Jesus’s travel to Egypt reminds us that we are a missionary people, together as we pray and send, individually as God plumps us down in the midst of situations in which he calls on us to give witness to him and to the trust in him that sustains us in daily life.
Gentiles throughout the world have delighted in the fact that three learned scholars from somewhere east of Judea appear, a bit tardily, in the story of the birth of Jesus. Their holiday, Epiphany, is often called “the Gentiles’ Christmas.” In many churches in the world Epiphany is a more important day of celebration than Christmas itself although one might ask whether the focus in the event of the Incarnation should fall on them rather than the baby. Gentiles should also rejoice in the implications of what happened when the Wise Men from the East went home, undoubtedly like the Jewish shepherds some time earlier, “making known abroad all that they had experienced concerning this child.” In all likelihood, they got the same reaction of “wonder at those things which were told them” by the Magi.
Meanwhile, back in Bethlehem, the scent of danger in air caused Mary and Joseph to ponder their future. Clearly, their child had attracted more attention than they had anticipated, and this attention was not necessarily a good thing, they had good reason to think. So, they did what a considerable number of the inhabitants of Judea and Galilee had done in their time. The oppression of Pharaoh lay in the very distant past, and there were jobs in Alexandria and environs. A Galilean carpenter could certainly find work in Egypt and probably a welcoming immigrant community as well. The very young Jesus headed with his parents to Egypt. Like missionaries that have populated the pages of church history, he became a migrant who took up residence among people who spoke a different language, cooked different foods, and had other gods than he. Neither Matthew nor Luke—or Mark or John, for that matter—give us a clue as to how long the family of Joseph from Nazareth spent in Egypt. We can only speculate whether Jesus learned another language or two, whether he could read hieroglyphics when he returned to Nazareth, whether he left playmates behind. But we can be quite sure that the Word made flesh made himself at home, as children do, in his new environment in Egypt. We can well imagine that the second person of the Trinity made the wearisome trek from his Egyptian home to his “real” but—for this child—very strange home in Nazareth. We can presume that he missed certain friends and some customs to which he had become accustomed during his days and years in Egypt.
The “flight” to Egypt reminds us today that Jesus Christ came for the entire population of the whole earth. The Word that in the beginning created the heavens and the earth could make himself at home among Egyptians as well as Judeans and Galileans. He even found conversation later with Roman centurions and women from Samaria and Syro-Phoenicea. He was literally at home among the children of Abarham, whose blood brother he was, but he had no fear of rubbing shoulders with sinners from every corner of the earth he had created for them.
As we think of the Wise Men coming to Jesus, crossing the line between Jew and Gentile, we should also think of the implications of the fact that at a rather tender age Jesus crossed the line between Gentile and Jew as he fled with his parents to Egypt. His trip to Egypt reminds us that like our Lord, believers make themselves at home easily wherever God leads them. For life on earth is a pilgrimage, and settling down in one geographical location for longer periods of time does not alter that fact. Jesus’s taking up residence in Egypt directs us to be ready to go where God calls us. His time in Egypt invites us to recognize that wherever we may be, we are among people whom God created. Even human beings in places we never reach are creatures of the same God who has shaped us in our mother’s womb. He has given them worth as his creatures, for whom Jesus died at the hands of people like us, his blood brothers.
Even human beings in places we never reach are creatures of the same God who has shaped us in our mother’s womb. He has given them worth as his creatures, for whom Jesus died at the hands of people like us, his blood brothers.
Jesus’s travel to Egypt reminds us that we are a missionary people, together as we pray and send, individually as God plumps us down in the midst of situations in which he calls on us to give witness to him and to the trust in him that sustains us in daily life. Roughly thirty years after taking up residence in a “foreign” land, Jesus told his disciples that he was sending them with a message of forgiveness of sins into the world that he had created, to the human beings whom he had created. They went. As the story is told, Peter ended up in Rome, Thomas in what is now called Chennai, John on the island of Patmos. We are called to walk into the despairing situations of people near, and when possible, far, with his forgiveness, support, and love. For we are Christ’s people, who have received the message of the Jewish rabbi who knew Egypt first hand and the hills and valleys of Galilee, Samaria, and Judea like the back of his hand.
That Jesus was a migrant, a refugee, who sought asylum in Egypt when things became dangerous in Judea and even problematic in Roman-ruled Galilee, reminds us that the Old Testament prophets insisted again and again that we open our lives to the orphan, the widow, and the sojourner . Israel as a people had memories of being on the road, from the days of Abraham’s trek from Ur to the Mediterranean coast They recalled Joseph’s journey from a well in Dothan to a palace in Egypt, They were quite conscious of Moses’s wandering through Sinai’s desert to the Promised Land. As people who by nature have no abiding city on earth, believers in Jesus greet fellow wanderers and sojourners, whether they have fled political persecution and economic hardship or are on the run from the past that they have experienced next door. As Jesus continues to be present in our lives, we are “there”—that is “here”—for those whom the Lord places in our path.
That Jesus apparently settled into his new Egyptian surroundings without much trouble—none worth reporting about, at least—reminds us that God has placed us in certain situations that may feel like foreign territory. But every place he plops us down is a place where he wants our lives to take place at this time, no matter how “foreign” it feels. Believers in Christ, heirs of the Passover tradition, should always be prepared to be drawn by the Holy Spirit into new, often uncomfortable, sometimes strenuous, journeys into the foreign terrain of other people’s lives. At the same time, we are as much at home as we can be on this outlying stretch of our Father’s domains, just waiting for Immanuel’s call to come to his fuller or more immediate present. For he is with usnow, in every today, whether in Egypt or Judea or North America, but his promise is that “then” we shall know him in full.
Contemplating our Lord’s flight to Egypt should not occupy us for long since it can only send us on a trip into our own speculation. Nonetheless, briefly recalled, Jesus’s sojourn in Egypt reminds us that we are sojourners who are called to love other sojourners, wherever they may come from. The Lord’s flight to Egypt reminds us that our God makes himself comfortable and at home in all parts of his earthly creation. Christ’s time in Egypt reminds us that we are a people on the move, into the lives of others, with the forgiveness of sins, life, and the salvation that restores a personal sense of being worth much as God’s child.
