Egypt Redux
Matthew 2: 13-23

December 30, 2001

There is a reason that Joseph is in this story: the reason is Egypt. What the Gospel writers do best and remarkably well is to turn the Old Testament sagas upside down. The evangelists either redeem the bad stuff or do a variation on a theme when it's positive. This is called a redux - a bringing back, a revival, a restoration. Play Egypt again, Samuel.

Matthew has the wise men, the Magi, the Three Kings, whom we love to portray, but the rest of his story we forget or ignore. We shouldn't, because Matthew's nativity presents a more usable model of how God can transform our violent world.

God had to come to Bethlehem - which can mean "house of bread" or paradoxically "house of war." God had to come there, not because of any innate worth of this small city on the outskirts of Jerusalem, but because like so much of the rest of our world, it is a place teeming with violence and political corruption. If God came only to the Bethlehem of our carols, "how still we see thee lie," there would be little hope of our being saved. How many peaceful, sinless towns do you know? Certainly not on the Saskatchewan prairie. Jesus is never mentioned returning to Bethlehem in the Gospels. Nazareth's reputation is not much better.

Mary is mentioned in Matthew, but in as minor a role as one could have being the mother of the Messiah. Joseph is the silent centre of attention. He too never says a word that we hear, but apparently he had to sleep with one eye open with all the significant dreams he dreamt. What a strange life this was for Joseph - told to take on a prematurely pregnant wife, just as Hosea in the Old Testament was commanded to marry and love the faithless harlot Gomer. Then after the child was born and beset upon by exotic foreigners with extravagant, impractical gifts, Joseph's interfering dreams told him to flee with his family in the middle of the night to Egypt lest the horrid Herod slay the child.

Going down to Egypt is not a simple matter, especially in those days with no rest stops conveniently placed along the Trans-Canada. They made it to Egypt and somehow made do. Then there was another dream, one of liberation and freedom, for the wicked Herod was dead. Before Joseph and Mary and Jesus could make much headway home, yet another dream warns him not to return to Bethlehem, for Archelaus was now king and he was no better than his father. So, Joseph, Mary, and Jesus never returned to Bethlehem.

Many of you already know this story, though we have tended to push it aside since it does not rhyme with our carols. Nevertheless, more than ever before there are many writing in the newspapers, pronouncing on TV, talking in the workplaces, and yes, even murmuring in the pews that our Christmas pageants - "the real meaning of Christmas" which everyone assumes, but no one defines - are Pollyannish spectacles worthless in "the real world."

The Gospel upon that cold night is that in the midst of the very real world, God came to dwell among us, with us, as one of us.

Why now in the 21st century is the recounting of Herod slaying all the Jewish boys under two years old no longer unbelievable? Not so long ago, at the least in my young adult years, a lot of scholars and ministers complained that Herod's ruthless act of political insurance was a melodramatic fairy tale, grossly overstating the case. There were no records left behind from Roman rule about such a measure being taken.

Which of how many places in our hurting, violent world today do you wish to use as a parallel? Auschwitz, Rwanda, South Africa, Cambodia, Bosnia, East Timor, Afghanistan? None of them ever bothered to leave their own records. Surely it did not take until September 11, 2001, for you and I to know this.

Even the Gospel story itself: doesn't it sound familiar? Pharaoh tried to kill all the male Jewish babies way down in Egyptland, but just like Herod he missed his target. Moses slipped through the bulrushes.

Matthew cites Hosea 11:1, "Out of Egypt I have called my son." Hosea's prophetic words refer to Israel, the Exodus, and Moses, but now these words are linked to God's firstborn son saved from another Pharaoh's genocidal methods. Egypt has been redeemed from its legacy of slavery and oppression, restored to a land of safety and freedom.

Sure, there is poetic license at play here, but Hosea also married Gomer, while Joseph married Mary. Unlike Gomer, Mary was faithful to the Cross and the third day that followed.

The Silent Nights are over and the violent world we pretend to call the real world has taken over. Just like millions of refugees fleeing from wars and religious fanaticism and massacres of the innocents on the borders of Afghanistan, Jesus and family dislocated themselves. We are not shown the divine entrance into human life by the certainties of stability, but out of strange and foreign Egypts.

Finally, this part of the story ends as the family finds refuge in Nazareth to the north in Galilee, so that what was spoken through the prophets might be fulfilled, "He will be called a Nazorean." Jesus of Nazareth would be his name, even on the cross.

Yet, no one has ever figured out who those prophets were who foretold a Nazorean Messiah. No one mentions Nazareth in the Old Testament; it may have been a fairly recent settlement. If he is to be known by a place which is unknown and which has no sacred history, then Jesus, the Word who became flesh and dwells among us is from everywhere... Regina, for example.

Preached by Robert Kitchen
Knox-Metropolitan United Church
Regina, Saskatchewan