Sacred Season, Love

Advent Week Four

Matthew 2:3-18

Now when they had departed, behold, an angel of the Lord appeared to Joseph in a dream and said, “Rise, 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.” And he rose and took the child and his mother by night and departed to Egypt and remained there until the death of Herod. This was to fulfill what the Lord had spoken by the prophet, “Out of Egypt I called my son.”

 

Herod Kills the Children

Then Herod, when he saw that he had been tricked by the wise men, became furious, and he sent and killed all the male children in Bethlehem and in all that region who were two years old or under, according to the time that he had ascertained from the wise men. Then was fulfilled what was spoken by the prophet Jeremiah:

 

 “A voice was heard in Ramah,

    weeping and loud lamentation,

Rachel weeping for her children;

    she refused to be comforted, because they are no more.”

 

The Return to Nazareth

But when Herod died, behold, an angel of the Lord appeared in a dream to Joseph in Egypt, saying, “Rise, take the child and his mother and go to the land of Israel, for those who sought the child’s life are dead.” And he rose and took the child and his mother and went to the land of Israel. But when he heard that Archelaus was reigning over Judea in place of his father Herod, he was afraid to go there, and being warned in a dream he withdrew to the district of Galilee. And he went and lived in a city called Nazareth, so that what was spoken by the prophets might be fulfilled, that he would be called a Nazarene.

 

Joseph never gets to go home. We don’t talk about this often. Joseph is a stable guy, with a good job, a fiancé, and a baby on the way. It’s the 1^st century white picket fence and 2.5 kids, albeit with an immaculate conception and the birth of the foretold messiah.

Then one day he finds himself in the middle of a nationwide upheaval. Literally everyone and their cousin is on the move. And so, Joseph packs up his wife and his life and heads to Bethlehem. There, a child is born that he had nothing to do with, his family becomes the center of a region-wide murder plot involving a king, some fortune tellers, and a shiny star, and he has to run away in the middle of the night, ending up in a completely different country. Joseph is an active player in none of this. It all just sort of happens to him. And he never gets to go home.

Today, nearly 71 million people are displaced, the highest number in recorded history. Every 2 seconds a new person is displaced from their home, in less time than it takes to read this sentence. One person out of every 108 is an asylum-seeker, internally displaced, or a refugee. Half of them are children.

This past year I worked with the International Rescue Committee to help refugees and asylum seekers find jobs in the south Seattle area. My clients had advanced degrees, excellent English, experience as professors, managers, and engineers, and better computer skills than me.  We were lucky if I could find them a job as a night security worker. Many of them spoke longingly of their middleclass lives back home. Some still owned property in their home country, a huge asset they would never be able to cash in. One woman tried to explain to me the standard of life she was used to. She pulled up a listing for a multimillion-dollar property in downtown Bellevue and asked me confidently how long it would take her to work her way back to that. I looked her in the eye and told her she was almost certain never to see that level of luxury again.

If America were suddenly to become unlivable, if a blight took out all our corn crops, or a political party staged a coup, or sea levels rose and flooded our major costal cities, where would you go? Few of us hold foreign citizenships, or have relatives abroad, or even speak a second language. By 2020, the UK will have accepted 20,000 Syrian refugees under the Vulnerable Persons Resettlement Scheme, less than the population of Cottage Lake, Washington. In Canada it can take years to process an application to be reunited with your spouse or underage children. Grandparents, siblings, and adult children are not eligible under the family reunification program. Keeping your family together can be a decades long struggle, and the chance to return home may never come.

Joseph never gets to go home. He is an asylum seeker in Egypt, and fear of Herod’s son keeps him internally displaced even after he returns to his own country. He took no actions to deserve this. It just happened to him.

But the one action he takes over and over again, is love. When Mary tells him she is mysteriously pregnant, he loves her enough to stay together. When the birth of a child that isn’t his own puts Joseph’s life in danger, he loves that child enough to run away to Egypt. And when, years later, it is still not safe for his family to return to his home, he loves them enough to start over. Over and over again, Joseph is given the chance to leave. But he chooses to stay. He chooses to love. And the woman who he loves gives birth to a child that he loves. And that child, who was saved by Joseph’s love grows into a man who saves the world through love. Jesus, Son of God, son of Joseph, learned to love the world through a father’s love.