Do You Want a Silent Night?
St. Luke 2:1-21
December 24, 2024 anno Domini
No offense to one of our favorite Christmas Eve hymns, but I don’t think it was a silent night.
Caesar Augustus had just ordered a census of the entire Roman empire, which really meant he was raising taxes. Everyone in the empire was forced to travel to their hometown. The roads were packed. There were no rooms at the Holiday Inn, the Hilton, or even Motel Six. Everyone was grumbling about Gus’s greedy government grab and the forced family vacation.
I don’t think Mary and Joseph had a silent night either. Some early church fathers suggested that Mary gave birth without any pain and her virginity remained intact. I don’t think so. The curse of sin means women have pain in childbirth. God says so and Mary was such a sinner. After the ordeal of delivering her first born I doubt that Mary and Joseph were ready to pose for those nice family pictures that adorn our Christmas cards. I’m also guessing if there were any animals in the stable, they weren’t quiet either. Usually farm animals aren’t mellow around strangers.
Now the shepherds out in the field might have been having a silent night. They may have been the only ones in the story finally relaxing at the end of the workday. Until the heavenly choir burst upon them in the brightness of God’s glory to announce God’s arrival in the flesh. Luke doesn’t tell us how the sheep reacted, but for the Shepherds silent night was over. They took off running for Bethlehem, looking for a baby in a food trough.
We sing silent night, but do you ever get one? Parents see each other in passing as their son goes to hockey and their daughter to dance. Retired people wonder how they had time to work. Older folks spend half their days going to the doctor or the other half making appointments. There are gifts to wrap, meals to plan, traditions to keep, cards to mail, dogs to walk, beds to make, and food to buy for those fussy grandkids, plus you’ve got that series on Netflix to finish and don’t forget it’s almost 2025 and you know what that means – tax time. And you never know when your phone will ring with disturbing news from your family or friends.
What would you give for a silent night? Or would you?
How good are you at doing nothing, at sitting still, and just thinking about your life, your future, your burdens, your happiness? How long would you last if you had a silent night? How long could you sit in your favorite chair, in a quiet room, with no screen, no work, nothing to do, but silence? Test it out. I don’t think you’d last 10 minutes.
I am currently reading a book on Blaise Pascal, a 17th century Mathematician, Inventor and Christian philosopher. I know, you wonder how I can sleep at night with such an exciting thriller on my nightstand. 800 years ago Pascal wrote this, “I have often said that the sole cause of man’s unhappiness is that he does not know how to stay quietly in his room.” Pascal’s paradox is this – you want silence, but you cannot stand silence.
Why don’t you want silence? Why don’t you want to be alone with yourself? You don’t want to think about your most certain future which is death. You don’t want to contemplate all the pleasures and treasures you pursued for happiness, that in the end became boring and fail to deliver. You don’t want to be left alone with the sins by which you have hurt yourself and those around you.
We should have more time to rest than any other people in the history of the world. You can travel 70 miles an hour in your own car (and even more if you consider the speed limit a suggestion). You get water by turning a faucet, wash dishes and clothes by pushing a button, heat your house by tapping your finger on the thermostat, or just telling Alexa to bump it up a degree. But you keep busier than ever.
Yet, oddly, in your heart you really do want a silent night, don’t you? Pascal suggests this is because you know you are missing something. Deep down you want and need rest, peace, quiet. Pascal thinks this is a remnant of humanity, left over from our creation. We have some memory of our original state, of our first parents, Adam and Eve, who lived in Eden, in peace and quiet, in perfect love with each other and perfect faith toward God.
Here’s the question for you to contemplate on this most holy night, “Why do you so desperately want rest, but you cannot rest? You are seeking, but never finding, hunting but never satisfied with the conquest. You want silence, but you cannot turn your phone off for a half hour. Why? Because you have lost your place.
Into the silent night of the Shepherds, the Angels preached the sermon you need to hear. They revealed the Savior you seek but are not finding.
The silence and rest you want and need is found in that baby, wrapped in swaddling clothes and lying in a manger. The Son of God is born to bring peace to people on earth. He has come to restore us to the great, high, and restful place of being children of God.
The Son of God was born in the flesh, so He could die in the flesh. He was born righteous and holy so He could take your wretched sins and die the certain death you deserve. You will never find your way to peace and quiet. That’s what you would realize in the silence, if you could stand to be quiet, with only yourself. What you are seeking you will not find. That is why God seeks you. That is why He came Himself. That is why His angels preached to the shepherds and didn’t keep the treasured Prince of Peace hidden away in a barn in Bethlehem.
This is the love God has for you. He sent His only begotten Son for you. This is how God loved you. He put your sins on Jesus, nailed Him to the cross, judged Him with your hell and death. The baby that Mary wrapped in swaddling clothes and laid in a manger, was later wrapped in burial clothes and laid in a tomb.
God’s Word declares this truth. Christ Jesus took your place, as a damned sinner, so you could have His place – a son of God. Christ left His proper place – in honor and glory in heaven, to return you to your place – as God’s foremost creature, a child of the Most High God.
The rest you seek, the silence you crave is found when you have found Christ like the Shepherds, and when God has found you as His child once again. In the name of Jesus. Amen.