By Father Casey

One of the best ways to open a conversation this time of year is to ask for someone's favorite Christmas songs. You can learn a lot about someone this way. For example, it is telling when someone declares their love for "All I Want for Christmas," versus, oh I don't know, the "Wexford Carol."

Among my top tier is certainly "O Holy Night." I know for some it's been overdone, and it's not included in our hymnal, being better suited for a soloist than a congregation. But I can think of no song that better captures the miracle of the Incarnation than this. Just the first verse alone is better than any Christmas sermon I'll ever preach.

Long lay the world in sin and error pining,
Till he appeared and the soul felt its worth.
A thrill of hope – the weary world rejoices,
For yonder breaks a new and glorious morn!

As much as I've loved it, only recently did I learn the song's history. Or, more to the point, how its history makes it even more powerful than I had even known.

The song originated as a French poem, "Minuit, Chrétiens," by Placide Cappeau, which was set to a tune by Adolphe Adam in the 1840s. About a decade later, the song crossed the Atlantic and was translated into English by a Unitarian minister, John Sullivan Dwight. Dwight took some liberties with the original French, but in ways that bring it to life. For example, a literal translation of the refrain would be, "People kneel down, wait for your deliverance." But Mr. Dwight, channeling the wonder and awe at the heart of Christmas, gives us: "Fall on your knees; O hear the angel voices!"

Like most Christmas carols, we can sing the beginning by heart, but some of the most powerful lines don't come until the third stanza.

Truly he taught us to love one another;
His law is love and his Gospel is Peace.
Chains shall he break, for the slave is our brother
And in his name, all oppression shall cease.

Consider those words and the context in which Dwight wrote them: America in the 1850s. The conflict over slavery, simmering since before the founding of the country, was about to boil over into Civil War. As an ardent abolitionist, Dwight's choice of words was no accident. He was making the connection between the birth of Jesus and what he came into the world to accomplish. After all, in one of his first sermons, Jesus embraces as his mission the work of releasing captives and setting free the oppressed (Luke 4:18). Dwight wanted to convey this message in his carol: that liberation is at the heart of salvation. "In his name, all oppression shall cease."

As I've listened to "O Holy Night" recently, and particularly that last stanza, my mind has turned again and again to the conflict in Gaza. In just two months of war, over 20,000 have been killed, the majority women and children, and scores more forced to flee from their destroyed homes. Hospitals, schools, churches…there is no safe place for people seeking safety. The pain and rage of Israelis at the horrors of October 7 have fueled a military reprisal that has vastly multiplied the human suffering of that awful day. And so the wheel of hatred and vengeance keeps on grinding.

How mightily does the Holy Land need the Holy One, whose law is love and whose Gospel is Peace! How great is the need for the breaking of chains, rather than the casting of new ones! How badly does that region, and so many others around the world, need oppression to cease! How desperately do we all need to remember that the ones we call enemy, whose lives matter less to us than others, are actually our brothers and sisters – that we are all made of one blood?

In the Evangelical Lutheran Christmas Church in Bethlehem, the congregation has assembled their Nativity this year amidst a pile of rubble, and the figure of newborn Jesus is laid between bits of debris.[1] In a sermon preached there this week, Lutheran Bishop Muib Younan said,

This year we especially remember that Jesus was born in an unsettled political situation and under occupation. The whole world was available, and yet Jesus did not find any better place to be born than in a stable in Bethlehem. This is a reminder that even in the lowest places on earth, even the most troubled places, even amid rubble, there must be sanctity of life. A person living under oppression and suffering discrimination, who can only hope for freedom, is just as holy and sacred as one born into comfort and privilege.[2]

So I am singing "O Holy Night" this year not only as a Christmas carol, but as a freedom anthem. I am singing it in hope that our weak and weary world, still "in sin and error pining," may feel the "thrill of hope" that comes from pursuing the way of the Prince of Peace. I'm singing in prayer that we will not only feel our own souls' worth, but also the worth of every single other soul, too. And I'm singing in longing that our chain-breaking Lord will show us how to love one another until all oppression shall cease.

Father Casey +

 

The Evangelical Lutheran Christmas Church Bethlehem has a stark nativity scene with an infant Jesus surrounded by rubble to depict the devastation in Gaza while a light shines in hope there will be peace. Photo: Fr. Munther Isaac

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[1] https://religionunplugged.com/news/2023/12/11/nativity-crche-in-bethlehem-places-baby-jesus-in-gazas-rubble

[2] https://munibyounan.wixsite.com/website/single-post/in-christ-life-with-dignity?fbclid=IwAR0tSI0SkzTzGmTgL2s3FuppxgtDidzKHX9tPKsG6xp7m54QpfcR4RTN0LM