Fleeing to Egypt
Fleeing to Egypt
Matthew 2:13-23
There are a whole lot of Christians for whom the inerrancy of Scripture is the foundation of faith. I’m not one of those Christians. Trust me, here…The Bible is amazingly powerful, sacred and fascinating. I live with a text every week. I’ve been preaching it pretty much non-stop for 25 years! Here’s the thing, though: I worship God, not the book.
For those who insist that the Bible is literally true, we are facing a real problem this morning. The two Gospels which discuss Jesus’ birth and early childhood tell very different stories. In Luke, shepherds visit at the manger, Mary and Joseph take Jesus to the temple a couple of times and then they they are off to Nazareth. In Matthew, wise men visit the child in a house in Bethlehem. Then, through a series of dreams, Joseph is told to take the child all the way to Egypt, wait until Herod dies, return to Israel and, finally, settle in Nazareth.
The only thing the two Gospels agree on is that Jesus grows up in Nazareth. If your stake is to defend the inerrancy and harmony of Scripture, you’ve got a big problem. However, to me, what matters isn’t to try to make Luke and Matthew say the same thing. What matters is to hear what they each are saying.
Luke’s agenda is to show us that Jesus was aligned with everyday people. Jesus wasn’t a politician or a priest. He was one of us. So, when he is born, the common people—the shepherds—are the ones who are invited. After he is born, his parents do what any good Jewish family would have done. He is circumcised. A few days later, he goes through the rites of purification. Sure, strange things keep happening. Simeon makes his declaration about the child and about how this child will break his mother’s heart. Anna makes her prophecy, too. But the overwhelming message is that he is going to grow up like one of us in an entirely average place where any of us could have grown up. This is the springboard for a ministry that will reach out to common people.
So, Luke has a story to tell. He has an agenda. And, it may well be the case that he bends the narrative to fit that agenda. Here’s what’s true for me. Whether the video tape—if I had it—would show me actual footage of the baby Jesus at the temple in Simeon’s arms or something else, the story that is unfolding is one that suggests that the sacred is immersed in what is common and every day and that there are surprising people along the way who recognize the sacred in their midst. We shouldn’t overlook the small town or the average folks or the crazy old guy or the eccentric older woman at church. That truth resonates for me.
Even though the story is very different in Matthew, there is something true being revealed there, too. Matthew has a story to tell. He has an agenda. Like Luke, he will bend the narrative to fit his agenda. Matthew’s agenda, though, is more complicated for us to take in two thousand years later. Matthew is writing to a Jewish audience. Matthew wants that audience to see that from before his birth, Jesus’ life and core Jewish truths were converging.
Let’s start with a man named, Joseph, who has dreams and listens to them. The one assist that we get with this is that Andrew Lloyd Weber wrote that incredible musical, “Joseph and the Amazing Technicolor Dreamcoat” for his child’s Bible School: “Je…Je…Je…Joseph!” It would have been a powerful thing for Matthew’s audience that Joseph, Jesus’ father, was doing exactly what Joseph in the Old Testament did. Both of them are listening to dreams. This connection was not an accident. This is the kind of thread Matthew weaves into the narrative because any good Jew would recognize that this is how God works.
Then, things get really interesting. The most central event of the shared history of the Jewish people is the Exodus from slavery. God chooses to listen to the cries of the slaves. God sends Moses and a bunch of plagues to get Pharaoh’s attention. Eventually, God parts the Red Sea so that the people can flee into the Wilderness and be led toward the Promised Land. The gist of the whole story is that God chose these unlikely people. These people knew that God had chosen them because it was God who led them out of Egypt.
Here’s the crazy thing: the story that Matthew chooses to tell is that God chooses this woman, Mary and her husband, Joseph. And how do they know that God has chosen them? Brace yourself: because God led them back into Egypt. This is the ultimate twisted revision of the story of the Exodus. The Promised Land and it’s terrible leader were so toxic that when God so loved the world that God became one of us, God could be born here but God could not stay! That’s how corrupt and awful and faithless things had become. It was better to be in Egypt than to be in Israel!
