The story of the coming
of the Magi and the flight into Egypt, from Matthew’s Gospel, is
really rather strange.
It’s certainly not
found elsewhere;
in fact, Luke’s
version of events is so different you sometimes wonder whether they
are talking about the same thing.
Here we are, in
Matthew,
finding the Holy Family
living in Bethlehem,
fleeing to Egypt,
and then settling in
Nazareth,
well out of reach of
Herod’s descendants.
But Luke tells us that
the family lived in Nazareth in the first place,
went to Bethlehem for
the census,
and, far from avoiding
Jerusalem,
called in there on
their way back to Nazareth!
And, indeed, went there
each year for the festivals –
I wonder, don’t you,
whether they stayed with Mary’s cousin Elisabeth
and whether Jesus and
John played together as children?
Not that it matters.
We all rationalise the
two stories into one,
and add our own
extraneous bits –
the ox and the ass, for
instance,
are figments of
people’s imaginations, not part of the Luke’s account.
Even the stable – the
manger may well have been separating the dwelling-house from the
animal-house, rather than in a separate stable as we envisage it.
But from Matthew’s
telling of it, the Holy Family lived in Bethlehem anyway and didn’t
need to use a stable!
And they were probably
astrologers, not kings,
and Matthew doesn’t
actually say how many there were!
He doesn't even specify
that they were male, although they probably were. The word “Magi”
just means “wise ones”.
And do you really think
people kept bursting into song,
like they do in Luke’s
gospel?
I rather think that
Luke, like Shakespeare, was writing what he thought they ought to
have said, rather than what they actually did say!
But both Gospels –
for both Mark and John
choose not to start with Jesus’ birth,
but at the start of his
ministry –
both Gospels agree that
Jesus was born to a virgin,
was conceived in her by
the Holy Spirit in some way we simply don’t understand.
And they both agree
that he was born in Bethlehem,
to a mother named Mary
and a father named Joseph.
Both gospels also
provide a genealogy for him,
tracing him right back
to Adam in St Luke’s case,
and only as far back as
Abraham in St Matthew’s case!
And occasionally
tracing by different routes.
And both agree that the
baby Jesus was visited by outsiders, by people who were not from the
religious establishment of the day.
The shepherds were
apparently outsiders, not accepted in Jewish society.
And the Magi, of
course, were foreigners, outsiders, not even Jewish.
Similarities,
differences – it doesn't really matter, as I said.
The Bible people were
not writing to modern standards of historical accuracy, but they are
still telling us true stories, however they might vary in detail.
It’s what they are
telling us that matters, not the historical details!
Have you ever noticed,
too, that Luke’s version of events is from Mary’s point of view,
but Matthew is telling us it from Joseph’s?
Luke shows us Gabriel
going to Mary and saying “Hail, thou that art highly favoured;
blessed art thou among
women!”
But Matthew shows us
Joseph’s reaction to the news that Mary was expecting a baby and it
wasn’t his –
he could have discarded
her publicly and left her with no other resource than to go on the
streets.
But he didn’t.
He decided he’d end
the betrothal quietly, with no public scandal.
And then he listened to
the angel who said that he should marry her anyway.
I think I rather like
Joseph, don’t you?
He comes across as
someone who’s willing to listen,
and to change his mind.
He comes across as
someone who listens to God,
and is prepared to
accept that God speaks to him in dreams.
In our reading today,
again, Joseph listens.
He acts on what he
hears –
he takes his family and
flees to Egypt,
and when he is told it
is safe, he brings them home again,
only to Nazareth, not
Bethlehem.
But this whole story
that we heard read to day has echoes in the Old Testament, doesn’t
it?
And it echoes down the
years.....
There is Israel going
down into Egypt
and being called up out
of Egypt in the Exodus as God's son (hence the quotation from Hosea
in verse 15),
but we also have echoes
of when Pharaoh tried to kill Hebrew infants
which led to Moses
being hidden the bulrushes.
Jewish legends about
this event also have dream warnings
just as we have here
and I expect Matthew
knew about them when he was writing the story.
