Today in the church we remember the flight of the holy
family to Egypt to escape the killing of the children by Herod when he realizes
the wise men aren’t coming back to tell him of the child who is to be the king
of the Jews. The angel appeared to
Joseph in a dream telling him to take the family and flee to Egypt. He obeyed the word, just as Abram had obeyed
the word spoken to him so many centuries before. Whereas the people were delivered from Egypt
by someone from outside in times past, now the deliverer would come from Egypt.
Jesus’ earthly father was important in
that he was a man who obeyed, who had faith.
Joseph gets little credit and little mention in the Bible, he drops out
of the scene after Jesus’ adolescence but in those early years he proved
himself to be the right choice for the job of father. We need fathers like Joseph, men who are open
to believe even when things make no sense and who will obey the word of the
Lord to them.
The leaders believe they know who Jesus’ mother and father
were. Did they not know the story of His
birth or did they simply not believe it?
The problem is sometimes that we don’t know what we think we know and we
let our knowledge get in the way of knowing.
He is pointing to His heavenly father, affirming His true origin but in
doing so is not slighting His earthly father.
All Jesus did was give glory to the Father. That was the entire mission of His life, to
make the Father known. He did so in word
and deed, ultimately making known the love of the Father for those created in
His image by the incarnation, taking on human flesh, and on the cross, dying to
deliver us from sin as the perfect sacrifice once for all. He pointed to the Father in heaven and their
thinking was so earth and time-bound that they refused to see that the works He
did pointed beyond to God the Father.
John says he writes to little children (not necessarily
those who are youthful in age but in the faith) as those who know the Father
and who know their sins are forgiven in His Name (Jesus). The primary things we need to know and be
secure in are these two truths, that our sins are forgiven in Jesus’ Name and
that God is now Father when we believe in His Son and receive the spirit of
adoption. To love the world is to break
the great commandment to love God and the one like unto it, to love those
created in His image. John’s Gospel
tells us that God loved that world enough that He gave His Son that whoever
believes in Him should not perish but have everlasting life. Loving the world from our perspective is to
love it more than we love Him, to reject His gift in favor of having the
world. One of the greatest collects
Thomas Cranmer ever wrote encapsulates this truth, “O God, the protector of all
that trust in thee, without whom nothing is strong, nothing is holy: Increase
and multiply upon us thy mercy; that, thou being our ruler and guide, we may so
pass through things temporal, that we finally lose not the things eternal;
through Jesus Christ our Lord, who liveth and reigneth with thee and the Holy
Spirit, one God, for ever and ever. Amen.”
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