‘…remain there until I tell you....’ (Matt
2:13)
Matthew
2:13-23 (Year A: 1
st Sunday after Christmas
Sunday 1st
January 2017)
The gospel of St Matthew opens up the New Testament. Joseph, the spouse of Mary, is something of a
dreamer. He hears angelic messages in
his dreams. More to the point, he acts on those divine inspirations and
communications knowing in his heart that he must act decisively and urgently. Dreams
are a key part of the story in this passage from Matthew because it is through
this medium that God sometimes speaks to the key actors in the story. Hanging around was not an option for Joseph
or Mary.
- That Joseph received messages in dreams indicates that he
listened to his heart and pondered his situation.
- That Joseph took the appropriate action based on sound
judgment and analysis of the situation he and Mary found themselves in
indicates that he sought, only, what was best for his family to which divine
providence had led him.
- That Joseph waited and stayed the course in that place where
he arrived until further clear indications were forthcoming indicates that he
did not presume to know when or how the future would turn out. Rather, he
stayed the course in patience and in waiting.
Joseph a man of honour
In this passage Joseph, the ‘man of honour’, does the
honourable thing; he defends those in his care and avoids what is evil by
removing them from immediate danger. A
romanticised and nostalgic picture of the Christmas crib gives way very quickly
to a picture of violence and the threat of violence and the human response to
this. According to this Gospel story the
first Christmas did not leave a trail of peace in ‘Bethlehem and its vicinity’
especially if you were a family with an infant boy under the age of 2. The consequences
are harrowing and deeply troubling (
Matthew
2:18) and echo through the ages to the present day:
‘A voice was heard in Ramah, wailing and loud lamentation, Rachel
weeping for her children; she refused to be consoled, because they are no
more.’
In a world of violence, power struggles and hatred, families
and small communities on the margins of society continue to survive. For some
it means fleeing and ‘staying the course’ wherever they find themselves after
fleeing. There are no other options or choices when it comes to survival in the
face of death.
And this is the daily lot of 100,000s of refugees right now,
this Christmas, in the Middle East – in ‘Bethlehem and its vicinity’. There are
lots of Mary’s Joseph’s out there still ….and some of them might be nearer than
we think.
How did the flight into Egypt impact on Joseph, Mary and
Jesus? We do not know how long they
stayed in Egypt (see postscript note 1). Is it possible that Jesus was old
enough to learn something of the local language? Did he play with other African
children? How did Joseph and Mary make a
living? Were they accompanied by other family members? And, did they integrate
into a Jewish community settled in Egypt?
My guess is that they were a pretty normal and typical refugee family
for the times they lived in. Many people were crossing to and from on the
highways of what we call, nowadays, the middle east.
The return to Palestine
Joseph returned with Mary and Jesus to the region we know as
Palestine today but did not settled in Judea where, presumably, his extended
family and closer friends resided. Instead, for fear of Herod’s son who had now
taken over from Herod as ruler of Judea, Joseph settled his family in the
relatively obscure region of Galilee in an even more obscure town called
Nazareth out of which many thought no good could possibly come (
John
1:46).
In summary we have:
- A pregnant unmarried woman in the first place.
- An apparent father as far as society and
immediate family were concerned.
- A birth in outcast settings to a homeless and
poor family.
- A major rumpus and massacre of young children in
and around Bethlehem.
- A flight of a refugee family into Egypt where
they were foreigners for some time.
- A return by the same family from Egypt but,
still, as refugees from their normal and original place of abode (which remains
unclear in the synoptic gospels).
- A life of hidden obscurity for approximately 30
years following which an extraordinary preacher, healer and disrupter appears
in Galilee and finds his way to Jerusalem where he was put to death for his
outspoken words and scandalously irreligious acts.
Now who said that God does not work in very strange ways and
using very strange locations and circumstances to achieve his purposes? (see
note 2, below).
