The Holy Family’s Flight to Egypt
Partway through college, I lived for a year in Cairo studying Arabic. Kamal, the father in my host family, had been raised Presbyterian; my host mother, Iman, was from a Coptic family. On Saturdays, we piled into a Nasr Fiat and drove from their apartment at the western edge of Cairo, across the Nile and through countless neighborhoods to Heliopolis, a suburb east of the city, where Iman’s parents lived. All afternoon and into the night we would talk and share stories and meals with her extended family. I will always be grateful that this family took me in, humored me as I mangled their language, showed me their culture, and shared their lives.
It was the late 90s, a world where phone calls were made from booths and emails were sent only from internet cafes, which made for such different ways of living with others and communicating. Google wasn’t a thing yet. I soon discovered my map wasn’t much help in this ancient city of winding streets, often without names. Egyptian Arabic is not a written language, forcing me out of my comfort zone of book learning. Cairo taught me so much, not least to keep my eyes and ears open, to engage with strangers and very different ways of seeing the world, and to talk even when I didn’t know all the right words, or when words weren’t coming out quite the way I’d intended.
In the entryway to the grandparents’ house hung a large framed painting of Joseph, Mary, and baby Jesus with a donkey and date palm in the foreground, while the three pyramids of Giza featured prominently behind them. I found this picture absolutely captivating, in part, because it opened my eyes to a new way of seeing Jesus and the Holy Family in the context of a different culture and against the backdrop of a far greater swath of history.
Previously, my imagination of their flight to Egypt was largely shaped by Renaissance paintings with their stark contrast between darkness and light, particularly Caravaggio’s and Reubens’ depictions of Mother Mary tenderly cradling her infant. Their clothing and the countryside reflect the artists’ time and place--turn of 17th century Europe.
But here, in Heliopolis, among this family who traced their faith back to the decades following Jesus’s Resurrection, to the tradition that St Mark himself had brought the faith to Egypt, I came to see another facet of Jesus.
In the oldest neighborhood of Cairo, a fourth-century church—Abu Serga—stands on the site of a cave where the Holy Family is said to have rested on their journey. All around are the old walls of the Roman fortress, that according to tradition, Joseph helped build when he needed work in this foreign land.
In The Chosen—a multi-season TV show on Jesus’ life that I commend to you—is a scene where Jesus speaks with a woman from Egypt he and his followers meet on a road. The series is deeply grounded in Scripture and incorporates imagined elements that offer insights and interpretations to round out stories.
In this scene, Mary Magdalen has been making small talk with a woman wearing a distinctive necklace. Jesus asks her if it’s Egyptian. Yes, she grew up there. At this point Jesus shifts to speak to her in her native language, Coptic to respond, I grew up in Egypt, too. He says the necklace reminds him of things he saw there when he was a child. She introduces herself as Tamar from Heliopolis, and he replies, “Jesus of Nazareth. Peace to you, sister.” When they bid farewell, the disciples can’t hide their surprise: “You speak Egyptian?” and he relates the story of his early years that we heard today.
When the kings and the princes have gone home, an angel comes to Joseph in a dream and tells him to take the child and his mother, and seek sanctuary in Egypt. They leave under the cover of night. As the contemporary English poet—and my former priest—Malcolm Guite begins his sonnet on the Holy Family’s flight,
We think of him as safe beneath the steeple,
Or cosy in a crib beside the font,
But he is with a million displaced people
On the long road of weariness and want.
For even as we sing our final carol
His family is up and on that road,
Fleeing the wrath of someone else’s quarrel,
Glancing behind and shouldering their load.
It seems the king continued in pursuit of a child he perceived as a threat to his power, and they remain abroad some years.
When Herod dies, the angel again appears to Joseph in a dream, telling him to return to Canaan, but to a place considerably north of Bethlehem, near lake Galilee in Nazareth. In one sense they are returning to their own people, but it’s not their home. This is a story of a young family seeking refuge from violence, repeatedly compelled to uproot their lives, cross the wilderness, cross borders, and do their best to make a home so far from home.
As in Luke’s narrative we heard on Christmas Eve, Matthew’s telling underscores how Jesus’ family and birth upended expectations and inverted the values of the world, then and now. The Christ began his earthly journey on the road, and he is present even now with displaced people, “on the road of weariness and want.” He continues to travel with those crossing wastelands of rocks and sand, and with those crossing the rocky seas in search of shelter and safety. If we are to looking to encounter Jesus and grow in our love and knowledge of him, we’re likely to discover him on the road with migrant people.
Matthew’s Gospel reverberates with echoes of the Hebrew Bible as he weaves in phrases and patterns from Genesis and Exodus, and identifies fulfillment of prophecies. With this backdrop he is making claims about the Christ, and in this expanded context, multiple layers of meaning emerge.
Of all the books of the New Testament, Matthew is the book that draws the two Testaments together. This Gospel, written for Jewish readers, is making a case that Jesus was the long-expected Messiah fulfilling of the ancient promises of God to his people.
When Matthew cites the prophet Hosea, “Out of Egypt I have called my son,” he draws conclusions about fulfillment that are quite foreign to us. It’s helpful to remembers, as the Scottish theologian William Barclay observed, Matthew was writing, “not to convince a twentieth century Scotsman; it was written to convince a first century Jew” (pp. 8-9). This Gospel invites us to encounter Jesus in a different context from our own, and to see him from the perspective of another culture with different ways of thinking and speaking and viewing history.
Today’s passage reflects a multitude of stories from Genesis and Exodus, and holding them up together creates a fuller picture of the Christ. The names of his father, Joseph, son of Jacob, hearkens back to the Patriarchs. Both Josephs were saved by dreams, and both landed in Egypt, where their people were protected.
At the same time, Matthew establishes parallels between Joseph and Moses. The angel’s words, “those who were seeking the child’s life are dead” repeats the Lords words to Moses pertaining to Pharaoh (Ex 4.19), and Matthew depicts Jesus as reliving Israel’s escape from enslavement. In the chapters that follow, Jesus will spend 40 days in the wilderness echoing the years his people wandered in Sinai.
As the Season of Christmas draws to a close, Matthew challenges us with pictures of Jesus that are anything but “cosy in a crib beside the font.” As we head into a year with Matthew, let’s accompany each other in coming to see Jesus where we least expect him as we walk together through struggles and joys. Come, let us encourage one another in keeping our eyes and ears open, in engaging with strangers and very different ways of seeing the world, in talking even when not sure we have the right words. Come, let us venture together keeping eye out for the Christ taking on unexpected forms in Scripture, Sacraments, and song, and in each other. Come, let us adore him as we journey, “with a million displaced people/On the long road of weariness and want.”