My father – who was, like me, a minister – used to tell a story about a little boy in Sunday school. The boy’s class had been looking at the Christmas story as it appears in Matthew’s Gospel. They had been told to draw a picture to illustrate some aspect of it. So this little boy came up with a picture, not of shepherds or camels or kings, but of an aeroplane. In it were four people. The Sunday school teacher, rather puzzled at this apparent departure from biblical orthodoxy, asked what it was about, and the little boy replied, “It’s the flight into Egypt. That’s Mary and Joseph and the baby Jesus. And that,” he declared proudly, pointing at the fourth figure, “is Pontius the pilot!”
That little boy probably knew more about the Christmas story than many people today, who would struggle to see beyond the usual tableau familiar from Christmas cards and Nativity plays. Taking elements from Matthew’s and Luke’s gospels – and some other sources too, Christian and otherwise – tradition has built up the picture – or the cast – of Mary and Joseph and the baby Jesus, some shepherds with a lamb, three kings with gifts of gold, frankincense and myrrh, an innkeeper and sometimes an innkeeper’s wife, along with a star, a host of angels, an ox, a donkey, a flock of sheep, camels and sometimes – depending on the number of children needing a part and the available costumes – various other animals too, no matter how improbable! In fact they could also include a midwife and a woman called Salome, who appear in some early non-canonical Christian versions of the story, but not many people know about them!
Maybe the ‘flight into Egypt’, as described in Matthew’s gospel, gets less attention nowadays because to get to it you have to read first about that distressingly unChristmassy bit about the ‘massacre of the innocents’. That’s something we’d rather not think about, even though it is all too relevant in our world today – not least in the part of the world where the Christmas story is set. The slaughter of innocent people, especially children, is as much a part of the story as the manger and the heavenly choir, but it’s the part that is left out of the Christmas idyll.
Matthew tells us that Jesus escaped Herod’s murderous thugs – who, alas, have their counterparts today – when Joseph is warned by an angel in a dream to, “Get up, take the child and his mother and escape with them to Egypt, and stay there until I tell you…” (2: 13). Other families were less fortunate, as Matthew tells us by quoting some heart-rending words from Jeremiah: “A voice was heard in Rama, sobbing in bitter grief; it was Rachel weeping for her children, and refusing to be comforted because they were no more” (2: 19). Much “sobbing in bitter grief” has been heard in Israel and in Gaza since October 7th.
The story of the holy family’s flight into Egypt is briefly told in Matthew. We are not told which way they went, but there were two roads they could have taken. The longer route led through the Negeb to Heliopolis, but the shorter and more likely route was the coast road – known as the Way of the Sea - which passed – and still passes – through what is now the war-torn Gaza Strip. It continues across the north of Sinai and on into Egypt. If, indeed, Mary and Joseph took Jesus to safety in Egypt by that route, then they trod a road where today there is war and terrible suffering, and over which many armies have passed – and fought – for thousands of years. As the carol says of the angels, “And man, at war with man, hears not / The love song which they bring.”
That “love song” is what Jesus grew up to teach – even to sing, perhaps, who knows? – and it remains true today whatever we human beings do to try and deny it. It shows the way out of the long years of hatred and violence, and all we have to do is heed it and repent of the bigotry and malice, the greed and selfishness that create them and feed them. Too much to ask? It may seem so, but what is the alternative? Look no further than Gaza. Is that really to be our future, as too often it has been our past?
There is another lesson that the ‘Flight into Egypt’ has to teach. You won’t find it in Matthew, or anywhere in the New Testament. Rather it can be found among the various stories about the ‘Flight’ - and the Holy Family’s sojourn in Egypt - that exist in early Christian traditions that never made it into the Bible. One of my favourites is one that would certainly liven up Nativity plays, and create exciting new costumes and characters to wear them. And it also has something to say about our relationship with the natural world, an issue that has never been as important as it is now.
The story is of unknown age and although it only survives in medieval manuscripts, its roots are probably much older – maybe as far back as the 3rd century. It appears in a document that has been named – rather oddly - the ‘Gospel of Pseudo-Matthew’. Its purpose is to present the advent of Jesus as the fulfilment of prophecies about the coming Messianic age of peace, when even ferocious wild animals will forget their enmity for people and for each other.
The story begins with the holy family stopping to rest at a cave, but “suddenly a number of dragons came out of the cave”, and everyone is terrified. Everyone, that is, except Jesus, who is two years old by this time. Jesus gets down from Mary’s lap and confronts the dragons which then worship him. Quite what was meant by “dragons” I’m not sure – and neither are the biblical translators – but clearly they represent nature at its most savage and dangerous, with its profound and untamed power. The prophecy thus fulfilled comes from Psalm 148: “Praise the Lord out of the earth, ye dragons and all deeps.” Jesus is quite unfazed, telling everyone, “Fear not…it is necessary that all the beasts of the forest should grow tame before me.”
He then does the same thing with lions and leopards, which “adore” him and proceed to accompany the family and show them the way. Mary is clearly nervous about this but, we are told, “Jesus smiled on her and reassured her.” We are told here that the family had domestic animals with them too, and that “the lions never injured their oxen or asses or the sheep they had brought from Judaea.” And then wolves join the scene and they too “are harmless”. Again prophecy is being fulfilled: “The wolves shall feed with the lambs, the lion and ox shall eat straw together.”
Having brought peace between people and animals, and between animals, Jesus then demonstrates his authority with plants too, getting a palm tree to bend down so that Mary can pick its fruit. And for good measure, in that desert wilderness he gets a spring to flow from below the tree’s roots. We are told that “all rejoiced and drank of it” – “all” meaning perhaps, Mary and Joseph, Jesus himself, the lions, leopards and wolves, the oxen, asses and sheep, four children who make a brief and unexplained appearance, a palm tree and maybe even the dragons! Imagine that as the closing tableau of an alternative Nativity play! Maybe you could even squeeze in Pontius the Pilot, for the sake of a little boy in Sunday school!
In Luke’s gospel, in the familiar 17th-century words of the Authorised Version, the angels declare: “Glory to God in the highest, And on earth peace, goodwill toward men” (Luke 2: 14). Today, of course we take “men” to mean ‘people’ regardless of gender. And maybe that story about the “Flight into Egypt”, with its cast of animals both wild and domestic – not to mention the palm tree – tells us something more about inclusivity: that Jesus set out to extend peace and goodwill to the natural world too, and so should we.
The Christmas vision is of a world without war, without oppression, without terrorism and all their kindred evils. It is also of a world at peace with nature, a world without the environmental destruction that threatens our future on this planet. May we make that vision ours, and may it inspire us to live accordingly.
Cliff Reed
19th December 2023