ALL around us preparations for Christmas are going on everywhere. Christmas cards are being written; homes decorated and rehearsals of Christmas carols that will be sung at carol services are taking place.
Among the carols being sung is Silent Night. It was written in Austria at the beginning of the 19th century – it’s said that it was written at short notice and set to a guitar because the organ in the village where the carol was composed had broken down.
Silent Night is a beautiful, image-filled song of Christmas. You can almost see a snow-filled village in Austria, a church overlooked by mountains and trees, lit by candlelight, a congregation singing about the birth of the Christ child.
All is calm. All is bright. Was this what it was like for Mary and Joseph on that first Christmas? I don’t think so for a moment.
The Bible tells us that Joseph and Mary were in Bethlehem because they had just made an 80-mile journey there on foot on the orders of the Roman rulers of Palestine. For the purpose of being taxed. Imagine doing that at nine months pregnant.
The birth was quickly followed by the need for Mary, Joseph and their newborn son to flee genocide in Bethlehem, ending up as refugees and asylum-seekers in Egypt.
Jesus’s arrival in this world was as stressed and as chaotic as any birth could be imagined to be.
So, what can we mean when we sing “All is calm. All is bright”?
We just can’t say this if we think that faith in Jesus is somehow going to make us immune from trouble, our lives only about peace and serenity. From day one this wasn’t the case for Jesus. It won’t be for us.
At Christmas we’re asked to put our faith in a very different proposition: that in all the mess and disorder of the world, Jesus made the first move towards us and still does so today. He comes promising to be with us always – perhaps most especially in the storm and in the dark – in the rubble of Gaza and Ukraine, in the climate emergency that engulfs our planet, in the times of uncertainty in which we live – globally, nationally and as individuals.
Even in the storm. Even in the dark, Jesus is God with us. When we put our hands into his, in the midst of the chaos he brings us his peace. When all around us is night, Jesus brings us his light. It’s this that in spite of all that is happening around us enables us to sing “All is calm. All is bright.”
A very happy Christmas to you all.