Christ the Lord: Out of Egypt

I was surprised to hear it. I had become so used to Sepphoris with its Jewish ways. I knew that Samaria was Samaria, yes, and we had no doings with Samaritans though they were very close to our borders. But I hadn’t thought there were pagan cities in the land. Ascalon. I thought it beautiful. I formed a picture in my mind of Princess Salome, the daughter of Herod, wandering around her palace in Ascalon. What was a palace to me? I knew what a palace was, as surely as I knew what a pagan temple was.

“It’s the way of the Empire,” said my uncle Cleopas. “Don’t be distressed over it, that we have all these Gentiles among us. Herod, King of the Jews,” he said in a mean tone of voice, “built plenty of temples to the Emperor and to those pagan gods. That’s our King of the Jews for you.”

Joseph put his hand up for Cleopas to be quiet. “In this house we are in the Land of Israel,” he said.

Everybody laughed.

“Yes,” said Alphaeus, “and outside that door, it’s the Empire.”

We didn’t know whether or not we could laugh at that, but Cleopas nodded to it.

“But where does Israel stop and start?” asked James, who sat with us.

“Here!” said Joseph, “and there!” He pointed. “And anywhere that there are Jews gathered together who keep to the Law.”

“Will we ever see those Greek cities?” I asked.

“You saw Alexandria, you saw the best of them, the greatest,” said Cleopas. “You saw a city second only to Rome.”

We had to nod to that.

“And remember her and remember all of this,” said Cleopas. “Because in each of us, you must realize, is the full story of who we are. We were in Egypt, as were our people long ago, and as they did, we came home. We saw battle in the Temple, as our people did under Babylon, but the Temple is now restored. We suffered on our journey here, as our people suffered in the wilderness and under the scourge of the enemies, but we came home.”

My mother looked up from her sewing.

“Ah, so that’s why it happened this way,” she said, like a child would say it. She shrugged her shoulder and shook her head, and went on picking at the embroidery. “Before I couldn’t understand it—.”

“What?” asked Cleopas.

“Well, why an angel would come to Joseph and tell him to come home through all the bloodshed and the terrors, but you just made sense of it, didn’t you?”

She looked to Joseph.

He was smiling, but I think he was smiling because he hadn’t thought of this before. And she had the bright eyes of a child, the trust of a child, my mother.

“Yes,” he said. “Now it does seem that way. It was our journey through the wilderness.”

My uncle Simon had been asleep on his mat, his head on his elbow, but he rose up now and said in a sleepy voice, “I think Jews can make sense of anything.”

Silas laughed hard at that.

“No,” said my mother, “it’s true. It’s a matter of seeing it. I remember, in Bethlehem, when I was asking the Lord, ‘How, how …?’ and then—.”

She looked at me, and ran her hand over my hair as she often did. I liked it as always, but I didn’t cuddle close to her. I was too big for that.

“What happened in Bethlehem?” I asked. I blushed. I’d forgotten Joseph’s order to me not to ask. I felt a sharp pain all through me. “I’m sorry that I said it,” I whispered.

My mother looked at me, and I could see she knew that I was feeling bad. She looked at Joseph and then at me.

No one said a word.

My brother James had a hard look on his face as he stared at me.

“You were born there, you know that,” said my mother, “in Bethlehem. The town was crowded.” She spoke haltingly, looking at Joseph and then at me as she went on. “It was full of people that night, Bethlehem, and we couldn’t find a place to stay—it was Cleopas and Joseph and James and I, and—the i

“A snow!” I said. “I want to see snow.”

“Well, maybe someday you will, “ she said.

No one said a word. I looked at her. She wanted to go on. I knew she did. And she knew how much I wanted her to go on.

She started to talk again.

“You were born there in the stable,” she said calmly. “And I wrapped you up and put you in the manger.”

Everyone laughed the usual gentle family laugh.

“In the manger? The hay for the donkeys?” This was the secret of Bethlehem?

“Yes,” said my mother, “and there you lay, probably in a softer bed than any newborn in Bethlehem that night. And the beasts kept us very warm, while the tenants froze in the rooms above.”

Again, the family laughter.

The memory made them all happy, except for James. James looked almost dark. His thoughts were far away. He’d been by my reckoning maybe seven years old when this took place, the age I was now. How could I know what he thought?

He looked at me. Our eyes met, and something passed between us. He looked away.

I wanted my mother to tell me more.

But they had begun to talk of other things—of the good early rains, of the reports of peace coming from Judea, of the hope that we might go up to Jerusalem for the coming Passover if things continued to go well.

I got up and went out.

It was dark and chilly but it felt good after the close warmth of the house.

That couldn’t be the whole story of Bethlehem! That couldn’t be all that happened. My mind could not put all the pieces together, the questions, the moments and words spoken, and doubts.

I remembered my terrible dream. I remembered the winged man, and the mean things that he said. In the dream, they hadn’t hurt me. But now they stung me.

Oh, if only I could talk to someone, but there was no one, no one to whom I could tell what was in my heart, and there never would be!

I heard steps behind me, soft, dragging steps, and then I felt a hand on my shoulder. I heard a breathing that I knew was from Old Sarah.

“You come inside, Jesus bar Joseph,” she said, “it’s too cold out here for you to be standing and looking at the stars.”

I turned around and did what she said because she told me to, but I didn’t want to. I went with her inside the house. And back to the warm gathering of the family and this time I lay down like my uncles with my head on my arm and looked at the low brazier with its burning coals.

The little ones started fussing. My mother got up to tend to them, and then called for Joseph to help.

My uncles went off to bed in their rooms. Aunt Esther was in the other part of the house, with Baby Esther, who was howling as always.

Only Old Sarah sat on her bench because she was too old to sit on the floor, and James was there, and James was looking at me, and the fire was in both his eyes.

“What is it?” I asked him. “What’s this thing you want to say?” I asked. But I said it low.

“What was that?” asked Old Sarah. She stood up. “Was that Old Justus?” she asked. She went off into the other room. It wasn’t anything really bad. It was only Old Justus coughing because his throat was so weak that he couldn’t swallow.

James and I were alone.

“Say it to me,” I said.

“Men said they saw things,” James said. “When you were born, they saw things.”

“What?”

He looked away. He was angry, and hard.

At age twelve, a boy can take on the yoke of the Law. He was past that now.

“Men claimed to see things,” he said. “But I can tell you what I saw, myself, with my eyes.”

I waited.

His eyes came back to me, and his look was sharp.

“These men came. To the house in Bethlehem. We’d been in Bethlehem for a while. We’d found good lodgings. My father was tending to his affairs, finding our kindred, all of that. And then in the night, these men came. They were wise men, from the East, maybe from Persia. They were the men who read the stars and believe in magic, and advise the Kings of Persia as to what they should do and not do on account of the signs. They had servants with them. They were rich men, beautifully robed. They came asking to see you. They knelt in front of you. They brought gifts. They called you a King.”