, but nothing helped. There would be no organ on Christmas Eve.

There was nothing more he could do, so… he paused and did what we should all do… he prayed. He asked God to show him a way to bring music to the mass on that Christmas Eve.

It was then that he remembered the words he had penned on that cold winter’s night some 2 years before. He grabbed his only copy of the poem and raced to his friend’s home, Franz Gruber. As he trudged through the snow-covered streets, he had the same feeling of hope that he had the night he left the Woodcutter’s house after holding their infant. Though it was short notice, Gruber agreed to write a melody for the lyric and with only a few minutes before the midnight Mass of Christmas Eve, Franz Gruber grabbed his guitar, shared the melody with Father Mohr in the candle lit sanctuary of St. Nicolas Church. Together they shared the song with their choir… who then shared the song with the worshipers at Mass.

As Mohr and Gruber stood at the altar introducing the song, written for a Christmas Eve when nothing seemed to work, they never dreamed that their simple little song would be remembered and requested the next year, much less continue to be sung in hundreds of languages across the world.

First it was the Organ repairman, Karl Mauracher, who heard the story of the night from Father Mohr, and then heard the song. Karl shared it with other churches as he traveled from community to community repairing their organs. Then, traveling folk singers learned the song and shared it across Germany and Austria as they traveled during the Christmas season.

20 years after the humble beginnings of the song, the Austrian singing family The Rainers brought the song to New York and introduced the English version of the song. By the Civil War, it wasn’t uncommon for the soldiers to lay down their arms for a cease-fire at Christmas and gather on the field to trade gifts, read scripture, and sing Silent Night.

The famous Christmas Truce of 1914 is another story of the Peace brought about by the simplicity of a song written on a cold winter’s night. The stories vary, but one I heard shares that as the British soldiers sat shuddering in the trenches on Christmas Eve, the Germans began placing candles along the top of the trench. Then, from the silence of the night, they heard a lone voice begin singing a familiar tune. They may not have understood the words, but they knew the German soldier was singing Silent Night. What was one voice became a chorus of German Voices, then the Englishmen joined in the chorus. That night, instead of gunfire, they shared Christmas Carols and then on Christmas Morning, it was first a German who climbed out of the trench, unarmed… then an Englishman… they met on the battlefield and shook hands. Others followed and soon the trenches emptied and there were soldiers trading souvenirs and chocolates, cutting one another’s hair, holding joint services for the fallen soldiers, and playing soccer together.

It was truly a Christmas Miracle, and some would say it was the song written by a young priest and put to music by a young teacher that brought about the peace, but I think it was more than that.

The song we will soon sing is beautiful and simple, but it isn’t the song that made a difference. It was what the words of the song share, words that are anything but ordinary words. The lyrics of the song tell the story of loves pure light, of redeeming grace, of the angels singing and the shepherds quaking. Silent Night reminds us that God is no longer far away. God is near. God has come near to you and me. God cared enough to leave the heights of heaven for the humility of humanity.

That is the story of Christmas. It isn’t just a story of a baby in a manger. It isn’t just a story of Bethlehem. It isn’t just a story of shepherds and stables. It isn’t just a story of the past some 2000 years ago.

The Story of Christmas is a story that lives today. It is a story that Jesus Christ is here. It is a story that Jesus is standing with open arms, welcoming you today.

My prayer for you is that today… if you do not know Jesus… if you do not have a relationship with the One we celebrate today…

It’s my prayer that you would not only know Jesus, but that you would give your life to our Savior who was born on a silent night and lived on into a Bethlehem morning.

And, as we prepare our hearts to receive Holy Communion together, we do so tonight, because the birth of Jesus is intricately linked to the death of Jesus. As Charles Wesley wrote and as we sang a moment ago, Jesus was born “that man no more may die, born to raise the sons of earth, born to give them second birth.” Yes, Jesus came to teach us to love. Yes, Jesus came that we might learn how to be in relationship with God and one another. Yes to all of that… but he also came as the perfect lamb, to be the sacrifice that we may live…

And it is for that reason that we gather at this table…