Modern day ironies
Is it not just a little ironic that this story of a family
fleeing danger and facing untold hardships through the desert to a foreign land
has echoes of journeys undertaken over land and by sea by tens and by hundreds
of thousands of women, children and men fleeing the same diabolical forces that
elevate power and control above human dignity? Is it not ironic that Joseph
takes Jesus and Mary to a country called Egypt where, today, a large minority
of that population is persecuted and attacked because they bear the name of the
saviour who was taken there for refuge? Is it not ironic that the focal point
of this feast of Christmas is the scene of a crib housing a homeless family when
thousands of families are accommodated in ‘emergency’ accommodation across the
capital city of Ireland? And, then, there is the historical legacy of Palestine
and Israel as two competing narratives of victimhood and human rights (though
different from but not that different to the historical legacies of Ireland).
The causes of homelessness, migration and persecution are
not unrelated. At some point someone, somewhere decides and acts on the
principle that some goal of power or wealth or pride comes before the most
basic human rights to life, shelter and sustenance. It seems that rich societies (at least those
with high levels of GDP per capita adjusted for tax distortion) are
particularly prone to social breakdown and extremes of homelessness and
poverty. Opulence and pressure of affluence coupled with a shortage of
accommodation is driving the cost of renting as well as purchasing living space
to levels well beyond the capacity of the poorest. The problem is exacerbated
and augmented by problems of addiction and ill-health of mind and body to a
point where people end up sheltering in cardboard and blankets in doorways of
well known public buildings and shops on some of main thoroughfares of our
cities.
Food and shelter is provided by a combination of state and voluntary
effort. But, we must understand better the causes of homelessness, poverty,
addiction as well as the power of unregulated markets to wreck havoc on
people’s lives. The Christmas story is not, for us, just a comfortable and
comforting nice story. It is a call to action for justice in a world pulled
apart by war, terror, poverty and homelessness. The feast of Christmas Day is
followed – immediately – by the feast of St Stephen ‘the first Christian
martyr’ (26th December) and the slaughter of the innocents (28th
December). There is a message somewhere in there for us today.
Postcripts
1 Did it really happen (and so what)?
Some academic theologians and biblical scholars might
question the historical nature of the birth stories in Luke and Matthew
including the flight into Egypt which is unique to the gospel of St Matthew.
What matters, in my view, is the key message or messages in these stories that
form part of a living tradition of transformative faith and love. As for the
literal historical truth of these stories and the many details therein
(sticking with post-enlightenment terminology and understanding of terms of
like ‘history’ and ‘truth’) I reckon that unless there is convincing evidence
to the contrary (which there is not) then one may assume that the stories link
to events that ‘actually happened’ as narrated give or take a few details. I acknowledge that this view may be viewed
with some disquiet by some our illustrious and learned academics.
2 Dysfunctional
families in the bible?
Egypt is mentioned a lot in the Bible. The patriarch,
Abraham, went there to avoid a famine in the land where he came from (
Genesis
12:10). Joseph the son of Jacob ended up in Egypt after a foiled attempt to
murder him triggered slavery for him (
Genesis
37:12-36). And Jacob pulls a smart one on his brother Essau by means of lies and trickery. All of this suggests that
dysfunctional families are not a modern day invention! In
Genesis
46:1-7. Jacob goes to Egypt with his family
on a mission of mercy to rescue Joseph. We may note that this same Jacob had
twelve sons (who gave rise to the 12 tribes of Israel) and at least one
daughter – all by two concurrent wives, first cousin Leah (the one with the
‘lovely eyes’ according to Genesis 29:17) and her younger sister Rachel (the
one actually preferred by Jacob who had special taste) and by their handmaidens
Bilhah (referred to Jacob by Rachel for additional procreation) and Zilpah
(referred to Jacob by Leah for yet further procreation). That could pass for a 21
st century
soap based on the Tudors! (If you think this is all dodgy check out
Genesis
29:1-30:24).
