Gospel: Luke 2:1-20
Throughout the four weeks of Advent I tried to determine how, on this night, I’d talk about the birth of Jesus. Perhaps a new way of describing that remarkable moment would come to me. Maybe some new inspiration about the arrival of the Messiah would fall on my ears or begin to swirl in my mind. At certain moments there were rapid flashes of particular words: birth; Messiah; hope; joy. And then I sat down this week, opened a new document on my laptop, and the first word that came to mind was … silence.
With everything we hear in these 20 verses from Luke – the noise of the crowds going to be counted in the census, the first cries of the newborn child, the voice of the angel, the overwhelming volume of the singing by the heavenly host – I’ve been drawn to the almost imperceptible moments of silence. Even though the entire arc of the nativity is very important, the birth of Jesus is not the high point of that arc. That position is held by the message to and journey of the shepherds, and their appearance in the narrative begins in silence.
The priest and writer Henri Nouwen said, “A word with power is a word that comes out of silence. A word that bears fruit is a word that emerges from the silence and returns to it.”[1] It’s out of the silence in those darkened Galilean fields that a powerful word – the heralding of the arrival of the Word – emerges. Often when we read this passage we pass over the moments of silence, and I think we do so because silence puts us off balance. Silence is uncertain. Silence is uncomfortable. Yet I think silence becomes more powerful and more important if instead of avoiding it we acknowledge and hold it.
Think for instance of the power of Elijah’s encounter with God on Mount Horeb in a moment of sheer silence. Look ahead as well to the end of the New Testament and the Book of Revelation, where we see at the beginning of chapter eight a moment of complete silence before the moment of God’s judgments. Silence in those passages is crucial; it’s vital to the narrative; it cannot be glossed over. Now listen to two key moments in these verses about the shepherds, read with the silence embraced:
In that region there were shepherds living in the fields, keeping watch over their flock by night. [LONG PAUSE] Then an angel of the Lord stood before them… [S]uddenly there was with the angel a multitude of the heavenly host, praising God and saying, “Glory to God in the highest heaven, and on earth peace among those whom he favors!’’ [LONG PAUSE] When the angels had left them and gone into heaven…
Before the first long pause, nothing was different. These shepherds, a group numbered among those found on the lowest rung of the economic ladder, outsiders in their own land, were with their flocks. They were likely expecting nothing more than a quiet, uneventful night of simple watchfulness. After the second long pause, however, everything had changed. Earlier in Luke, Mary had received word from a visitor from on high that she, (depending on the translation read), a humble and lowly servant, would bear the child of God. Now, the shepherds – the lowliest of the low – received word from another visitor from on high that the child had been born. These shepherds were the living fulfillment of ones named in the Book of Isaiah: recipients of the good news proclaimed to the poor.[2]
It was into the silence of that evening that the first angel spoke, sharing words of comfort in what was most assuredly an anxious moment: Do not be afraid. Then there was the incredible news of the birth of a Savior, a pronouncement normally reserved for Roman emperors and regional kings now being shared about a child in a manger. Hearing this statement about anyone other than a monarch was very much a countercultural moment, one that marked the beginning of the challenge to earthly kingdoms by the Kingdom of Heaven.
The silence was then pushed aside even more forcefully with the appearance of the heavenly host, a group who (again looking at Revelation) is tasked solely with standing around the heavenly altar, praising God. It’s a gathering of immeasurable size generating volume that must have been deafening to the shepherds. A place of no sound has now become a place of overwhelming sound, filled with a canticle of joy: Glory to God in the highest heaven.
And then suddenly, silence. The angel is gone. The heavenly host has vanished. The volume, as quickly as it was dialed up to a level beyond 10, has been just as quickly dialed back to zero. In that new silence, what were the shepherds thinking? What were they feeling? As we read later in the passage about Mary, what were they pondering in their hearts? We of course see them immediately go to Bethlehem, share news with Mary and Joseph, and then return to their fields and their flocks – their role as intermediaries between the heavenly host and the holy family completed, words of glory and praise filling their speech.
But what of the silence? Frederick Buechner wrote a beautiful phrase in which he said that “it is the silence encircling the sound that is itself most holy.”[3] In these moments, the holiness isn’t in the appearance of the angel or the song of the heavenly host. It’s in the silence encircling the chaotic, joyful noise. And here we end with my invitation for you this evening: dwell in the moments of silence. Embrace the moments of silence. Rejoice in the moments of silence. Life is noisy and chaotic, and silence is hard to come by – and because of that, we sometimes must try twice as hard to find it. When you do, pause; wait; perhaps hold your breath. For in the blink of an eye, good news of great joy – news from God that’s just for you – may very well be spoken into that silence.
Amen.
[1] Henri Nouwen. Quoted from The Way of the Heart in Seeds of Hope: A Henri Nouwen Reader, p. 59.
[2] Isaiah 61:1 (NIV).
[3] Frederick Buechner. Listening to Your Life: Daily Meditations with Frederick Buechner, p. 81-2.