A Christmas Story: The Courage Jesus Learned as a Refugee
Image by Wim van ‘t Einde.
Jesus’s birth was a silent night, when all was calm and all was bright, but there was a context to the Christmas story critical to understanding the lesson of Christmas. This context gives insight into why Jesus taught what he later taught. It was a time of foment, rebellion, near civil war, with fake news, false prophets, malicious Kings, grasping rich, and, of course, many, many poor, displaced persons who were often abused, derided and imprisoned by those in power and government.
In the Gospel of Matthew, Jesus’ adoptive father Joseph and his mother Mary, live in Bethlehem, a town in Judaea near Jerusalem. It is assumed to be their home village. Certain wise men come from “the East” to Herod, the evil King, looking to honor a new ruler they have determined from their study of a bright star that has appeared like a message in the “heavens” is soon to be born.
The wise men, astronomers of their day, identify Jesus as the one. Herod, whose evil rule is based on fear and violence combined with abhorrent personal behaviors, fears the challenge, even of an infant, because Herod knows the people regard him with disfavor. Herod’s life of luxury and excess is starkly contrasted with the harsh and difficult life of most of the people over whom he rules and whom he taxes to sustain his excessive luxurious lifestyle.
Herod is determined to rise above any law (especially god’s law) and hold on to power. Herod cannot tolerate a challenge to his rule by any new king proclaimed by the heavens, because Herod knew many of his people believed god ruled the world and god often proclaimed his messages by unusual natural phenomena, like voices from burning bushes, or seas dividing to allow passage of refugees and closing upon pursuing troops of earthly kings.
To avoid word of the new king Jesus from spreading, Herod orders his troops to undertake a pre-emptive strike against the people of Bethlehem and its environs. Herod orders that all boys under two years of age be killed in an atrocity traditionally known as the massacre of the innocents (Matthew 2.16–18).
A mysterious message is sent to Joseph in a dream or vision warning of Herod’s intentions to kill the infant Jesus. Joseph emigrates from their home nation taking Jesus, and the family flees to Egypt, ruled by a king where, though not citizens, they lived safely.
It is only after Herod is dead that Joseph and Mary dare return, and then they avoid Judaea, apparently to avoid being identified in case Herod’s successors continue his search for his “enemy,” Jesus. As Matthew’s Gospel tells it, Joseph “was afraid to go there” (Nazareth) (Matthew 2.22). This is wise because Herod’s son has inherited Herod’s crown, an early warning against the evils of inherited kingship. Instead, they find a new place of refuge, in Nazareth of Galilee far from Bethlehem.
Jesus’ earliest years were then, according to the Gospel of Matthew spent as a refugee in a foreign land, and then as a displaced person in a village a long way from his family’s original home.
The biblical history of Jesus’ birth, detailed in Matthew and Luke describes a virgin birth to Mary and Joseph in Bethlehem, prompted by a Roman census that required all persons to return to their native villages for the counting, with Jesus laid in a manger and visited by shepherds, fulfilling Biblical prophecy as to the birth of the Messiah, the Son of God.
All was not calm, not bright, as Jesus was raised knowing he was hunted, despised, and a refugee, without rights or protection of law in a lawless kingdom. Living day to day, a carpenter’s apprentice, and later a carpenter, Jesus rubbed shoulders with the “salt of the earth.” Poor, lower-class people like his parents, were his friends and neighbors, his teachers and role models. He watched as agents of the governing Herod family abused, imprisoned, tortured and even killed His community members, not sparing children or even pregnant women, with impunity and immunity. Jesus lived under one law for the wealthy and powerful and another for all the rest of the people. Jesus grew to adulthood witnessing senseless violence and abuse for which there was no recourse, no justice in the court of “kings.” Perhaps this experience taught him to abhor violence and killing, “no matter what the reason’s for.” (John Prine, “Your Flag Decal Won’t Get You into Heaven Anymore”).
And so another Christmas approaches. One recalls the question once asked so loudly about issues of the day, “What would Jesus do?” Of course the example of how Jesus lived his life answers that question. It is not that we do not know what Jesus would do; we do know. It is the courage of Jesus, born into deprivation in the midst of violence and savagery, to stand against the apparent evil, the manifest wretched excess of the privileged and powerful, the violence of government minions and legions that is needed. The courage of Jesus, nonviolent, caring, concerned, thoughtful, decent and healing, so different from the false and brittle courage that is trumpeted today as “warrior ethos,” infecting ICE in a pogrom against refugees, calls to us from the stars, the calm and bright stars. What a magnificent Christmas story it was, and perhaps, should enough follow Jesus today, it will be again. May the courage of Jesus be your gift this holy season.
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