Still (D17-23)
This week’s snapshots:
Happy Saturday, celebrators~
Unless you’re reading this first thing today, I am on a plane to Germany right now to celebrate my favorite holiday in my favorite place. And while “Christmas in Europe” sometimes sounds absurdly pompous (it’s not) or privileged (it is), my Christmas will not be so different from yours, I imagine. Our family will be together, we’ll eat too much delicious food and tear through wrapping paper with hilarious particularities and we’ll read the Christmas story. I suppose you’ll have your own ways of doing it - so do tell me, what is your favorite tradition that you use to celebrate most fully?
Mine is going to midnight mass on Christmas Eve.
We spent most of my high school Christmases in Germany. On one especially snowy 24th, with a half-hour until midnight, we left the house bedecked in thick boots, long coats, with soft scarves to brave the half-meter of snow already outside. The sidewalks had been last cleared by diligent German neighbors just after dark, and a dense layer of snow had piled back onto the walkways and roadways as we started toward the village cathedral. At first we were alone on the quiet streets - loud Americans that we were, we were encouraged that the snow piles dampened our voices. But as we drew nearer and nearer to the cathedral, the same German neighbors who had cleared their sidewalks so we could walk unobstructed filled the street with us and called just as loudly to each other as we all piled past the dark stone walls of the cathedral and received waxy candlesticks with paper shields at the base.
We - the loud Americans - sat silent now, candles in hand, but the Germans filled the quiet with their utter delight that we came even though half of us spoke kein Deustch (zero words) and the other half of us had schwach Deutsch (weak words). Midnight drew closer and closer, and before we knew it, the chatter settled and the service began with the lights suddenly turning off.
From the back of the sanctuary, a single lit candle broke through the darkness, illuminating the face of the pastor - he represents Christ coming into the world. His lonely candle shines so that only faces are visible as he passes. All of the altar and lectern candles are illuminated at the front, but we, like the world at Christ’s birth, remain in darkness.
Members of the congregation sit under the candles of the lectern and read the Christmas story, after each segment of scripture we would follow it up with a couple verses of the appropriate Christmas carols. After our communal reminding of the birth of Christ, the pastor stood alone and exhorted us about why God as a baby is astonishing even in our world, how this festive reminder draws us nearer to that vulnerable God, and what our future with Him might look like. With some magnanimous words I mostly understood, he set his wick against the wick of the first congregant - and the flame leapt from hand to hand until the darkness dissipated and each of us rested in the candlelight.
The elder saints stood in the choir loft and sang all 6 verses of Stille Nacht (Silent Night) while we took communion. Though none of us are Lutheran and our German is zero or weak, the pastor blessed us the same and offered Christ’s body, broken for all people in all times - even loud Americans in a village cathedral - and Christ’s blood, poured out for every nation, tribe, and tongue - even though we couldn’t share theirs - and we drank and ate together as the candles dribbled wax onto paper shields.
I didn’t realize the original carol had extra verses, and I wept through the majority of it. Cathedrals are made for choirs, I think, more than choirs are made for cathedrals. Here is a direct translation of Mohr and Gruber’s carol that I heard that night:
Silent night! Holy night!
All are sleeping, alone and awake
Only the intimate holy pair,
Lovely boy with curly hair,
Sleep in heavenly peace!
Sleep in heavenly peace!
Silent night! Holy night!
Son of God, O how he laughs
Love from your divine mouth,
Then it hits us - the hour of salvation.
Jesus at your birth!
Jesus at your birth!
Silent night! Holy night!
Which brought salvation to the world,
From Heaven's golden heights,
Mercy's abundance was made visible to us:
Jesus in human form,
Jesus in human form.
Silent night! Holy night!
Where on this day all power
of fatherly love poured forth
And like a brother lovingly embraced
Jesus the peoples of the world,
Jesus the peoples of the world.
Silent night! Holy night!
Already long ago planned for us,
When the Lord frees from wrath
Since the beginning of ancient times
A salvation promised for the whole world.
A salvation promised for the whole world.
Silent night! Holy night!
To shepherds it was first made known
By the angel, Alleluia;
Sounding forth loudly far and near:
Jesus the Savior is here!
Jesus the Savior is here!
If you want to feel like a literary scholar, pull up John Freeman Young’s translation and compare it to this one. Some of the things I immediately noticed are how Young sanctifies the imagery. Jesus at birth becomes, “Jesus, Lord at thy birth.” The verse where Love laughs is completely re-written to match renaissance imagery with imaginary “radiant beams” instead of the actual sounds babies make (ofc newborns prolly aren’t laughing either, but that makes it all the better - you assumed the silent and holy night was the very night of his birth, but the textual indication that Jesus is old enough to laugh shows silent and holy nights are every night that we remember Jesus in human form, Jesus the Savior is here!). The triumphant angel song concluding the German poem is moved up to English’s middle verse and sometimes doubles as the fourth, final verse. Instead of the song being a reminder of how like-us and with-us God chose to be, it elevates Jesus and removes us from the scene almost completely. I was scarcely beginning my journey into literary analysis at that point in my life, and the German itself holds more treasures than the translations can reveal (such as all of the connotations with the word we translate as “silent”).
But I would find out how like-us and with-us Jesus chose to be through a more obvious venue. To conclude the service, a group of the villagers had written and then performed a gut-busting play about what it might look like if Jesus was born in their village. If he was like them, and with them. So instead of the shepherds and the wise men, they cast bakers, butchers, and doctors who hustled to the edge of town at the beckoning of spooky angel voices and a bizarre cosmic event in the night sky.
As we filed out of the cathedral doors with the still-laughing villagers, our friends roughly translated the 3-act play and explained all the inside jokes. It started to snow again as we headed back to the house - huge, slowly fluttering flakes that landed so gently on top of the snowpack that you could pluck them up and look at them. Even the littlest of us could catch them in our mouths! It was as though the Prince of peace had set the scene so we would remember him as Love who laughs…
Young’s translation reminds us of the very important otherness of God: his ways are higher than ours (we would have chosen a Superman to save us, but he sent us a baby), and holier too (we would have announced his coming to the religious elite who would understand the significance, but he chose shepherds and aliens) and we are so far removed from 1st-century Judea that a baby Yeshua may or may not even be very much “like” us. But that doesn’t stop the Germans from imagining how like-them Jesus might be - nor should it stop you. The silent and holy night is no less silent nor holy with angels singing “Alleluia” so loudly that it is heard both far and near. And you miss something important about Christ’s coming if you can’t imagine him with you, in middle-of-nowhere America, or can’t imagine him being like you, given that your life is invited to be his incarnation here and now.
While snowflakes the size of quarters may or may not fall upon you at midnight tomorrow, I invite you to consider, when you inevitably hear Silent Night next, that Jesus the Savior is here. Not away in a manger, not hanging on a cross, not ascended into the heavens and coming again, but here. In this very moment. With you.
What Christmas traditions do you keep that remind you of his here-ness? What Christmas imagery hits you hardest - is it the Light motif? The Incarnation? Nativity? And if you were to write a play about the Christ-child coming to your village, what would it be like?
Merry Christmas - the wait is almost over, your patience is remembered, Jesus loves you, and love laughs.
—Beth
