Christmas Eve Candlelight Service

The Dawn of Redeeming Grace

(Is 62:10-12; Lk 2:1-20) JG White ~ 6:00 pm, XE, Wed, Dec 24, 2025, FBC Amherst

Every Baptist Church I’ve been to on Christmas Eve sings, at the end, “Silent Night.” Including here, though we also end with “Joy to the World.” Number 48 in our pew hymnbooks, in a different book we refer to often, I notice Silent Night is carol number Six Seven. 😉 

I don’t know if the 6-7 trend is starting to die out, but Silent Night has not gone out of style, after more than two hundred years. The words and the music are simple and strong enough to have stood the test of time. I’ve heard it and sung it hundreds of times. 

So, it surprised me, a couple weeks ago, when a bit of the well-worn carol jumped out at me. I was hearing Drew Moore sing it at an event here in town. In the last verse it says, of Jesus:

Radiant beams from Thy holy face, with the dawn of redeeming grace,

“With the dawn of redeeming grace.” We’ve had a lot of beautiful sunrises lately. I guess that it’s easier to catch them when sunrise is at five to eight in the morning. ‘Silent Night’ talks of infant Jesus like He is glowing, which is a common Bible way of imagining goodness and glory and blessings. Like rays of sunshine, the colourful glow of dawn.

So it struck me that Jesus, in the famous stories, is ‘the dawn of redeeming grace.’ Religious songs are particularly filled with uncommon words like these. ‘Redemption;’ what does it mean to be redeemed? 

Some of you live across the border, and over in New Brunswick that word is not uncommon. You have ‘redemption centres,’ right? Just over in Sackville, Wheaton’s All In One Redemption Centre, Sackville, NB. You can take your bottles and cans, batteries and brass, radiators and cast iron and get money for them. Redemption centres are also for getting rid of your cardboard, old paint, dead cell phones and appliances. 

We also redeem coupons, and gift cards, don’t we. So we do know what this may be about. We exchange something for value, something good. The gift cards we get for Christmas will be redeemed.

Redemption is one image of God blessing us. Buying us back, when we were not quite where we belonged. And if Jesus was the first light of redeeming grace, this action was a gift, God doing something wonderful that we could not do all on our own. 

We celebrate the beginning of the Jesus story tonight. It is amazing grace, redeeming grace, that the Creator comes to us, the created. Christ comes to bring us home, to set us free, to show us we belong, to heal and forgive and fix, to rekindle the light of love within us. To redeem.

Today, may you have moments of Silent Night, and tomorrow the bright, joyful light of Jesus!