When they had gone, an angel of the Lord appeared to Joseph in a dream. “Get up,” he said, “take the child and his mother and escape to Egypt. Stay there until I tell you, for Herod is going to search for the child to kill him.” So he got up, took the child and his mother during the night and left for Egypt, where he stayed until the death of Herod. And so was fulfilled what the Lord had said through the prophet, “Out of Egypt I called my son.” After Herod died, an angel of the Lord appeared in a dream to Joseph in Egypt and said, “Get up, take the child and his mother and go to the land of Israel, for those who were trying to take the child’s life are dead.” So he got up, took the child and his mother and went to the land of Israel. But when he heard that Archelaus was reigning in Judea in place of his father Herod, he was afraid to go there. Having been warned in a dream, he withdrew to the district of Galilee, and he went and lived in a town called Nazareth. So was fulfilled what was said through the prophets: “He will be called a Nazarene.”
Fact and Meaning: Christmas Come Full Circle
Once again Christmas has come and gone. Somewhat weary from all the celebrations, purchases, family gatherings, programs and trips, we look for a moment to reflect on it all and make sure that it has been worth our time. I think of the children in the Charlie Brown Christmas Special who break into histrionics, certain that their revelry has something to do with the Christmas meaning, until little Linus takes his quiet place center stage and sums it all up with the ancient words: “The shepherds returned, glorifying and praising God for all that they had heard and seen.”
The shepherds apparently experienced the same facts as the rest of us, but the facts’ impact on them was the touching thing. Deep beneath the surface of details are profound meanings which change lives and send us on in new directions. It’s worth taking the time this morning to see what our text really wants to say to us about this, and what others in the course of history have done with these words. Perhaps we can also be assured of realizing the deeper meaning of Christmas in our own lives.
Matthew’s “take” on the Christmas story
Everyone has a right to their own “take” on a story and Matthew is no different. As a Jew writing to Jews, he finds it important to set this story within the context of Jews’ hope and expectation. The impact of such reflection can be powerful and it has a special meaning for me today. As I write this sermon, I’m awaiting for the moment, perhaps tomorrow, when our first grandchild will arrive. I’ve been perusing a book titled What to Expect When You’re Expecting (of which, it says on the cover, ten million copies have been sold). In a foreword, one of the authors is justifying the book’s writing, as she tells of an experience which, for mothers, is “exhilarating, exhausting, fulfilling, confounding, heartwarming and nerve-wracking.” Such words could surely sum up Matthew’s own feelings as he sought to give birth in words to the hope and consolation of Israel, the birth of a promised Messiah.
The approaches he uses strike us as strange, perhaps, but we should remember he writes within the context of literary strategies--typologies and analogies--which made good sense to people of his day. The story of Jesus’ exile into Egypt is for Matthew a type of Joseph’s original exile in the Old Testament setting. It is a kind of second Exodus. When Jesus arrives back in the land he left, he inaugurates a new Israel, a new drama of salvation. The people of Israel have been waiting for this day and Matthew uses Old Testament prophecy to demonstrate that the new day has arrived. Quoting Hosea 11:1 (where the prophet was actually talking about people who went in and out of Egypt in the latter half of the second millennium), he seeks to give a deeper meaning to the prophecy by having it refer to Jesus himself. As a result, people of his day can interpret Jesus’ arrival as a new beginning, especially at a time when the Roman yoke seems to have brought an end to Israel’s hope for meaning and future.
Matthew also uses the story of the exile into Egypt and the problematic return under a new unsympathetic ruler in Judea, Archelaus, to explain why Jesus ends up in Nazareth. You may remember that Bethlehem was the prophesied future home of the Messianic ruler, but Matthew explains that it was dangerous to return there, thus justifying Jesus’ growing up in Nazareth, in Galilee.