As if that’s not enough, at the heart of the narrative is the twisting of the Passover story, itself. The last of the plagues in Egypt at the beginning of the people’s history was the death of the Egyptians’ first born sons. The people marked their doors with the blood of a sacrificed lamb. The plague passed over the slaves’ homes. The sons of the Egyptians died, a terrible testament to how stubborn Pharaoh was about not wanting to let the people go. Now, though, in this retelling of the story, terrible sacrifices are made at Herod’s command. The king of Israel had grown so corrupt that he was killing Israel’s own children to protect himself.
The catch is that historians don’t believe this slaughter ever happened. Herod did terrible things but there is no evidence he did this terrible thing. However, I don’t think Matthew intended to be historical. I think he meant to be provocative. It’s not that what is happening is exactly what happened before but it is close enough that it should make his audience go, “Hmmm…” It should stop them and make them think, “Hold it. This is the way God works, isn’t it?”
What’s interesting to me is that both Luke and Matthew’s narratives present us with great truths. Luke’s invitation to see Jesus from the start as one of us, as familiar with the common person’s life, as a regular guy in some respects, is essential. If Jesus isn’t like me, if he’s not familiar with a life like mine, if he’s just some otherworldly spiritual presence floating through this world, then what will he have to teach me? I need to know that Jesus saw just as many people and places and things that were worth loving in this world as I do. I need to know that he knew just how hard this life can be. Luke is going to help me see that.
At the same time, Matthew invites me to see some larger truths about how God works in this world. God has always had a tendency to choose to care for the least likely people. That was true with a rag-tag bunch of slaves in Egypt. That was true with a young, very average couple who weren’t even married yet in Bethlehem. Wherever I find myself, I’d best be on my toes if I’m looking for God’s presence. I should look in the least likely places. I should search the faces of the least likely people. God is the gym class captain who picks the kid whom no one has ever picked first. God says, “I want you on my team.” Of course, if we are self-aware at all, this is good news because being the least likely pick may be our best shot at God ever choosing one of us. (The alternative would be some delusional moment when we think to ourselves, “Of course God’s going to pick me! Who else would God pick?)
Even more specifically in this morning’s text, we can carry with us the notion that if we are following God’s lead and going where God would have us go, we should not be surprised to find God leading us straight to Egypt or some equally absurd location. Can you imagine how shocked Mary was when Joseph came to her and said, “Mary, you’re going to think that I’ve lost my mind but…we are supposed to flee to Egypt.” “Gee, Joseph,” Mary would answer after a long pause, “What makes you think that?” He would answer, “I had a dream.” “Oh…” Mary would whisper, looking into his eyes, “Then we have to go!” There are moments in life when the only possible reason we would do something is because it is the faithful thing to do—however we arrived at that conclusion. These people are newly married. They have an infant son. They have already had the weirdest beginning that any family could have…and yet, they go. That’s what faithful people do. God leads. We follow.
That’s why I copied the strange painting and put it in our bulletin this morning. https://www.thewinedarksea.com/wp-content/uploads/2017/04/SC171946.jpg It is such an odd scene. Joseph is asleep on the ground with a hood over his head, exhausted with worry from trying to keep his family safe. His donkey (whom you can’t see in this copy) is grazing on the few blades of grass that can be found in the dessert. Taking up a huge part of the painting is the Sphinx, the ultimate symbol of Egypt. And nestled in the Sphinx’s lap is Mary, sound asleep. No one’s eyes are open. Everyone is lost in exhaustion and sleep. Yet, our eyes are drawn to the Christ child who sits on Mary’s lap and glows in that dark night.
Your dark night might not happen on the way to Egypt. It might be on your way to some dreaded meeting at work. It might be on your way to the parent/teacher conference. Whatever it is, you will be going where you never thought you would go and feeling a little crazy and maybe even a little lost. You may find yourself totally exhausted along the way and remember Mary asleep in the arms of the Sphinx or Joseph exhausted and splayed out on the ground. Yet, no matter how dark that moment might seem, what we should remember is the Christ child through whom light still shines. God will be present. The light will shine. Matthew reminds us that wherever we are called to go, what matters is not where we are going but who is going with us.
According to Matthew, Joseph and Mary and the child were refugees and were strangers in a strange land. When it was safe, they were called home. And when Herod died and Herod’s son turned out to be awful, too, God made sure that this family was hidden away safely in the countryside. God leads. The faithful follow. That lived experience of God being present in life, not just in a book, is the foundation on which we stand.