“So Joseph paid attention, took the child and his mother during the night, and left for Egypt. He was there until Herod died in order to accomplish the words of the Holy One spoken through the prophet: Out of Egypt I’ve called my son” (Matthew 2:14-15).
After the holidays. I’m willing to bet that if you haven’t used those words this year, you’ve used them at some point in the past. November into December is busy, full of gatherings and meals and shopping and fun. It’s also emotionally taxing: family, grief, money all bring stresses and strains upon us. We’re so tired during the holiday season that there are some things like ophthalmologist appointments and that dead branch hanging off the backyard tree with which we just can’t deal.
And then January arrives. The lights are turned off for the last time, unwrapped from the house and packed away. We’re all out of leftovers and we’ve got to think of something to fix for dinner. And all those things we put off are there waiting for us, and we slip so quickly back into the mundane routines of life in these days the poet W.H. Auden described as “the Time Being.”
The Flight into Egypt often gets left out of the Christmas season. And understandably so, it’s a terrible intrusion of reality into our season of stars, angels, shepherds, and Magi. It’s the sudden, stark reminder that this season of song and story is the exception, and the world after the holidays the rule. And it’s not just that it’s a moment of terror that comes in the middle of the night—like a phone call or a sudden pain that won’t subside. It’s the normality.
Within these two verses years pass. The family that, moments before, was entertaining strangers from afar are now living normal, quiet lives of work, school, and laundry. If there are any miracles or supernatural events, they’re so small as to be forgotten. Such is life in the Time Being.
Which is a lot like, no exactly like our lives in a world where we know the promise will be kept, but it can still seem a long way off.
I doubt that Jesus had any memory of his birth, the same way I and you and practically everyone doesn’t remember our own even though we were there. Same goes for the visit of the Magi or that scary trip under the cloak of night out of town and to a place of safety.
But, I’ll bet he had plenty of memories of days covered in Egyptian dust, surrounded by people who thought his accent was strange. But the neighboring parents cared for him as they did every other child. And while a world would come to think of his youth as one bathed in starlight, he probably thought about bright, sunny days when the wind blew warm and evening came late.
It is really here, after the holidays within the Time Being that we are probably closest to the life Jesus lived and remembered upon this earth. It was these days that helped form and teach him about what could be, how the world, if ruled by love, could be something amazing.
Maybe, in this time, the hope and promise of Christmas and Epiphany took form.
Jesus, as we enter a new, ordinary season give me eyes to see, ears to hear, and a heart to feel the presence of Love in this world.