What Child is This?

As I listen to the carols and hear again the ancient stories of Christmas, I am transformed back to Christmas of my youth.  The memories completely fill me again: home, hearth, and my untroubled childhood filled with family exchanging gifts of love.  These scriptures and carols tonight interweave with my childhood reveries, and Christmas is re-born in my heart again.

Christmas is a time of connections between “long long ago in Bethlehem,” and our world today.  But our world and culture today rarely invoke spiritual foundations or stories of joy.  We must come back home into our spiritual communities to do that these days.  Christmas out there is about consumerism and a frantic attempt to numb who we really are, so tonight, in our cozy candle-lit sanctuary, full of people we love, we re-tell our old stories of how Christmas has, for thousands of years, changed lives, touched hearts, and transformed strangers into the body of Christ.  So, in honor of Christmases past, here is my favorite true Christmas story.

It is 1914 in Flanders, in northern France during the opening months of the First World War.  After months of ceaseless fighting, the German and British soldiers face each other in trenches and foxholes, dug in, cold, wet, and frustrated.  The enemy lines were less than 60 yards apart in many places in Flanders, and the freezing muck sucked the spirit and energy from the soldiers on both sides.  Little did they know that the war would drag on for four more terrible years, with the loss of 8-1/2 million dead and 21 million wounded on both sides.  But out in the trenches of Flanders now, none of that mattered.  The troops were freezing, hungry, and dispirited because the only goal they knew was the endless killing of one another across the narrow “no-man’s-land” between the trenches.  No one believed the war was going to be short anymore, especially the troops who were hunkered down in those abhorrent trenches and foxholes.

The British and German governments supporting the troops knew they had to do something to bolster the sagging morale of their dug-in troops, so they sent small Christmas care packages of food and tobacco and candles to them—unheard of luxuries in the trenches in that bleak mid-winter.

Christmas eve 1914 was raw and cold in Flanders; harsh winter weather to match the foul mood in the trenches.  The troops were glum that the Christmas cease-fire proposed by Pope Benedict the 15th had been flatly rejected by both sides as “impossible.”  But Christmas eve had its own miracle to work.

At dusk, some of the Germans carefully took some small tree branches and placed candles in them, and then set them up onto the parapet of their trenches in full sight of everyone.  Then bravely, they lit the candles.  Here and there along the trenches, some trees were shot at, but most stood courageously, the small candles flickering strongly in the gathering gloom. “The light shines in the darkness, and the darkness cannot overcome it.”  Then faintly, so faintly it could have only have been angel’s wings, the breeze was filled with—what was that again, [sing] “Stille nacht, heilige nacht, alles schlaft, einsam wacht…” The English strained to hear.  They did not know the words, but they knew the tune, and oh, so faintly, they began singing in response, “Round yon virgin, mother and child, holy infant so tender and mild.”

And in the following eternal-moments, love came down at Christmas.  Men who had been killing each other mere minutes before, for miles along the trenches now were singing together, “Sleep in heavenly peace, schlaf in himmlischer Ruh.”  And then… it was quiet again.  But his time the quiet was different: not ominous and hate-filled, but instead it was quiet that was somehow filled with compassion and love—the same quiet that is around the Christmas tree after all of the presents are opened.  That same quiet that comes after childbirth when the chaos subsides, and love walks in. 

Then, way down the trench-line, a solder impossibly stood up on the parapet next to a candle-lit tree.  More eternal minutes past, and miraculously, no shot was fired.  Another soldier stood up.  Then a dozen.  And then two whole armies slowly stood up on that Christmas Eve, the guns remaining as silent as the holy night...

By Christmas morning, the “no-man’s-land” between the Germans and the English had been miraculously transformed into “all-man’s-land,” filled with soldiers from both sides talking, laughing and sharing their rations and gifts, often singing familiar tunes in English, French and German.  The men helped bury each other’s dead, crying as they dug graves together.  And after the dead were buried, a soccer ball appeared, and “Tommy” played “Fritz” in a fierce but strangely friendly game of soccer-football. 

Impossible Christmas Peace conquered the Flanders trenches that Christmas eve and day.  Impossible Peace, a peace completely beyond understanding.  Rancor and war was replaced with the kinship of humanity. “And the Word became flesh and dwelt among us, and we have seen his glory, the glory as of a father’s only son, full of grace and truth.” The unbelievably precious gifts from back home were joyously shared with complete strangers that only hours before had been mortal enemies.  A very small crack was opened into the world of violence and warfare, and into this crack, the light of Christ burst through, bringing “Peace on Earth, Goodwill to Men.”  Wise men from the east and west met on a battlefield defiled with mortal combat, but now the Light of Christ shone ‘round about, and the very universe asked, “What child is this?”

By dusk on Christmas Day, word had spread back to the various headquarters that an Impossible Christmas Peace had spontaneously broken out in the foxholes of Flanders.  Each headquarters wondered how the other side had tricked their soldiers to stop shooting.  Furious commanders ordered the insanity of not warring to immediately stop, threatening courts-marshal for anyone who dared to fraternize with the enemy.

And the delicate, quiet peace of Christ, the peace that had appeared out of nowhere in the guise of a hymn about a silent and holy night filled with a small child and his mother, that peace was swallowed back into the madness of war.  The Christ-light that spontaneously and courageously shone out onto the battlefields in Flanders was snuffed out and the candles thrown away into the battle’s muck and mud, swallowed by darkness.

The same Christ-light of Christmas 1914 in Flanders is always available to you and me, just like it was mysteriously available to those cold and courageous soldiers almost hundred years ago.  The Christ-child appeared on that cold wet night in Flanders when two armies stood up for peace.  Where will you stand up so the Christ-child can appear in your life?  How will you invite the Christ-child to bring an impossible peace into your life?  When the Peace of Christ comes in mysterious and unexpected ways, may we look into each other’s eyes, and remember the miracle of Christmas at Flanders, when they stopped shooting, and began living, “The true light, which enlightens everyone, has come into the world.”  Who brings this peace?  “What child is this, who laid to rest, on Mary’s lap is sleeping?  [sing] Whom angels greet with anthems sweet while shepherds watch are keeping?  This, this, is Christ the King, whom shepherds guard and angels sing, Haste, haste, to bring him laud, the babe, the son of Mary.”