Today’s Author is Prince of Peace member, Scott Tunseth.
I appreciate the words from Matthew’s Gospel that we read each week as we also work through the Old Testament story of God and God’s people. Matthew 2:13-15 brings us back to Egypt as Joseph and Mary flee there with their infant son Jesus to escape the clutches of King Herod who was about to order the massacre “all the children in and around Bethlehem who were two years old or under” (Matt 2:16).
No little irony here. The Israelite people fled slavery in Egypt at the hands of Pharaoh centuries before Jesus was born, and now in Matthew’s Gospel Egypt becomes a safe haven for Jesus and his parents, who apparently stay there quite a while until Herod eventually dies and it is safe to return home. The author of Matthew often uses the phrase: “This was to fulfill what had been spoken by the Lord through the prophet” to prove that Jesus fulfills the ancient prophecies in Hebrew Scripture. In 2:15, the phrase “Out of Egypt I have called my son” is a reference to the words of the prophet Hosea who in Hosea 11:1 says: “When Israel was a child, I loved him, and out of Egypt I called my son.”
So, Matthew knows that the “son” who returns from Egypt with Joseph and Mary is not the son that Hosea was talking about, but rather, his (Jesus’) return from Egypt to Palestine (Galilee to be exact) parallels the great exodus from Egypt undertaken by the ancestors of Jesus. In Jesus the story comes full circle.
And once again, the story of God’s salvation is marked by violence, the slaughter of innocent children. Once again we wonder why some must die while others live. And as we look to the end of the story told by Matthew and the other Gospel writers, we can ask the same of Jesus: Why must he die so that we might live? This is a theological question that has been pondered often and taken up by many theories of atonement. But that’s a subject for another time.
As followers of Jesus the Christ, we live in the shadow of the cross but also in the mystery of the empty tomb. Death, which sometimes seems to surround us on every side, is not the final word. We are called out of death to new life in the waters of baptism just as the Israelite people were called to freedom through the sea. Full circle.
We give thanks, O God, that through the water and the Holy Spirit you give your daughters and sons new birth, cleanse them from sin, and raise them to eternal life. Amen. [ELW, p. 231]