At that, wasn’t there
another Joseph who knew all about hearing God’s voice in dreams?
What these echoes do is
to root the story in history.
The provide a setting
for Jesus, if you like.
Sending Jesus wasn’t
just something God decided to do totally randomly –
he was firmly rooted in
the history of the Jews, who were expecting a Messiah.
Matthew, who is thought
to have been Jewish, is trying to show how the Scriptures led down to
this moment.
Rather like, if you
will, when Jesus explained the Scriptures to Cleopas and his wife on
the road to Emmaus, so they were able to see that they pointed to
Jesus, and to the Resurrection.
For Matthew, all the
Scripture quotations act as proof that Jesus is who He claimed to be.
It’s not the sort of
thing scholars nowadays consider proof,
but that doesn’t
matter.
For Matthew, as for all
Jewish scholars of the time,
that was how you proved
things:
was there a relevant
quotation in the Scriptures?
He wants to set the
Messiah in context.
And showing that
history is repeating itself:
a new Pharaoh killing
the babies, a new Joseph listening to dreams, a new journey into
Egypt, and a new Exodus out of it.
And it echoes down to
our own day, doesn’t it –
refugees, people
fleeing in terror of their lives, genocide....
it never ends.
The magi –
wise men, astrologers,
it’s thought –
came to Bethlehem to
worship the new-born infant,
and we are invited to
do the same.
But we don’t just
worship him as a baby –
it’s not just
about watching a child grow and develop, and applauding when he does
something really clever, like I do with young James.
Actually,
he has learnt to applaud himself when he's done something he
considers clever, but never mind that now.
No,
worshipping the Baby at Bethlehem involves a whole lot more than
that.
It’s
about worshipping Jesus for Who He became, and what he did.
We
kneel at the cradle in Bethlehem, yes –
but
we worship the Risen Lord.
We
celebrate Christmas, not just because it’s Jesus’ birthday,
although
that, too,
but
because we are remembering that if Jesus had not come,
he
could not come again.
And
he could not be “born in our hearts”, as we sing in the old
carol.
We
worship at the cradle in Bethlehem,
but
we also worship Jesus all year round,
remembering
not only his birth,
but
his teachings,
his
ministry,
the
Passion,
the
Resurrection,
the
Ascension and the coming of the Holy Spirit.
And
we worship, not only as an abstract “Thing” –
what
was that song:
“I
will celebrate Nativity, for it has a place in history....” –
it’s
not just about worshipping a distant divinity,
but
about God with us:
Emmanuel.
Jesus,
as a human being, can identify with us.
He
knows from the inside what it is like to be vulnerable, ill, in pain,
tempted.....
From
the story of the flight into Egypt, we see him as a refugee, an
asylum-seeker, although he was just a baby, or perhaps a small boy at
the time.
From
the story that Joseph chose deliberately to settle his family in the
sticks, far away from civilisation, we see Jesus as living an
ordinary, obscure life.
His
father, Joseph, was, we are told, a carpenter, although in fact
that’s not such a great translation –
the
word is “Technion”, which is basically the word we get our word
“technician” from.
A
“technion” would not only work in wood,
but
he’d build houses –
and
design them, too.
He
was a really skilled worker,
not
your average builder with his trousers falling off.
Jesus
would have been educated, as every Jewish boy was,
and
probably taught to follow his father’s trade.
After
all, we think he was about 30 when he started his ministry,
and
he must have done something in the eighteen years since we last saw
him, as a boy in the Temple.
God
with us:
a
God who chose to live an ordinary life,
who
knows what it is to be homeless, a refugee;
who
knows what it is to work for his living.
Who
knows what it is to be rejected, to be spat upon, to be despised.
Who
knows what it’s like to live in a land that was occupied by a
foreign power.
This,
then, is the God we adore.
We
sing “Joy to the World” at this time of year, and rightly so,
for
the Gospel message is a joyful one.
But
it is so much more than just a happy-clappy story of the birth of a
baby.
It
is the story of the God who is there.
God
with us.
Emmanuel.
Amen.
