Heavenly Peace

12-24-18 (Christmas Eve, Year C)

Isaiah 9:2-7; Luke 2:1-20

Heavenly Peace: 200 Years of Silent Night

               Tonight marks the 200^th anniversary of the first performance of the beloved Christmas hymn “Silent Night.”  In churches around the world this night, people will gather together to sing – in many churches, it will be much the same as we do each year, with candles in hand as we pass the Christ light to one another and prepare to carry it out into the world.  For many people, it’s the defining moment that makes Christmas truly Christmas.  Of all the Christmas carols and hymns that have been written, Silent Night has managed to become such a permanent fixture in our Christmas experience that it has even been designated by UNESCO as a treasured item of Intangible Cultural Heritage.

               There are many reasons why I think this hymn has endured for 200 years – the words carry a beautiful kind of poetry that paints a clear picture of Christmas Eve in all its holiness, its wonder, its beauty and power.  At the same time, the simplicity and lullaby-like gentleness of the song itself provide a beautiful moment for reflection – a moment in which we, like Mary, can ponder all of these things in our hearts, even in the midst of a season that is otherwise filled with the noises of silver jingling bells, reindeer hooves click-click-clicking on our roofs, and fa-la-la-ing.  Here, in this singular holy moment, as we are bathed in the candle-light, we can embody a holy moment in which “all is calm, all is bright” and we can simply be still in God’s presence.

               The wonder of this hymn, however, only grows the more you dig into its backstory and history.  While some of the story has transcended into the realm of legend, this Christmas hymn nevertheless has relatively humble beginnings.  In 1816, Joseph Mohr, an assistant priest from Salzburg, Austria, wrote a poem that he called “Silent Night.”  In it, he depicted the night of Jesus’ birth, the joy and wonder of the moment when God became flesh in a “lovely boy with curly hair” and the moment that “mercy’s abundance was made visible to us.”  Mohr wrote the poem during a time in which there was little peace to be found in Austria – the Napoleonic Wars had only just ended and all of Austria was still in turmoil and transition.  A volcano had erupted in Indonesia in 1815 and its effects around the world were catastrophic, with Austria experiencing “the year without a summer” due to volcanic ash wreaking havoc in the atmosphere, causing constant storms and even snow during the summer months.  Farmers experienced massive, devastating crop failures, which in turn led to famine, disease, and a multitude of deaths.  And yet, in the midst of all these things Mohr penned these six verses to commemorate the peace that had been brokered in his homeland. They spoke of hope, of joy, and of a God who so loved and cared for God’s creation that God became a human being for our sakes, even during a time when peace seemed to be a distant memory.

               Fast forward two more years to 1818.  Mohr has transferred from Salzburg to Oberndorf, where he serves as the assistant priest in the parish of St. Nicholas.  The border divisions caused by the end of the Napoleonic Wars are still affecting the people of his parish – money and food alike are both scarce, and to make matters even worse, Oberndorf had experienced significant flooding from the nearby Salzbach river.  Whether from flood damage or from the more colorful and legendary activity of church mice, the organ in the St. Nicholas parish chapel was broken, and Joseph Mohr sought to still be able to provide music for his people.  He took his poem from two years before and approached a friend of his, named Franz Gruber, who was the church organist and a local teacher.  Gruber quickly added music to the verses, arranging the tune for two voices and a guitar, and the two men sang the new hymn at the end of the Christmas mass, since the guitar had not yet been officially approved as an instrument suitable for worship services in the Catholic church at the time.  When the snows thawed and they could get a repairman in to fix the organ, the story goes that Gruber played the tune to test and see that the organ was fully repaired, and the organ repairman became so enamored with the song that he carried it with him, where it was quickly taken up as a folk song that would make its way to nearly every corner of the world through traveling folk-singers and missionaries.

               While we may not know what of the story is truth and what is legend today, we do know that the hymn has been performed in the courts of kings, on Wall Street, with Kermit the Frog, and in the trenches on the field of Flanders during the miraculous Christmas Truce of 1914.  Today, it has been translated and is sung in more than 300 different languages.  Its message of “heavenly peace,” even one that comes in the midst of trials and sufferings, is one that continues to resonate even 200 years later.  The final lines of Mohr’s original poem translate to “Jesus the Savior is here!  Jesus the Savior is here!”  As we take this time tonight and remember the joyful proclamations of angels and shepherds, as we ponder this holy moment in our own hearts, I pray that this may be our own proclamation, as well – “Jesus the Savior is here!”  And in that proclamation, may we, too, find heavenly peace.  To God be the Glory.  Merry Christmas!