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HOW SILENTLY Two traditional Christmas carols were written by church pastors and their organists, and both of them show what church life is like around the Christmas season. The first one, written in 1818, is Silent Night. The night being referred to is not just the night of the first Christmas, but also the night of Christmas in 1818 when the priest at St. Nicholas Church in Oberndorf, Austria, had to deal with the fact that the church organ had broken down. That kind of stuff likes to happen around Christmas, and they don't cover that in seminary. Facing Christmas services with no organ, the priest, Joseph Mohr, got together with the organist, Franz Gruber, and they wrote a song about that silent night. The priest sang tenor, the organist sang base and played guitar. The carol caught on quickly in Germany, but the English thought it was trite and sentimental and didn't include it in their hymnals until after the turn of the century. The other carol written by a pastor and his organist is "O Little Town of Bethlehem," which was written in 1868 by Phillips Brooks, rector of Holy Trinity Church in Philadelphia. It was supposed to be a Christmas gift to the children in the Sunday School, but day after day went by and the organist, Lewis Redner, still had not composed the music. In fact, the tune didn't come to him until after midnight Christmas Eve when he said, "A little angel whispered the strain in my ears and I roused myself and dotted it down as you have it." The musicians of the next century didn't much care for what the angels had whispered. They called the music, "broken-backed and paralytic," and one commentator said it had "nothing of the craftsmanship one associates with great music; and the added misfortune of being undeservedly popular." In 1906, the music editor of The English Hymnal decided it needed a new tune and published it with the tune Forest Green, which is still listed as a possible alternative tune in our hymnal today. If the musical purists had their way, this is what carolers would be singing on street corners. Two carols, both written at the last minute, both with lyrics by pastors and music by their organists, and both had all of that hard work blasted by people who didn't like it. But there is also something else that these two carols have in common. They both remind us of silence. Silent Night, of course, was written in the crisis of silence...what do you do when the organ goes dead right before Christmas. Silence is also palpable in O Little Town of Bethlehem. In the first stanza, the little town lies still, and as the people have a deep and dreamless sleep, the silent stars go by. The people are still sleeping in verse two, and in verse three we read, "How silently, how silently, the wondrous gift is given. No ear may hear his coming." We've talked a lot in the past two weeks about the message being sung in the skies by the angels. On this night, however, I want us to remember not the angels so much as the silence. Thinking about the silence in these carols brought a lot of Scripture passages to mind. "Be still and know that I am God," from Psalm 46; the story of Elijah who tries to see God in wind and earthquake and fire but finally finds God "in the sound of sheer silence." I thought of Jesus' instructions for prayer...to go into our room and close the door and pray in private...away from the noises of life...and I thought of Jesus being mocked and beaten and led to the Cross, in silence. There is something in silence that is necessary for our spiritual well-being. It is in the deep and dreamless sleep that the miracle often happens...the little angel finally shows up with the tune for the carol, the little baby is born to save the world. And yet, we so rarely seek out the silence. Like in Austria, our silences often only come because there is a crisis. The organ breaks, a storm knocks out the power, something so frightful has happened that there simply is no sound that can express it. From the chaos of the crisis, suddenly there is the sound of sheer silence. Often we are afraid. O Little Town of Bethlehem gets it exactly right when it says, "The hopes and fears of all the years are met in thee tonight." That is what we face in the silence, and that is why we often don't want to face it. Without life's noise buzzing around us, we must confront our own noise...the collision of our hopes and fears. Maybe I could do this...oh, but what if that happened? What if I try and I fail? What if I give love and it is not returned? What if he dies? What if she leaves? What if I don't have what I need to get by? Hopes and fears meet together in the silence, and it is there that we must decide which to follow. This dilemma is painted nicely in the fifth stanza that Phillips Brooks wrote...you have it on your insert. He wrote, "Where children pure and happy pray to the blessed Child, where misery cries out to thee, Son of the Mother mild." That's the hopes and the fears...the happy children and the miserable children all cry out to the Christ child, they meet each other in Jesus, and it is there they all find their answers. As we wrestle with both the happy and the miserable in our lives, our own hopes and fears, God waits for our decision. "Where charity stands watching and faith holds wide the door." Charity and faith are the representatives of our hopes. When we are charitable...in the deepest sense of that word...loving and kind to the extent of giving deeply of ourselves...we are casting a vote for hope. We are saying that the misery that cries out to the Christ child does not have to be the last word. There can be a better world, lives that are unhappy now can still have a chance at happiness, or as the psalmist puts it, "Weeping may endure for a night, but joy comes in the morning." Charity waits to see if we will choose the way of hope. And the door to that hope is held open by faith. This is not a faith that says nothing bad will ever happen, but a faith that says, "I can trust in God, no matter what happens. Come misery or happiness, it doesn't matter, just so long as God is with me." That is a very profound hope. It is hope for our souls, hope for meaning and purpose for our lives, hope in the eternal goodness and love of God. Such a faith holds the door wide, even as we sit in the silent darkness, wrestling with our hopes and fears. At any time we can make our decision...whether to trust fear or to trust hope and walk through that open door. If we choose to walk through the door of hope, Brooks tells us, "The dark night wakes, the glory breaks, and Christmas comes once more." The silent night of Christmas Eve turns into the laughter and feasting and joy of Christmas morning. That is why Jesus came...to meet all our hopes and fears and to show us that even with the worst that life can throw at us, hope will come out on top. God became a man in Jesus because we human beings were stuck between our hopes and our fears. We simply couldn't decide to trust our hopes and walk through the door God was holding open for us. We were too frightened, too blind in the dark night. And so God descended into our silence. How silently, how silently the wondrous gift was given. No ear may hear his coming, but in this world of sin, where meek souls will receive him, still the dear Christ enters in. Like the baby born in a stable, unnoticed except by some shepherds, so Jesus still comes into the heart that simply wants to have him there. Sometimes people tell grand conversion stories, and those are valid. But the more common story is that Jesus simply slips in, almost unnoticed, except that it begins to feel warmer, lighter somehow, and life begins to look a bit more manageable than it did before. The dark night wakes, the glory breaks, and Christmas comes once more. Later, in the silence of this night, you will have your choice about whether tomorrow will really be Christmas or not. It is the choice we have been preparing for during the whole season of Advent. Christ is born, but are you willing that Jesus should be born in you? Do you come to the manger to say, "Aw, how cute!" or did you come to kneel and say, "My Lord, and my God!" The hopes and fears of all of your years meet in the silence of this night. Charity is watching, and faith holds wide the door. Will you step through the door to Christmas? Amen. © 2002, Anne Robertson
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