Silent Night, Yeah Right!

(Walking in, exhausted, sipping coffee, baggy clothes and a doll)

LD:  “Silent Night, holy night…” we just sang it but honestly, I’d settle for a quiet night! Whoever wrote that song clearly never had a newborn. My nights are more like: 11pm, 1am, 3am — crying, crying, crying. (Points to doll) I’d love a baby that sleeps in heavenly peace like Jesus! Surely, if he’s the Son of God, he was the perfect sleeper. I picture that first Christmas like one of those calm nativity scenes - everyone glowing, Joseph snoring softly, angels humming lullabies, cattle lowing in key… (Sighs) …if only.

MS: (Smiling) That’s a beautiful image… but I think the Bible reading paints a slightly different picture. It said Jesus was laid in a manger — where the animals eat. So, not a sparkling nursery, more like a farm stay gone wrong. There would’ve been mooing, bleating, probably a fair bit of mess and yes, crying.

LD: Wait, Jesus cried? But the carol says, “no crying he makes”!

MS: (Laughs kindly) That’s the carol claim. But the Bible correction is better news.          Jesus was a real baby the kind who cried when he was hungry, or tired, or cold. That’s what Christmas means: God became human. He didn’t float above real life he entered it. That’s what we call the incarnation. God putting on a body, literally, God into flesh, like a squishy, human body.

LD: God squeezed into a nappy?

MS: Exactly! It’s like that line from Aladdin: “Phenomenal cosmic power… itty-bitty living space!” The God who was there at the beginning and who created the heavens and the earth; the God who created human beings and breathed life into us, chooses to step into his creation and become one of us.

LD: So can Jesus also grant me three wishes like the Genie?

MS: Uhhh, I think you’re focusing on the wrong part of what I just said. And anyways, remember that even with all his phenomenal cosmic power, Genie was a prisoner. He wasn’t free in that itty-bitty lamp. He needed Aladdin to use one of his wishes to set him free.

LD: And with Jesus, it’s different?

MS: Yes! With Jesus, it’s the reverse. All the cosmic power of the creator God comes to live in an itty-bitty human so that he might set humanity free.

LD: Free from an endless cycle of sleepless nights and dirty nappies?

MS: Even better. Jesus came to set us free from sin. To set us free from death. To set us free from eternity apart from God and all his goodness. And he can do that because he is both God and a human.

LD: I’m pretty sleep deprived so you better explain that to me a little bit more.

MS: Well as a human being, Jesus can represent us before God because he is one of us. He understands all of life’s experiences and stresses and tensions. He knows what it’s like to be human.

LD: He actually gets what my life’s like?

MS: He really does. He understands what it means to be hungry and to be tired. And he cried, both as a baby and an adult. After all, the shortest verse in the whole Bible is “Jesus wept.” He was exactly like us in every way, but with one key difference.

LD: Oh yeah, what’s that?

MS: He was also God, and so he was perfect. He came not just to relate to us, but to do what we imperfect human beings could never do for ourselves. He came to rescue us and set us free. That’s why the angels said, “A Saviour has been born to you.”

LD: So the baby who cried can actually help me when I cry?

MS: Yes. He’s the God who stepped into our noisy, messy, ordinary world to bring peace. Not just a silent night, but peace with God. Christmas shows us God’s grace and truth in a really visible, relatable way because in Jesus, everything God wants to say to us, is there, not as an email, a reel, a vision, but as a person.

LD: (Smiling, rocking doll) So maybe this Christmas, I don’t need total silence, just to remember the Saviour who understands.

MS: Exactly. The baby who cried then is the God who hears your cries now.

LD: (Raises coffee cup) Well, there’s plenty of crying and rarely a silent night around here, which is good to know, so cheers to that!

Next Step

So as it turns out, that first Christmas night was anything but silent. In a cold, noisy, and dirty animal shelter, God entered into the world as a real, crying, human being.

Jesus didn’t come to sleep in heavenly peace; he came to bring peace between heaven and earth. In the person of Jesus, God steps down from heaven and becomes a man so that he might make peace between God and humanity. As the angels announce to the shepherds, his birth is good news bringing great joy to all people, because he is the Saviour who sets humanity free from sin and death so that we might have peace with God.

Do you need to know this peace? Whether for the first time, or just to be reminded of it once again, do you need to cry out to Jesus and ask for the peace that only comes from knowing and submitting to him as your Saviour and Lord?

If you need this peace, please join with me as I lead us in a short prayer.

Lord Jesus,

We praise you for creating us, and still more for becoming one of us. You shared in our weakness, so that we might share in your peace and glory.

Grant each one of us here the peace that only comes through knowing you as Saviour, and please help us to live each day following you as our Lord.

In your precious name we pray, Amen.

In the final part of the Bible reading, we heard that a great multitude of angels from heaven filled the skies above the fields surrounding Bethlehem to sing thunderous praise to God.

Let us now follow their example by joyfully praising God for sending Jesus by singing our next carol, Mary’s Little Boy Child.