The way life is!

Matthew 2:13-18

13 After the scholars were gone, God's angel showed up again in Joseph's dream and commanded, "Get up. Take the child and his mother and flee to Egypt. Stay until further notice. Herod is on the hunt for this child, and wants to kill him."14 Joseph obeyed. He got up, took the child and his mother under cover of darkness. They were out of town and well on their way by daylight. 15 They lived in Egypt until Herod's death. This Egyptian exile fulfilled what Hosea had preached: "I called my son out of Egypt." 16 Herod, when he realized that the scholars had tricked him, flew into a rage. He commanded the murder of every little boy two years old and under who lived in Bethlehem and its surrounding hills. (He determined that age from information he'd gotten from the scholars.) 17 That's when Jeremiah's sermon was fulfilled: 18 A sound was heard in Ramah, weeping and much lament. Rachel weeping for her children, Rachel refusing all solace, Her children gone, dead and buried.

Food for thought!

Flee to Egypt. Stay until further notice. Herod is on the hunt for this child, and wants to kill him.

This statement is a real shock. The Son of the Almighty is on the run, because some human king wants to kill him. We would expect Jesus to have the best protection and security, especially from evil kings like Herod. But he didn’t. Right from his childhood, Jesus is not exempt from problems. And this is the lesson for us; Jesus has started to teach us about life and living, ABOUT THE WAY LIFE IS.

God, is the one who makes life the way it is, and there are things about "the way life is" that we cannot understand or change. We cannot have life on our own terms. We are finite beings. The very nature of being human is to be homeless in this world. And that is what Jesus is teaching in today’s Gospel. 

This is what Jesus meant when he said, “Foxes have holes and birds of the air have nests, but a human being has no place to lay his head.” (Luke 9:58). All this does not mean that God is not in charge. On the contrary, "God being in charge now" does not mean a suspension of "the way life is."  In other words, earth is not heaven, and heaven is not earth;  life on earth is just plain insecure.

God's care is not to be seen as rescue from "the way life is." God's care is to be seen as rescue in the midst of "the way life is." One is not to try to escape the limitations of "the way life is," but to embrace reality and live in it as God's creation. The eyes of Jesus saw that divine care comes as guidance amidst the treacherous difficulties of life.

Christ did not come to deliver humankind from "the way life is," but to transform and deliver us in the midst of "the way life is." For instance, a woman feels pains as she delivers a new baby. This cannot change, because this is “the way life is”. This said, the woman can and must pray to Jesus to sustain her through child bearing experience. 

Wherever we can, and only if we can, we have to run, like Jesus, not towards but away from our Herods who seek to kill the child, the new idea we got, the inspiration, the new life; we have to Flee to Egypt. Stay until further notice. Herod is on the hunt for this child, and wants to kill him.