This holiday season, I have been thinking a lot about the lyrics of some of the songs we hear and sing around this time of year. I’ve thought about that line from Joy to the World, what it really means to prepare Him room. As I mentioned in my previous post, I’ve thought about the opening line of O Come All Ye Faithful with its call for the faithful, the joyful, and the triumphant to come and adore the Christ child and what that might imply for the rest of us. And this past week, I’ve thought a lot about Silent Night.
Silent night, holy night
All is calm, all is bright
I guess from a certain point of view, you could say that Jesus was born on a silent night. By the time He was born, it had been four hundred years since the last prophet in Israel. Just think about it. That means no inspired writers. No prophetic utterances. No one boldly declaring, “Thus sayeth the Lord!” I wouldn’t blame the people if they started to wonder, Does God have anything left to say to us? Since the days of Malachi, generation after generation had been born and lived and died without any new word from the Lord. In that regard, the night when Jesus was born was just the latest in a series of silent nights stretching back hundreds of years.
But when it comes down to the reality of His birth, this holiest of nights was far from silent. I’ve been in the room for three different births and I can tell you that “silent” is the last word I would use to describe the scene. Even with the help of modern medicine, there’s still a fair amount of screaming and crying going on when a baby is born. Imagine how much more so this must have been the case for Mary, giving birth in a dark cave, no epidural, no spinal block. You think Mary was silent? Probably not!
But they say the most important sound amid all the chaos is the baby’s first cry. It’s a sign that he or she is healthy — that air is being forced into the lungs as the baby transitions from life inside the womb to life outside. Imagine Mary’s joy at hearing the cry of her son for the first time. After all those months of waiting, the child had finally arrived.
And He cried.
This is worth considering in a deep way.
When Jesus was born, God’s long silence was finally broken.
After centuries with no word from the Lord, God finally had something to say.
And that long silent night was broken when God — in the form of a child — began to cry.
Just let that sink in. After four hundred years of silence, what would be the first thing to come out of God’s mouth? A word of judgment? A prophetic prediction? A declaration of power? No — it was a child’s cry! Who could have ever seen that one coming? The eternal, self-sufficient God crying to be held, crying to be fed. It defies our wildest expectations and — for my money — is the greatest evidence that this story originated from on high. We would never concoct such an unexpected story!
God breaks the long silence by putting the cry of humanity upon His own lips.
We have been crying out for a long time. War and violence. Famine and plague. Oppression and abuse. Paul says creation itself is groaning as in childbirth. How long, O Lord? This is the cry of the psalmist and the prophet alike, but it is our cry as well. In the words of another Christmas song, we live in a weary world in need of rejoicing. As we survey this mess of pain and suffering, we might wonder if God has anything left to say to us.
But in the birth of this child, God puts our cries upon His own lips.
He subjects Himself to our weary world.
And when He arrives, He cries.
He feels what we feel; He is Immanuel, God with us but also God as one of us.
On that holiest of nights, God breaks the silence with a cry.
How do you react when a child starts crying in church? Does it irritate you? If you’re the parent of that child, does it embarrass you?
Some people seem to have this assumption that children are supposed to be completely silent during worship. And I guess I understand that, at least up to a point. No parent wants their child to be a distraction as we’re praying or reading God’s Word or taking communion together.
But at the same time, the cry of a child during worship is actually in keeping with the story we’re supposed to be remembering and celebrating. The cry of a child during worship — especially during communion — might actually be the holiest part of our week if we just have eyes to see and ears to hear.
The next time you hear the cry of a child as we worship, it’s not a time to get irritated. If you’re the parent of that child, it’s not a time to be embarrassed.
May the cries of that child remind us of that holiest of nights, when Christ was born — when God broke His silence by putting the cry of humanity on His lips.
And may the cries of that child point us to the cross, where Jesus bore our grief and carried our sorrows, as He was pierced for our transgressions and He cried out once again.
Merry Christmas, my dear friends.
already & not yet 