If you’ve got to go…
If you’ve got to go, you’ve got to go.
13 After the wise men were gone, an angel of the Lord appeared to Joseph in a dream. “Get up! Flee to Egypt with the child and his mother,” the angel said. “Stay there until I tell you to return, because Herod is going to search for the child to kill him.”
14 That night Joseph left for Egypt with the child and Mary, his mother, 15 and they stayed there until Herod’s death. This fulfilled what the Lord had spoken through the prophet: “I called my Son out of Egypt.”
16 Herod was furious when he realized that the wise men had outwitted him. He sent soldiers to kill all the boys in and around Bethlehem who were two years old and under, based on the wise men’s report of the star’s first appearance. 17 Herod’s brutal action fulfilled what God had spoken through the prophet Jeremiah:
18 “A cry was heard in Ramah —
weeping and great mourning.
Rachel weeps for her children,
refusing to be comforted,
for they are dead.”
19 When Herod died, an angel of the Lord appeared in a dream to Joseph in Egypt. 20 “Get up!” the angel said. “Take the child and his mother back to the land of Israel, because those who were trying to kill the child are dead.”
21 So Joseph got up and returned to the land of Israel with Jesus and his mother. 22 But when he learned that the new ruler of Judea was Herod’s son Archelaus, he was afraid to go there. Then, after being warned in a dream, he left for the region of Galilee. 23 So the family went and lived in a town called Nazareth. This fulfilled what the prophets had said: “He will be called a Nazarene.”
Joseph, Mary and little Jesus already knew what it was like to be displaced from their home in Nazareth, even though the displacement in Bethlehem was only going to be temporary. Nevertheless, for a working man like the carpenter Joseph, it had been a huge inconvenience. Assuming that he and Mary had been in Bethlehem for at least 18 months, it would have given him time to restart his business, find a place to use as a workshop, and start getting some customers and orders.
Then he had another angelic dream.
I have been involved with refugees and asylum seekers for over 20 years, and I often find that people just don’t understand what it’s like to flee your country. They seem to believe that refugees can always make informed, rational decisions, and plan what they are going to do. Fear, confusion, rumours and information are all factors driving people to leave their homes and flee, as well as torture, discrimination and persecution.
I have listened to many stories from refugees, and often they had very little time to make an informed decision. Waiting just wasn’t an option. Sometimes people have to get out with just the clothes on their backs. I don’t know of any who were told to go by an angel, but many of them had similar choices to Joseph and Mary. What do I take? What if I am caught with ID before I get out of the country? Who can I safely tell where I am going? How do I get there? What will I need when I am there?
What happened when Joseph woke up from his dream? Perhaps the conversation with Mary went something like this –
The Midnight Conversation
“Mary! Mary!” Wake up!
“Whatever is it? Is it Jesus?”
“Yes… er… no… well, sort of.”
“Joseph, it’s the middle of the night. And Jesus is fine. He’s sound asleep. And so should you be, if you’re going to finish that table tomorrow.”
“I don’t think I’ll be finishing the table. Or anything else for a while.”
“What do you mean? Aren’t you well?”
“I had a dream.”
“Oh…I’m sorry. It must have been bad to wake you up. Shall I fix you a drink?”
“No… it wasn’t a nightmare. It wasn’t an ordinary dream. It was like the one I had after I found out you were pregnant.”
“Oh…another angel?”
“Yes, but it wasn’t as comforting as the last message. We have to leave Bethlehem.”
“Leave? But why? Everything had just started to work out for us. Your business has just started to pay. You’ve just paid the rent on your workshop. It’s almost as established as it was in Nazareth. And people have just begun to accept us here too. I have friends now…and Jesus gets on so well with his cousins. Do we have to go back to Nazareth? You know how people will treat us there. It’s less than two years since we left. They won’t have forgotten that I was pregnant before we married.”
“We’re not going back to Nazareth. We’re going to Egypt.”
“Egypt? Are you sure? We don’t speak Egyptian. We don’t know any Egyptians! And they all worship false Gods! Surely the LORD can’t want us to go there!”
“Mary, was I wrong last time? It’s not like it was a fuzzy dream. He was crystal clear, dazzling white…and he said I had to take you and Jesus, and flee to Egypt.”
“Did he say why?”
“Yes, and that’s why we need to go now. Herod is going to search for Jesus and when he finds him… he will kill him.”
“Oh…dear God…Herod knows the Messiah was to be born in Bethlehem…and he knows roughly when he was born, because the Magi told him when the star first appeared. He will know to look for a boy who is coming up to two years old…”
“…and it won’t be hard to find the right boy. There can’t be more than a few dozen boys of his age in the town, and none of the others got visited by rich foreigners on camels…come on, we need to pack and go right now.”
“I’ll start packing. I can buy some food from the market first thing in the morning. We’ll need plenty to keep us going for the journey.”
“Mary, we can’t wait till the market opens. It’s only six miles to Jerusalem. You can walk it in two hours, and Herod’s men won’t be walking! If we aren’t well away before dawn, we won’t get away at all.”
“Ok, but how are we going to manage with Jesus? He is so heavy now. Can we borrow Jacob’s donkey? Surely he’ll let us, if we tell him why we need it.”
“Mary, we can’t tell anyone where we’re going. If we do, it will put people in danger. If Herod’s men suspect that Jesus is the Messiah, they will torture people until they tell them where we have gone. No, I’ll leave a note for Jacob, and a couple of gold coins from what the Magi gave us. That will be enough for a new donkey, and he can just say we bought it if anyone asks. Folks will assume we have gone back to Nazareth, so if anyone does talk, that’s where the soldiers will look for us.”
“So, what do we take? There’s not much room on the donkey, and he’s not as young as he was. Food for a day or two, some clothes, a cooking pan and some utensils…can we take the scrolls too? We must have God’s word if we are to survive in Egypt.”
“We will take what we can of the scrolls. But there will be some synagogues in Egypt. We will settle where we find fellow Jews.
I will go and get the donkey ready. He won’t like it, but he’ll move if we feed him first. You get packing. We’ll leave Jesus sleeping for as long as we can… And don’t forget to pack something warm. It can get really cold at night in the desert.”
“I am just so grateful for the gifts the Magi brought. We will need every bit of that gold to rent a place to live and set up your carpentry shop. Did the angel say how long we would be in Egypt?”
“No. He just said we should stay until he tells us to return.”
“So this is what living by faith is like. Somehow I thought it would be different. Easier, I guess. More triumphs than trials.”
“The triumphs will come, my love. They will come through the chosen one, our child. Our task is to make sure we deliver Him safely into adulthood. Whatever Herod and other devils throw at us.”
— — — — — -
I wonder if God sent Mary and Joseph to Egypt because it was the last place anyone would look?
Whatever the reason, it meant another new start for Mary and Joseph. Not just a new home, but a new culture, a new language, a whole new environment, and with that, almost certainly suspicion and a degree of discrimination from their new neighbours. After all, did they really need this foreign carpenter? Didn’t they have enough Egyptian carpenters? These foreigners, coming here and taking our jobs!
Isn’t it just like those who make it to the UK to start a new life? Whatever you call them, whether it’s a migrant, refugee or asylum seeker — or worse — all they want is the chance, like Joseph and Mary, to be safe, to have a home and to earn a living.
That doesn’t seem a big ask to me.
