Dec 26: Out of Egypt I Have Called My Son

Jörg Ratgeb: The Flight into Egypt
Carmelite Convent, Frankfort, 1515-21

Feast of the Holy Family of Jesus, Mary, and Joseph

Gospel: Mt 2:13-15, 19-23

Then Joseph got up, took the child and his mother by night, and went to Egypt, and remained there until the death of Herod. This was to fulfill what had been spoken by the Lord through the prophet, “Out of Egypt I have called my son (NRSV, Mt 2:14-15).”

Father in heaven, our first conscious experience of you as one God, as a God who cares for his people, as a God who challenges his people to love one another, is when the Hebrews were enslaved in Egypt. Their plight, as they remember it, was onerous. They were held captive in a foreign land, subjected to forced labor and worse. In their memory, even their future as a people was threatened by infanticide. Nearly overcome by their troubles, Lord, they heard you speaking to them, more clearly than any people before them, and realized that they were not alone. It was not only comfort that you brought them. They became aware of you as a God who empowers his people. You were actually calling them forth out of their oppressive situation into freedom.

Today we acknowledge that you speak your one Word to all of us in the depth of our being at every moment. The Hebrews remember a privileged moment, after their escape from subjugation in Egypt, when they were especially aware of your presence. It took place in a mountain storm in the Sinai. There they sensed that they had become your covenanted people, bound by your law, and called to a future of promise in the land.

And so they went forth toward their destiny, not always accepting of the challenges that you laid upon them, often murmuring and frequently rebellious. Still you never abandoned them in spite of their sinfulness. They looked to Moses to represent you to them, not yet realizing that you speak directly to us all.

Moses died before reaching the land. Was it because even he had questioned you, Father, or was it perhaps because finally the land was not really the destiny to which you called your people?

In the incarnation of your Word, our Lord Jesus Christ, we finally have come to understand that you summon us forth to a destiny far greater than the land. We are called to share eternal life with you, a destiny to be fulfilled, not here, certainly not in the land, but in the world to come, still a destiny that begins even here in this life.

Jesus is truly a new and absolute Moses for all peoples. He is Moses and beyond.

The Lord Jesus, unlike Moses, does not claim merely to represent you, Father, to us and us to you. In Jesus we all have direct and immediate access to you.

Moses did his best to show the people the way into their destiny. Jesus, on the other hand, is himself the Way, and the Truth and the Life. We come to you, Father, in him.

Lord, for the writer of Matthew’s gospel, Jesus is the new David but also the new Moses. We can easily find Moses in the way in which Matthew casts the story of Jesus who, for Matthew, is born into a politically oppressive social situation in which his very life is threatened from the beginning. Here too we encounter a tale of infanticide as the Hebrews remember from their experience in Egypt. Here to, Lord, you are present to call Joseph and the holy family out of danger into freedom. You lead then curiously enough back into Egypt so that, of course, like Moses and the people, Jesus may come up out of Egypt. Out of Egypt I have called my son.

Father, from the Hebrews’ first acknowledged encounter with you, and certainly as fulfilled in the Lord Jesus, we have continued to be aware of you as always calling us forth. Every situation in which we find ourselves has its own oppression and is always impoverished as concerns the future with you forever to which you summon us.

Because of the evil which we do, and with which we have surrounded ourselves, we are truly an alienated people living in subjugation in a foreign land. Call us to freedom, Father, as you always do. Empower us to shake off the chains of sin which hold us down, the evil that we perpetrate upon one another. Strengthen us in the struggle against all forms of injustice and violence in this world to prepare us for our true future in the world to come. Lord, you who recognize us as your daughters and sons, call us out of Egypt.

Through Christ our Lord. Amen