“There’s a song in the air! There’s a star in the sky! There’s a mother’s deep prayer and a baby’s low cry! And the star reigns its fire while the beautiful sing, for the manger of Bethlehem cradles a King!” So goes the first stanza of “There’s A Song in the Air”. We linger on this beautiful, angelic scene of Christmas—when the angels leave the shepherds then the newborn baby seems angelic. Mary ponders all of these things in her heart.
Then Joseph is warned in a dream that King Herod is going to be searching for Jesus—to destroy him. DESTROY him. This passage in Matthew spares no words. Destroy is something that happens in war, in gale-force hurricanes, in earthquakes, in ferocious fires. Destroy is not what one human does to another, much less an adult human to a newborn baby—except in extreme circumstances. Joseph, Mary, and Jesus have to run away. They not only have to leave town—they have to leave the country. They go to Egypt, seeking asylum, seeking to escape violence and bloodshed and certain death.
Why? Herod has heard from the “visitors from the East” who are looking for the one born “King of the Jews”—whom the star will lead them to. All Herod can hear is “threat to my power”. The most important word to Herod in that song is KING—“the manger in Bethlehem cradles a King” is a threat to his power. If indeed a King of the Jews is born, then the Jews won’t stay well-behaved as Herod rules over that part of the Roman Empire—the “conquered” may not stay conquered; they might rebel. So how to eliminate this problem? DESTROY it. He is a king; he can make this problem go away. All male babies under the age of two are slaughtered, by Herod’s order.
Then, once Herod has died, Herod’s son is ruling, and Joseph doesn’t feel safe going to his ancestral town of Bethlehem, in Judea (the Southern Kingdom after Israel’s split many years earlier). So they go to Nazareth, in Galilee, in the Northern Kingdom, where the ruler is not a descendent of Herod. The way Matthew’s Gospel tells the story, they have to find a new home—in essence, in a new country.
This kind of world still exists today. People are killed so a ruler can maintain power. People flee their home countries to escape violence and horror, and even have to reinvent their lives in a new country. The part of the Christmas story that we don’t usually tell does indeed affirm that God in Jesus DOES know all of human experience—not just getting bullied by the other kids at school, but getting bullied by a paranoid ruler to the point of life literally being threatened.
God-with-us is truly with even the most threatened of us, with even the most disregarded of us, with even the most desperate of us. God-with-us really does get it—at the risk of being DESTROYED God enters into our world, and seeks to show “with-ness”—and how we are to live with God so that that may not ever happen again.
GOSPEL Matthew 2:13-23
13 Now after they had left, an angel of the Lord appeared to Joseph in a dream and said, ‘Get up, take the child and his mother, and flee to Egypt, and remain there until I tell you; for Herod is about to search for the child, to destroy him.’ 14 Then Joseph got up, took the child and his mother by night, and went to Egypt, 15 and remained there until the death of Herod. This was to fulfil what had been spoken by the Lord through the prophet, ‘Out of Egypt I have called my son.’
16 When Herod saw that he had been tricked by the wise men, he was infuriated, and he sent and killed all the children in and around Bethlehem who were two years old or under, according to the time that he had learned from the wise men. 17 Then was fulfilled what had been spoken through the prophet Jeremiah:
18 ‘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.’
19 When Herod died, an angel of the Lord suddenly appeared in a dream to Joseph in Egypt and said, 20‘Get up, take the child and his mother, and go to the land of Israel, for those who were seeking the child’s life are dead.’ 21 Then Joseph got up, took the child and his mother, and went to the land of Israel. 22 But when he heard that Archelaus was ruling over Judea in place of his father Herod, he was afraid to go there. And after being warned in a dream, he went away to the district of Galilee. 23 There he made his home in a town called Nazareth, so that what had been spoken through the prophets might be fulfilled, ‘He will be called a Nazorean.’