“…’get up, take the child and his mother and flee to Egypt….'” Matthew 2:13
The Wise Men have come and gone, Mary gets Jesus off to bed, and then she and Joseph lie down. The precious gifts of the Wise Men are there in the corner and, in the dim light, they stare at them, expecting them to disappear like a dream. For a family that experienced the wonders of Christmas Night, even this is almost too much to take in.
But the moment doesn’t last. Joseph’s sleep is disturbed by a dream, this one a warning to grab his son and his wife and run. And before sunrise, they are on the road, headed for the unknown.
In the years the calendar gives us a second Sunday of the Christmas season, it falls either on or near Twelfth Night. The season of Christmas is almost over. Soon it will be time to pack away all the decorations, the lights, and the music.
Truth be told, the season, for most of us, ended over a week ago. That beautiful moment when the church is dark, the candles are lit, and voices young and old sing together often quickly gives way to the cold light of the world after Bethlehem. It’s a world where things break, you get sick, and things are neither calm nor bright.
Perhaps this is why I wish as a community of Christians we’d tell this story more often. It is not just a pivotal moment in the life of Christ, but it’s one that speaks to our experience of the Christmas season. It, and not the arrival of the Wise Men, is the true close of the season. It is a story that expresses just how abrupt the transition from the manger to the world beyond is.
Maybe if we told this story more, it would allow us to mourn, as our hearts long to, that the redemption of all things is not yet. Perhaps it would give us license to be sad as we encounter what Auden calls this “bleak post-Bethlehem world.” Sad, not that we’re back at work and the year’s to-do list yawns in front of us, but that the world is not what it is meant to be. We are not what we are meant to be.
Tonight, before going to bed, I’ll cut off the lights inside the house for the last time. When I wake in the morning, before dawn, I’ll unplug those outside, plunging the yard into darkness. It’s a darkness I will then have to, like the Holy Family, head out into. There, I will find no promise of safety and, sometimes, no guide on the way.
But like them, I’m not alone. And, eventually, I will find my way home.
Be near me, Lord Jesus, close by as I walk into the darkness and the unknown.