In the Holy Family, we see the example of God’s command: to trust. In their flight into Egypt, we are reminded of God’s command.
The Holy Refugees and the command of God
Christmas 2C | Matthew 2:13-15,19-23
We have two Jesus birth stories in Scripture. We hear Luke’s on Christmas Eve night. It is the one with the census, the travel, no room at the inn. It is a story of Jesus’s place in the world.
The other comes from Matthew and it is without such fanfare. It is even told in the past tense, as having happened.
There are other stories around the birth that we tell, too. The stuff leading up to it with Elizabeth and Zechariah. And after, in the coming of the strangers from the East.
There’s a kind of comfort and joy that we associate with them. Even if we know these stories have a deeper character.
But this story of the Holy Family’s flight into Egypt is not really an outlier. It is just more obvious about the threat powerful people pose to the Christ Event.
The action
The action of the story is direct. Angels appear to Joseph, warning him of King Herod’s intentions. So he packs up his family and they run away to a foreign land, where the clutches of the mad king can’t reach them.
Later, an angel comes to tell them it is safe to return. But when they hear that it is Herod’s son on the throne, they reason that maybe they shouldn’t go home to Bethlehem. Another warning cements the decision. So instead, they’ll settle in a new place: Nazareth. A podunk little town. The last place a cruel tyrant would look.
This is a familiar kind of story; like fleeing the mob. It is also straight from our own headlines as refugees flee terror in their own lands; seeking safety in another.
It should also be familiar to us as people of faith.
As Moses led his people out of Egypt to free them from the tyranny of a mad king, God intervened to protect them and ensure their deliverance to a foreign land. This is clearly a reversal — the people fleeing to Egypt rather than from it.
These elements are so clear that the people hearing this in the first century would be unable to miss them. But they would also be mixed, confusing.
Throughout Scripture, God instructs that they are never to return to Egypt. For it was the site of their enslavement. This command: that they never return: comes as a literal command, yes, but as a representative one as well. A command to never go back. Don’t seek the comfort of predictability over the comfort that comes from trust in God.
And this is a command that scares me more than any other.
As Rose and I prepare for a new year as a family. As we continue to struggle with a pandemic that is surging again. As we prepare our congregation’s budget. We are commanded to trust in God, not certainty.
Nothing I say to myself makes that any easier. Right now, I am a nervous wreck! Because I want proof that things are going to be OK. I want a system. A mechanism. Balanced budgets. Certainty that everyone is going to be OK. That nothing will bring us down.
I want what I know I can’t have. And I punish myself for it. And often we punish each other for it.
But none of that is trusting in God. That’s all 100% returning to Egypt thinking.
Trusting God is foolish. But it is also necessary. And it is what God has commanded us to do.
The Reversal reveals a new trust
In sending the Holy Family to Egypt, God is reversing a long-standing command, but doing so because of the people’s lack of trust.
God reverses course because the arrangement has flipped. Now, the tyranny comes from within the promised land. And they have to go to Egypt to escape it.
We might be focusing on God’s reversal. But it is founded on the people’s reversal. Their distrust is driving them into tyranny. Not from Roman occupation, but from their joining with Rome for the sake of certainty.
This is the same thing they did in Babylon. And in Egypt.
Joseph’s trust in God is magnified by just how unique it is. His trust in God’s work, first in Mary’s divine pregnancy, and now, in God’s foresight, encouragement, and protection.
On Status
This certainly makes for an awkward Christmas story. Especially at a time in which uttering the word “refugee” is itself considered a political act. Which, in a sense, it is.
But it is also something we are called to talk about because we are commanded in scripture to welcome the refugee. How we do that is obviously the challenge. But that we do it is not.
We, along with with our neighbors at Central Presbyterian and the Interfaith Council of the Wabash Valley have been discussing how we can support refugees in our community. And as we’ve discussed, our federal government won’t call someone a refugee until they are designated as such.
That our government narrowly defines the word refugee…that is political. We, as people of faith, who are commanded by God to welcome the refugee, the immigrant, the displaced, should have little trouble calling anyone coming to us for help as a child of God, and to be welcomed as such.
We’ve been at that for three thousand years. Which is a little longer than our government.
While legal representatives are restricted from using the word refugee, we are not. And more importantly, must not.
For we were refugees.
From the Exodus onward, God has commanded us to welcome the refugee because we were refugees.
This is an unbreakably permanent condition. It isn’t about whether you or I immigrated or sought refuge in our individual lifetimes. Our ancestors did. So we remain refugees. We are citizens and refugees: both.
This is essential for those of us with European ancestry to wrestle with. Especially those who can trace their immigration to the 16th or 17th centuries. This is the land of my birth, but not the land of our birth.
We were refugees. So we offer refuge. Always and forever.
This is Christmas.
All of this is part of our Christmas story. A story which, in a nutshell, describes God’s emigration from power into vulnerability. Being welcomed into a hospitable home and raised as if he were their own child.
Because he was.
God trusted Joseph and Mary without reason and need.
God trusted in humanity. And continues to trust in us.
Through Jesus, we are able to see that trust in the flesh, through story and witness, through personal encounter and revelation. And we are able to connect to God’s trust through our trust.
This is Christmas.
In love, hope, and joy that our trust in God will build more love, hope, and joy in the world.
Forever as children of God. Blessed, trusted, and filled with grace.