Refugees in Egypt, a sermon based on Matthew 2: 13-23 preached on December 28, 2025

Words like “refugee” or “immigrant” bring a particular kind of person to mind, and the kind of person that comes to mind depends on what you’ve heard about refugees and immigrants. Who are they to you? Why have they come? What are they doing here? I’ll never hear the word “immigrant” without thinking of my father-in-law, who came to Knoxville, Tennessee as a graduate student from Columbia, South America, longing to learn about how the Tennessee Valley Authority brought electricity to the rural south. He applied and was accepted to the University of Tennessee with a plan to go back to help his home country do what the TVA had done. He learned English well enough to be accepted in their graduate school, yet he learned English in such a way that he was prepared for the classroom and not the real world. He ordered biscuits and groovy in the school cafeteria. A couple of evangelical church ladies asked him if he’d been saved. He said, “I have a checking account, but not a savings account.” I love these stories, and I also admire the man for what he did. Leaving home takes courage, as does living in a country that’s not your home. It can be dangerous and exhausting. One summer, I lived for two months in Argentina as a missionary intern. The first few days I was there, I slept for 12 hours each night because my brain was exhausted from taking it all in. It was a different language. It was a different world. There, I lived with college students who lived in a dorm the church owned. I practiced Spanish with those students as they practiced English. I had never been so far away from home, and I missed so many people that I wore out a long-distance calling card my dad gave me. This was in the days before cell phones, and the dorm I lived in didn’t have a phone, so I’d be out on the corner using a payphone with this calling card, and because I had a card, I never put any money in the payphone, which made a couple police officers suspicious. There are few feelings more terrifying than being questioned by police officers and not being able to understand what they’re saying. To be pushed out of the view of onlookers, to be frisked and questioned by police officers in another country is a much worse feeling than not having access to peanut butter, which they don’t eat in Argentina, or being cold in July since winter in the southern hemisphere happens while we have our summer. What was it like for Jesus, Joseph, and Mary while they were in Egypt? How were they treated? What did Joseph do for work? Did Jesus like it there? In our Gospel lesson for this morning, we focus on the Holy Family who so soon after Jesus’ birth, leave home in fear for their lives. An angel of the Lord appeared to Joseph in a dream, saying, “Get up and go to Egypt, and remain there until I tell you, for Herod is about to search for Jesus to destroy him.” Like so many people in the Bible, including Ruth and Naomi in our first Scripture lesson, the members of the Holy Family were refugees. To preserve their lives, they packed quickly and left everything they knew. They depended on the kindness of strangers to make their way down dangerous roads. Surely, they faced many terrifying situations while crossing borders and evading authorities just as many immigrants and refugees do, but when we hear those words: “refugee” or “immigrant,” does the face of Jesus come to mind? Maybe not, yet what else would you call Him? They lived in Egypt until they knew that Herod had died. How many years was it before they could go back home? An angel of the Lord appeared to Joseph again, saying, “Those who were seeking the child’s life are dead,” but Joseph was too afraid to go back from where they had come. What about Jesus? When it was finally time to go back to Israel, did Jesus even want to go? By then, did He feel more like an Egyptian than an Israelite? As a church, we know from experience how quickly children assimilate. For 35 years, a profound ministry of our church, we call it Club 3:30, has provided afterschool care for kids who would go home to an empty house after school. For some reason or another, most of our kids today are from the same region of the world, Guatemala, and the volunteers in this program know that while the kids may start kindergarten not knowing a word of English, in no time at all, they adapt, yet their parents are not nearly so fast. I imagine the child Jesus in Egypt much the same way. I imagine Him as being something like one of the Club 3:30 students I got to know. When I first met her, she never spoke because she couldn’t understand what I was saying. Not only did she not speak English, she was from so remote a region of Guatemala that she didn’t even speak Spanish. She spoke an indigenous dialect of the Mayan people, called Kʼicheʼ, but before she had even finished kindergarten, she was given a medal by the Kiwanis Club of Marietta for most improved English speaker. When I imagine Jesus in Egypt, I think of Him this way: shy at first but then learning the language and understanding the culture. Before long, I imagine He felt at home in the shadow of the Great Pyramids. Scripture was fulfilled in this way so that “Out of Egypt God would call his Son,” the Gospel of Matthew tells us. Like the sons of Jacob who went to Egypt looking for food. Like Joseph who rose to power there and was able to save them from the famine. Like the Hebrew people who labored in Egypt so long that generations passed before Moses led them out of slavery and back to the Promised Land, Jesus, Mary, and Joseph fled to Egypt then came back out again that He might lead us all to salvation. Salvation comes through remembering these things. Salvation comes through compassion, understanding, and sympathy rather than the cruelty of Herod, and so as a nation, we boldly put on the Statue of Liberty a poem: Give me your tired, your poor, your huddled masses Yearning to breathe free. The wretched refuse of your teeming shore. Send these, the homeless, tempest tossed, to me, I lift my lamp beside the golden door! Those are the ideals. That we see in the face of the immigrant and refugee the face of Joseph and his brothers, Ruth and Naomi, Joseph, Mary, and young Jesus, that is the ideal. We remember the proclamation of Matthew’s gospel: What we have done to the least of these who are God’s children, so we have done it to Jesus, and yet today many immigrants in our community live their lives afraid. Most of the kids in our Club 3:30 program don’t go trick-or-treating. Their parents don’t feel safe enough to let their children do such a thing, so they trick-or-treat to the church staff offices at Halloween. Then at Christmas, they do something similar. Following a Central American Christmas tradition, like Joseph and Mary, they go to each staff office looking for a place to stay. We all respond as the innkeeper did, “We have no room,” but then we say, “Take this treat for your journey.” The treat we give them for the journey is something small: a toothbrush or a sheet of stickers, but one year I challenged the staff to up their game, telling them that I was going to give all the kids bicycles when they come to my office. I was just joking about that, but later that afternoon, County Commissioner Keli Gambrill called the church telling me that she knew of an organization in town that had 35 bikes to give away. Did I know of any kids who would want them? I couldn’t believe the divine coincidence. I called Tim Hammond, who helped me pick up the bikes, inflate all their tires, and make sure they were in working order. That year, each kid in Club 3:30 got a bike for Christmas, and I hope that there was a group of people in Egypt who did the same for little Jesus. I hope there was kindness. I hope He didn’t have to fear that one day He’d come home to an empty house. I hope He didn’t have to worry every time He saw a police car in the neighborhood. For there’s not always kindness shown to immigrants and refugees, yet remember this story of Jesus and know that His story is theirs. Back home there was danger. They came here looking for safety, and notice with me the way God acted towards them: first warning Joseph in a dream, then calling them back home again. My friends, see the face of Jesus in the immigrant and know that we are called to help them on their way, for we are, all of us, pilgrims in a foreign land who long for home. Let us show kindness to the fellow travelers as the Savior leads us all to our eternal home. Amen.