Out of Egypt
Out of Egypt
Matthew 2:19-23
When Jesus is crucified in the Gospel of Matthew, the Roman soldiers put a plaque above his head that reads, “King of the Jews.” During Holy Week, we may note this in passing. There’s so much going on. Earlier that week, Pilate accuses Jesus of claiming to be the “King of the Jews,” himself. Again, mostly, the reference tends to fly right past us. This morning, though, I want to pause and put this accusation in context. According to Matthew, who were the Magi looking for when they got to Herod’s court? They were asking for the newborn King of the Jews. That question was enough to drive Herod crazy.
Here’s the next question: “Why would the most powerful man in the country be threatened by a group of foreigners asking such a question?” The answer is that the first priority for a person in power is to stay in power. The more power that person has, the more likely they are to be paranoid about maintaining that power. The more paranoid they are, the more likely they are to do terrible things to hold onto that power. Aside from all the things that they would like to do with their power, their most central focus is to identify and eliminate threats to that power the moment they arise.
Welcome to Herod’s world! Herod became the “King of the Jews” in 37 BCE and died in 4 BCE. For 33 years, he ruled Judea, the region that included Bethlehem and Jerusalem. On the positive side, Herod, the Great, accomplished a great deal. He built the city of Herodium, created the harbor in Caesarea Maritima, and built the fortress city of Masada in the middle of the desert near the Dead Sea. Most notably, Herod rebuilt the temple in Jerusalem and made it way more extravagant than even the original temple that Solomon had built 1000 years earlier. Josephus, the famous historian, said that it was like a huge white mountain that loomed over everything, except for all the parts that were covered in gold. Herod was also a brilliant economist who increased the national wealth dramatically by engaging in international trade. Herod was even credited with helping to avoid a regional famine.
Despite all those achievements, Herod was always suspected of not really being Jewish at all by most of the people because of where he came from. Even more importantly, though, the very legitimacy of his rule was questioned for one simple reason. He didn’t become king because he was called by God and anointed by a prophet—the old tradition. He didn’t become king because of his goodness or faith or moral authority. No, the sole reason that Herod became king was because Rome appointed him. Everyone knew this. The only reason that he remained in power was because he appeased Rome by gouging the people to pay their “tribute” to Rome. He knew that the people could turn on him at any moment. He knew that Rome could turn on him at any moment. So, he spent his every moment obsessing about the smallest whiff of disloyalty or revolution from the people or focussing on any hint of displeasure from Rome. He accomplished a lot but was haunted by his illegitimate rule.
Because his authority was always in question, his ruthlessness was demonstrated again and again. Herod would execute anyone who he perceived to be a threat to his rule, including his own first wife and three of his sons. Herod would keep increasing taxes on his people so that he could keep paying off Rome and buying himself more time. Herod was a powerful, desperate, insecure man. And when the king is a desperate man, everyone is in trouble.
Eventually, Herod, the Great, died. He didn’t die because Rome killed him. He didn’t die in the hands of revolutionaries. No…Herod died of natural causes. After 33 years, Herod was a broken man. Power, and the blind devotion to retaining power, left Herod mentally ill and physically ravaged. A power hungry life killed him.
For us, Herod is a historical footnote. For Matthew, Jesus is God’s answer to Herod. Herod may have been appointed the “King of the Jews” by Rome. However, the case that Matthew makes is not only that Jesus had the legitimate claim to that title—anointed by God, not Rome, choosing powerlessness over power, living with spiritual and moral authority—but that he bore an even more important—Emmanuel, “God with us,” the Messiah. Herod ruled for 33 years. Jesus lived for 33 years. However, when Herod died he became a historical footnote. When Jesus died, his spiritual and moral authority took a central place in the world for the next 2000 years. Ruthless leaders come and go. A person who has moral and spiritual authority always remains powerful.
So, as Herod is living his final days, rotting mentally and physically from the inside out, Jesus is an infant in Egypt, of all places. As we heard last week, Matthew tells us that Joseph had been warned in a dream to take Mary and the baby and flee. Joseph, a faithful man, listens to that dream and takes it seriously. It’s fair for us to assume that Joseph didn’t have a history of being warned in dreams about upcoming peril, so we have to give him credit for facing something novel and not dismissing it. We are drawn to what’s familiar. We tend to see what we expect to see.
