The angel said to Joseph: “Get up, take the child and flee to Egypt, for Herod intends to kill him.”
And Joseph went, whereupon he and Mary and the baby became refugees.
According to the United Nations, a refugee is someone who has been forced to flee his or her country because of persecution, war or violence; because his or her life is threatened for reasons of race, religion, nationality, political opinion, or membership in a particular social group.
In June of 2009, the UN High Command for Refugees reported that there are now 42 million displaced persons in the world. Sixteen million of these are actual refugees, people seeking asylum, fleeing for their lives, seeking a place to live without fear.
Jesus began his life on earth as a refugee.
Although we are still in the season of Christmas, the stable is no longer a safe place to be. The world of Jesus’ day held more violence than it did peace. Herod considered himself equal to God. He was powerful, cunning, and manipulative, and he had little regard for any human life other than his own. More than half the population of his kingdom was poor by any standard, and all laws and rules were skewed to ensure his comfort and that of his friends. For everyone else, life was harsh, hard, and could be taken by his whim. Two thousand years later, I’m not sure things are much improved. There are still many, many places in the world where life is cheap, if it has any value at all. Over and over again, history bends itself back to violent solutions. The fulfillment of scripture in Matthew’s time did not terminate the “ways of the world” nor put an end to human tragedy. This ancient story of the Holy Family’s Flight into Egypt could, however, call us in the church to account; inviting us to ask how we ourselves might be part of this repetitive violence; how we ourselves, seeking our own security, might sometimes pay tribute to the Herods of our world, to the “powers that be.”
We have no scriptural information about what Mary and Joseph did while they were in Egypt, how long they were there, or even where they stayed. There is a large body of non-scriptural stories and legends, and an extraordinary number of shrines and churches in Egypt that claim to have sheltered the family during their visit to this foreign land. In some areas, there is a stiff competition between the shrines, each one claiming to have been visited the longest, or to have provided the better accommodations. We will never know.
What scripture does offer is a number of connections between Egypt and the people of Israel. As a place of refuge, Egypt has some ambiguity. It has been used this way before. Another Joseph once brought his family here to save them from famine. A whole series of Hebrew prophets and leaders sheltered in Egypt at one time or another. But Egypt was also the place of bondage and oppression, the beginning point for God’s saving act of the exodus. Here is a bit of incredible irony. In the time of the exodus, the wicked pharaoh slaughtered Hebrew babies, causing Moses to lead his people on a flight through the Red Sea into the desert. Now, Mary and Joseph, a good Jewish couple, must run to Egypt because Hebrew babies are being massacred in their own land.
In the midst of these many connections, this story also presents an unexpected turn in the overall narrative. The writer of Matthew’s gospel has, to this point, led us to believe that this infant king, Jesus, would be a person of great power, before whom rulers such as Herod would tremble, and to whom kings from foreign lands would bow down. Now we learn that instead, Jesus will be one with the most helpless and vulnerable people on earth.
Later in this same gospel, the adult Jesus will identify himself with those who are hungry, naked, in prison, ill, or oppressed. But here, in the very beginning of the story, our infant savior is already a refugee – one who has fled the threat of death, and who must find life in a new place, without the comfort of familiar people, familiar customs, or even familiar language.
If this gospel story does nothing else, it must call us to attend the needs of the refugees who are learning to call Greensboro home. Jesus said, “When you have (helped) the least of these, you have (helped) me.” When we work with the refugee community, we will find Jesus there.
But our reading has more than this message of outreach, as important as that message is. In today’s lesson, more than once, the writer makes the claim that “all of this” has happened according to God’s plan as put forth in the scripture. This author wants readers to know that Jesus has been part of God from the very beginning. It is Matthew’s way of speaking the truth that is proclaimed in poetry in the Gospel of John: “In the beginning was the Word, and the Word was with God and the Word was God.”
There is a sense of mystery here, a timelessness that cannot be explained, but that is at the heart of our faith. God’s time may or may not coincide with our linear time. When we speak of God’s plan, as we read in this lesson, we are not necessarily claiming that God has decided what will happen to us tomorrow. What we are saying is that we believe God already inhabits tomorrow. God is there before us, and will be with us when we arrive. How can that be? I don’t know. What I do know is that with God all things are possible. That was what the angel said to Mary. Jesus himself said it: “… for God all things are possible.” Because God holds all of time - past, present, and future, nothing can stop God’s plan. Nothing will prevent the coming of the Kingdom of God – not Pharaoh, not Herod, not any government or governor, no matter how horrible or cruel. Since the time when our gospel lesson was written, empires have come and gone, wars have been lost and won, but wherever the hungry are fed, the blind see, and the oppressed are set free, there IS the kingdom of God on this earth. It is among us, it is here, and yet it also over there. We cannot confine it, we cannot define it, we cannot always see it, but we know it is there.
Our daily lives have plenty of pain. Like Joseph and Mary, we’re go along, putting one foot in front of the other, and then, all of a sudden – we’re on our way to Egypt! Sometimes it seems that life turns on a dime, up becomes down and the way ahead disappears. What kept Joseph and Mary going was nothing more or less than faith – faith that God intended the best for them, and that no matter what, God would be with them. It was the same as the faith of Abraham, who offered up Isaac, his only son. It was like the faith of Moses, who led the people out of bondage. It was just like the faith that kept Job silent when God spoke from the whirlwind, the faith that allowed Jesus’ disciples to move forward after the day of Pentecost. It can be our faith – yours and mine.
Faith is more than blind trust. Faith is knowing, not with your head, but with your heart. Here is a description of faith, a paragraph from Eli Wiesel’s book “Night.” Wiesel writes as a prisoner in one of the Nazi death camps:
"Then came the march past the victims. The two men were no longer alive. Their tongues were hanging out, swollen and bluish. But the third rope was still moving: the child, too light, was still breathing...
And so he remained for more than half an hour, lingering between life and death, writhing before our eyes. And we were forced to look at him at close range. He was still alive when I passed him. His tongue was still red, his eyes not yet extinguished.
Behind me, I heard a man asking:
"For God's sake, where is God?"
And from within me, I heard a voice answer:
"Where He is? This is where--hanging here from this gallows..."
Faith will take us to safety in Egypt, and bring us home again. Faith is our participation in God’s plan that this whole creation will someday be redeemed, that someday swords will be turned to plowshares, someday mourning will be turned to joy and we will all be given gladness for sorrow.
This is the promise of God, and it will be so.