Flight

Good news; but if you ask me what it is, I know not;

It is a track of feet in the snow,

It is a lantern showing a path,

It is a door set open.

— G. K. Chesterton

Flight — it is the leit motif of the birth of Christ, in Matthew’s telling. If Joseph had kept a journal, it would detail change after change in his plans, hurried changes, haste made necessary by danger, menacing shadows all around.

Mary’s pregnancy, visits from angels, dreams full of warnings – these are all unexpected news. The astonishing visit of the Kings brought a few moments when Joseph could rest in their devotion, be awed by their gifts, but then the Games were on again, the deadly games that kept them wary, listening, seeking shelter and food every day for years.

The Kings arrival had been deeply quiet. The silence of camel hooves in sand. Their beautiful cloaks, muffling human sounds. They emerged from the night, first as rippling shadows, then as majestic selves under the Bright Star. They did not speak. They gave, they dreamed, they left. Responding to their own angel warning, they slipped away.

And then the Hounds of Hell were slobbering round the heavenly cradle. Lowly manger that it was, Herod’s soldiers sniffed the scent of hope, and nothing but innocent blood would satisfy them.

Like hunted animals , Joseph and Mary fled into the night. The screams of dying children, the shrieks of mothers, the blood yells of soldiers: slaughter sounds would never leave their memories.

Fury is all noise. You cannot rush a militia to a kill without everyone hearing the approach. Indeed, the uses of fury are part of the Dark Arts. People are riveted by Dark Arts and fall silent before them, but there is not much subtle significance in their sound and their fury, even the ignorant understand what cruelty, abuse, and terror are.

Herod the King was a noisome man. Devoid of talent, ignorant of his own traditions, and without faith, Herod used Dark Arts to keep his throne: savagery and secrets; the murder of children, for which he is remembered still, a grisly tale.

Before and since, the world has been fascinated by those who wield Dark Arts to hold sway in this world. In slave ships, concentration camps, holding cells in city jails, in places like Guantanamo and prisons in Iraq, and God knows, in far too many homes, ignorant bullies rule.

In this Advent alone, we have witnessed legislators vote to cut food stamps, leaving the 16.4 million American children who are living in poverty hungrier this Christmas than they have been in years.

And last week we heard Georgia Congressman Jack Kingston advocate that primary school children who receive free lunches be required to work for their food, cleaning school floors and bathrooms so they will not become morally soft.

Joseph, according to Matthew, fled into Egypt, where for two years he and Mary and the Child survived as illegal aliens. Then, hearing of the death of Herod, they returned, but as they neared Judea, Joseph heard that Herod Archelaus had come into power there, and fearing to enter, Joseph turned instead to Galilee, finding a place in the town of Nazareth where they could live unseen, undetected, till the Child was grown.

The quiet, generous Kings, went home by another way.

And they remain with us still, in our wondering.

We carry them with us all our days, for home is the place we spend our lives seeking, on unknown roads. And Herod is the one we spend our lives avoiding. In every age, Herod is unmasked by his own deeds, and by Wise Men. In them, in us, and along unknown roads, Christ is always being born.

All this was a long time ago, I remember,

And I would do it again, but set down

This set down

This: were we led all that way for

Birth or Death? There was a Birth, certainly

We had evidence and no doubt. I had seen birth and death,

But had thought they were different; this Birth was

Hard and bitter agony for us, like Death, our death.

We returned to our places, these Kingdoms,

But no longer at ease here, in the old dispensation,

With an alien people clutching their gods.

— T.S. Eliot, from Journey of the Magi

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Illustrations:

Flight into Egypt, Fra Angelico, Florence Italy, 1450. Vanderbilt Divinity School Library Art in the Christian Tradition.
Flight into Egypt. He Qi, Nanqing, China, 2001. Vanderbilt Divinity School Library Art in the Christian Tradition.
Flight into Egypt, Albrecht Durer, Dresden, Germany, 1494. Vanderbilt Divinity School Library Art in the Christian Tradition.
Rest on the Flight into Egypt. Nicholas Mynheer, Britain, 2000. Vanderbilt Divinity School Library Art in the Christian Tradition.
Magi. He Qi, Nanjing, China, 2001. Vanderbilt Divinity School Library Art in the Christian Tradition.