It’s also fair for us to assume that Matthew would have relished the chance to tell his audience about a man named Joseph who listened to a dream. One of the core stories of the Hebrew Scriptures is of another Joseph who’s family were the original ancestors of the tribes of Israel. Joseph’s brothers are consumed with jealousy because their father adores Joseph. After being attacked and left for dead by his brothers, Joseph gains the attention of the most powerful man in the world—Pharaoh in Egypt—because Joseph has powerful dreams. And, the most powerful man in the world, who happens to not be consumed by paranoia, listens to Joseph.
Finally, it is fair for us to be challenged again by Matthew. He’s already put before us these Magi who followed a star. Would we follow a star, too? Now, for the second time, God speaks through a dream: the magi are warned to go home by a different way; Joseph is warned to leave home altogether. Would we be the kind of people who would listen to what we never expected to hear? On the one hand, we have a king who roars and terrorizes. On the other hand, we have a God who whispers to us in the night. Would we take the whispers seriously?
Joseph and Mary and the baby Jesus flee to Egypt, the very place from which our ancestors in faith had fled. Those ancient people had barely made it across the parted Red Sea alive. Now, as history is wont to do, the tables are turned. The only place that is safe enough for the Messiah to survive is the very place that used to be the most God-forsaken place on earth. Go figure…
As I pointed out last week, this means that one of the very first experiences for Jesus and his family was to be outsiders, to be a people on the run, to be refugees. They were strangers in a strange land. They were foreigners. Although we don’t know the details or even the duration of this time in Egypt, it is reasonable to believe that this young family would have been treated decently in Egypt. Egypt, it seems, was a prosperous place. People from around the world were welcomed there. With a king who felt threatened and paranoid, it wasn’t surprising that the king’s people would be threatened and paranoid, too. With a paranoid leader foreigners and refugees become scapegoats for the people’s fears.
Having respected the “get up and go” message that he had received in a dream, after an unknown period of time, Joseph gets a second, “get up and go” dream. This time, the message is that Herod, the Great, is dead. It is safe to go home: “Get up and go home—now.” It is time to get out of Egypt.
Who came out of Egypt centuries before? Before the people ever fled Egypt, it was Moses who was raised there in Pharaoh’s court by someone who gathered him up as he floated down the river in a basket. Raised as one of their own, Moses eventually sees a Hebrew being abused by an Egyptian and realizes that the Hebrew is actually one of his own people. He defends the powerless man and ends up fleeing Egypt. In other words, the greatest leader that the people had ever known came…(say it with me now), “out of Egypt.”
Jesus and Mary and Jesus—the refugees—found refuge in Egypt. Then, they fled to their homeland, seeking refuge there. However, though, Herod, the Great, is dead, Herod’s son—the new king—is not. Joseph suspects that the son may be just as much of a threat as the father had been. The son, Herod Archelaus, would in fact rule until Jesus’ death and would be a part of the power structure that killed him. Joseph wasn’t wrong. So what does Joseph do, he flees again—not back to Egypt—but to a totally obscure little village called Nazareth in the most remote province in the land—Galilee. No one in Jerusalem paid any attention to Galilee and Galileans and their hick accents. No one took anyone who came from such a place seriously. There were too many Gentiles there. The place was just too remote. When you lived there, you might as well be in the wilderness, itself.
This, I believe, is Matthew’s point. When Moses came out of Egypt, after defending the slave, he married a woman who’s father owned sheep. He spent years following those sheep around through the scruff and the dust, safe from the reach of the Egyptian authorities. Then, one day, a bush that was burning but not consumed catches his eye. From out of that bush, Moses receives his calling. In the wilderness, Moses is anointed to his calling by God.
Years later, the calling would come for Jesus, too. It would be time for him to rise to the challenge set before him, to lead the people into a different way of living, to challenge people to see what real power might be. Until then, like Moses, he would tend to the business at hand—in Jesus’ case, the business of growing up and loving this life and all the people around him.
The Messiah would come, just like Moses, out of Egypt. After thirty years, Jesus’ calling would come and he would leave everything that was familiar to begin his ministry, not by passing through a parted Red Sea, but by being dipped into the chilly waters of the Jordan River.