Read: Matthew 2:13-15 NRSV
Now after they had left, an angel of the Lord appeared to Joseph in a dream and said, ‘Get up, 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.’ 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 fulfil what had been spoken by the Lord through the prophet, ‘Out of Egypt I have called my son.’
Imagine you are Joseph. You’ve been a good guy. Much better than anybody else would have been in the same circumstances. You come from a good family, the oldest and most respected in Israel. Your fiance has come to you with a crazy story to explain her unplanned pregnancy, and being the supportive and trusting person you are, you believe her and marry her anyway. At least you’ll have a front row seat to the meteoric rise to power of the long-awaited Messiah and the destruction of the Roman occupiers. Things seem to start off well: wise men from the east arrive with expensive tributes that seem to corroborate Mary’s story. But all of a sudden you are running for your life as King Herod, the most powerful Jew in the world and the pawn of Caesar, is looking for the child who isn’t even yours. Is this the thanks you get for being the bigger man? For obeying the angel?
If Joseph was looking for an easy exit, he could have used this opportunity to ditch Mary and baby Jesus and go back to being the righteous, law-abiding Jew that he was. He even had a perfect scapegoat set up for him in Herod to get out of his responsibilities. What if he had turned in the child, which wasn’t even his. He would simply be following orders, obeying his king. Surely God wouldn’t ask him to care for the child if it meant they would all die, right?
We have the benefit of reading about the flight to Egypt 2,000 years after the fact. It’s difficult to imagine the fear and despair that must have gripped Mary and Joseph as they fled their homeland and escaped to a foreign country as refugees. We know how the story ends, but Joseph probably didn’t know it at the time. All he could do was obey the Lord’s commands.
It doesn’t make it any easier, but Joseph’s obedience can be a model for the seemingly overwhelming situations in our lives. When we face some sort of catastrophe, we usually try to take things into our own hands, even if it means disregarding God’s word or the sound advice of his messengers. Sometimes obedience means acting against all of our instincts or common sense. The words of the hymn “Trust and Obey” sound innocuous until we are asked to put them into practice. As Joseph’s story shows, sometimes to trust and obey means closing one’s eyes and jumping into the dark, not knowing how or if you’ll land.
