Vigil of Christmas, 12/24/2018

Sermon on Luke 2:1-20, by Paula Murray

Luke 2:1-20 (alternatively, preacher may use Matthew 1:18-25)

Legend has it that two hundred years ago today, a small, rural church located outside of Salzburg, Austria suffered a catastrophe. Mice had eaten through the leathers of the bellows of the organ of St. Nicholaus Church, silencing it on the most important evening mass of the year. Small churches rarely have the funds to finance a repair as extensive as this, and rural communities rarely have access to experts close enough to fix the problem in a timely way. So Pastor Josef Mohr and organist Franz Gruber collaborated, combining Mohr’s previously written lyrics with a simple, lullaby-like tune that was easily learned and could be played on the guitar. Silent Night was sung in worship the first time two hundred years ago tonight, on Christmas Eve of 1818.

The legend may not quite have the origins of Silent Night exactly right, or it may. A rather less exciting explanation of the Obendorf church’s Christmas Eve catastrophe is that the organ’s bellows were damaged by repeated flooding. Who knows? But we do all know Silent Night and love it. It has been translated into 140 languages and is sung worldwide, often as the congregation or parish holds lit candles aloft in a darkened sanctuary, as we will do a bit later tonight. It’s the wise pastor who does not mess with that part of the evening’s liturgy, for the holiness of the night of Jesus’ birth is deeply felt by most at that time.

And it is the holiness of the evening that the words of the carol get right. Like many a hymn, Silent Night is named for its first words, and while that first night of Jesus’ earthly life may have been silent at times, like any newborn Jesus probably cried at his birth and when he was hungry or wet or tired and when he had need of the warmth of his mother’s arms. Depending on the child and his circumstances, a silent night can be a rare occasion indeed in the house of a family with a newborn, and it would have been no different for the holy family in that stable in Bethlehem. And this truth does not take into account the rest of the story of Jesus’ birth, including the choirs of angels and the bustle and wonder of shepherds as they worship of the newborn king, all of which would have broken the night’s silence.

It is not the purported silence of the night of Christ’s birth that matters but its holiness. It matters because God chose to clothe His pre-existent Son in human flesh, to send him to live among us, and to offer up for our salvation his precious life. It is not simply that unto us a child is born, unto us a son is given; it is that this Child, this Son, is unlike any other previously born on earth or thereafter. All children are precious; there is something holy about every birth. But this child and this birth mean new life not just for the small family that welcomed him, but for all of us who acknowledge that infant as Lord and God.

For in him the grace of God has appeared. In him, the mercy of the Almighty God is revealed. The sinlessness of the Son of God means our sin no longer needs to burden us. In his death on the cross, death itself was vanquished. It’s not just the infant Jesus Christ who can sleep in heavenly peace, but all God’s children may lay their heads on their pillows, confident that their Father in heaven is both compassionate and loving. Our days, even those marked by human folly or natural disaster or some unholy mixture of the two can be brightened by the glorious radiance reflected from the face of that holy Infant. It can be Christmas every day for us, not the Christmas marked by an onslaught of shopping and baking and decorating, but the Christmas characterized by the holiness of God.

It can be Christmas every day for us because the holiness of Jesus Christ is no distant thing, limited to the far-off heavens. He became flesh and dwelt among us, and dwells among us still. At the time the angel announced to Joseph that the child of Mary’s womb was the Messiah, Joseph also learned he was to be called Jesus, or God saves. But the angel also quoted Scripture, specifically the prophet Isaiah, reminding the soon to be foster father and protector that, “the virgin shall conceive and bear a son, and they shall name him Emmanuel,” meaning, “God is with us.” We hear that second name for the Messiah at the end of Matthew’s Gospel when the ascending Christ assures his disciples that he “will be with them always.” Latter-day disciples like ourselves receive that same blessing. He who was that holy Infant in Bethlehem, who was crucified and raised for our salvation, remains with us still.

Let then, the holiness, and the occasional silence, of this extraordinary night fill your spirit, that it may strengthen you and preserve you in holy joy, a joy that may conquer whatever darkness threatens you in days to come.

Paula Murray

E-Mail: smotly@comcast.net

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