MaryBeth LaMont

What is your favorite Christmas carol? No, I’m not talking about those Bing Crosby, Perry Como, or Andy Williams tunes that play incessantly over the airwaves one after another. (By the way, our college students listen to them as often as do we older ones) I mean those found in hymnals, and apt to be sung Christmas Eve or, this year, Christmas day.

Various surveys list different ones as number 1. I learned a long time ago I cannot have a Christmas Eve worship service without O’ Come All Ye Faithful, Silent Night, and Joy to the World. Somehow “Go Tell it on the Mountain” even in a state as mountainous as Colorado is no acceptable substitute for Joy to the World as an ending Christmas Eve tune. Funny, it seemed like a good idea at the time.

Having said this while leaving out one of the big three will garner complaints, omitting one hymn in particular is apt to get more than complaints. Even I am smart enough to include Silent Night each of the 43 Christmases in which I have served as a pastor. Substituting another tune for Silent Night Christmas Eve? Pastors have been fired for less.

What is it about Silent Night that gets to us? The part about silence? Nighttime? The tune? And I also wonder: is Silent Night accompanied by candles or are candles accompanied by Silent Night? Either way for most who are frequently found in worship, Silent Night sung in complete candlelight is usually the worship highlight of the year.

Originally Silent Night was composed for a guitar as the alpine Austrian church in which it was first played had an organ damaged by flooding. Over the years the tune has been tweaked a bit until ending up the music by which you and I and countless others know it.

Perhaps it is a combination of words and tune that speak to us. Written after the Napoleonic wars, we can imagine the great need for a simple hymn of peace in both lyrics and music. In our time of hectic activity, wars, pandemic, threats, racism, anti-Semitism, and division, anything peaceful is greatly needed. During the singing of Silent Night we look around, grateful for those sitting by us should we be so fortunate. We think of those no longer able to be with us and those spending Christmas with others. Sometimes our burdens are lightened just a bit as we sing this hymn even with great solemnity. Gratitude, sadness, togetherness, and loneliness all mixed together in one emotional stew.

Likewise, the same ingredients seem to combine in a spiritual stew. Christmas, a time of great joy, is also a time the manger’s splinters and the gift of myrrh remind us of a cross and death yet to come. The one who comes as God’s gift and brings great joy is one who will be rejected and killed. The mother tending to him tenderly in a barn will be with him at the end, a grief-stricken witness to the violence that will befall him.

Silent Night. Sacred night. As we seem to feel God’s presence in this song, so we are reminded God is present in all those feelings we have as we gather or do not gather at Christmas. So is God present in a barn and a cross. The baby does not know any of this. The baby just knows when it wants feeding, changing, and holding. So it is with us. We are very aware of our hungering, our need to repent and change, and a desire to be held tight by all that is good and reaffirming.

The infant Jesus was placed in a feed trough. In this Jesus God continues to feed us and our emotional and spiritual hungering. Silent Night. Holy Night. We are fed, we shall be changed, we are held. Redeeming grace dawns. Jesus is Lord at his birth.
Jesus is Lord still.