Some of Matthew’s interpretation may be challenging for us. After all, for example, Joseph never returns to Israel while he is still alive. And Moses, who returns safely to Egypt because “the men who were seeking your life are dead (Exod. 4:19),” words which parallel Jesus’ situation with Herod, had actually killed a man, hardly the situation with the infant Jesus. However, such “trifles” misunderstand the purpose of literature. As Aristotle may have intended with his distinction between history and poetry, there are facts and there are meanings. Sometimes they do not parallel each other and sometimes they transcend each other. In this case, it is more important for us to understand what Matthew is intending to say than to assure that his use of analogy and typology is in accord with our own contemporary understanding. Matthew wanted to demonstrate that Jesus represented a new beginning for the people of Israel as for us all. He wanted to explain that what people longed for, as the fulfillment of life and hope, had arrived in one who came in the fullness of time.
Egypt ’s “take” on the Christmas story
It’s interesting to pause for a moment and see what Egyptian Christians have done with this story. On the one hand, we who have come through the Enlightenment and its subsequent rationalism may consider their treatment of it superstitious. However, the meaning which they have taken from the story is more important than the facts which were available to them.
From the standpoint of geography and history, an exodus from Israel to Egypt in the early first century need not have taken the Holy Family much farther than the current Gaza Strip (which represented the boundary of Egypt’s territory in Jesus’ day). The Egyptians, however, have been far more impressed with their own involvement in the Christmas story than such a sparse visit would allow. Today, along the Nile River, there are many “Stops of the Holy Family,” which have become tourist attractions for the Coptic Christians of Egypt. In fact, one should say these sites are actually religious pilgrimage destinations for an often persecuted Christian minority representing less than one tenth of Egypt’s population. On weekends, in a country with no Disneyworld or Sea World, Christian families take buses to these destinations where they marvel at the footsteps in stone of the infant Jesus and relax in monastic gardens over tea and biscuits. Here the Christmas story allows them to reflect on God’s regard for them as a people, and to make personal new beginnings as Christians. They wonder why Christians from the West do not come and ponder their marvels. In the end it makes little difference whether we acknowledge their unique and very ancient tradition or not. These sites continue to provide refuge for a persecuted group in today’s world and help a Christian minority to appreciate their own unique meaning for Hosea’s passage “out of Egypt have I called my son.” In their own words, they are allowed to think of themselves as a “second Holy Land,” even if not regarded as such the West. Sometimes fact and meaning are juxtaposed in different ways in differing situations. Egyptian Christians, still waiting to celebrate their more ancient Christmas tradition on the eve of Jan. 5, should be remembered by us who have taken this text to heart in such a personal way.
Our “take” on the Christmas story
Sometimes things are not what they seem. The Christmas story, much beloved by all of us, is bedecked with angels, shepherds and sheep, wise men or kings, donkeys and camels. (In Mexico last year I saw a life-size nativity replete with non-kosher pigs!). At more ethereal levels there are heavenly hosts, Hallelujah choruses, and millions of children world-wide costumed in pageants. Once we walk away from all this in time, finishing the last of the cookies and herring and fruit cake, we can’t help but ponder, with Mary, what all of this means. Meaning, after all, is what we are about in life, not just data, events, and facts. Matthew and the Coptic Christians of Egypt can help us here.
Matthew addressed the needs of people who were longing for fulfillment, for the realization of hopes of dreams. The Coptic Christians, in their own sometimes desperate longing for freedom to express themselves and live their faith, continue to look for consolation. Both of them speak to us in our own contemporary needs. They remind us that over and above the tinsel and gingerbread of the Christmas story’s facts and details, some of them quite fanciful and legendary, there are words about hope and peace to those upon whom God’s favor rests. They are reminders that in the midst of a world of plenty there are those who have too little—that in a world where there are Tsunamis that can kill 76,000 people--our God of stable and straw makes his home among the exiled and the have-nots. They bring practical encouragement to be the little Christs in our world who help to realize the expectations of those caught between the gaps. They challenge us to fulfill the prophecies that out of Egypt’s bondage new freedom dawns. They allow us to complete the Christmas story, to have it come full circle, because we have been embraced it—even as we enter a new year. Let Matthew tell it through us, as if we were the shepherds themselves, glorifying God for all we have heard and seen.
Prof. Dr. Dr. David Zersen, President Emeritus
Concordia University at Austin
djzersen@aol.com