Literally?

A Sermon preached on January 4^th (Christmas II) at St. Augustine’s, Wiesbaden

Jeremiah 31:7-14, Ephesians 1:3-6, 15-19, Matthew 2:13-15, 19-23

I’m certain you have all heard of the method called the literal interpretation of the Bible, which is mostly understood to mean accepting every word as true just as it is written. For example Creation actually happened over 6 days, and you will find museums dedicated to proving this, and every command, or at least those validated by the New Testament, must be obeyed exactly as they are found. This tends to be associated with those Christians we call “Fundamentalists” and many outsiders, and quite a few Christians too, probably think it’s the way the Bible has always been read and understood. Well no, it’s actually quite a new-fangled and relatively modern invention!  

The oldest Christian method of Biblical interpretation is what is called “allegorical.”  St. Paul used it a lot in his letters – taking stories and ideas from the Hebrew Scriptures and reinterpreting them in the light of Christ, the Gospel writers used it, and we credit the 2^nd century theologian Origen of Alexandria with having first defined and described this method. Origen recommended that both the Old and New Testaments be interpreted allegorically on three levels, the "flesh" or literal, but also the "soul," and the "spirit." Many of the events recounted in the Scriptures and many of the laws, if interpreted literally, or in the flesh, are impossible or nonsensical, he wrote, and so need to be read either morally or spiritually if we are to understand them. By the Middle Ages scholars had agreed on four possible interpretations:

1. The literal interpretation – especially appropriate for historical events 
2. The typological or allegorical – often used, as I said by St. Paul, to connect the events of the Old Testament with the New Testament, by drawing connections between the events of Christ’s life and the stories of the Old Testament. 
3.  The moral interpretation – what does the passage tell us about how we should act in the present? 
4. And finally the anagogic interpretation - dealing with the future events of Christian history – the last things, what God promises us!

Medieval scholars even had a little rhyme to help them remember the four interpretations:
Litera gesta docet, Quid credas allegoria, Moralis quid agas, Quo tendas anagogia.
Just in case you didn’t get that …. “The literal teaches what God and our ancestors did, the allegory is where our faith and belief is hid, the moral meaning gives us the rule of daily life, the anagogy shows us where we end our strife.”[1]

And today’s Gospel reading from Matthew about how Joseph and Mary with Jesus seek refuge in Egypt lends itself to all four interpretations. Let’s look at them one by one:

If we take this passage literally then it tells us what happened after Jesus’ birth, how the Holy Family fled to Egypt, guided by angels, when and why they returned, and how they ended up in Nazareth. It embeds Jesus in history and although we have no other documentary proof for these events they are at least not impossible. King Herod was a nasty piece of work, who had many relatives as well as his wife murdered because in his paranoia he feared that they were trying to take his throne away. So his actions are true to form. At that time there was a big Jewish colony in Egypt, in Alexandria. It was there that a few hundred years earlier the Hebrew Scriptures had been translated into Greek – by 70 scholars in 70 days according to legend, which is why the version is known as the LXX or Septuagint for 70. So Joseph and Mary would have had somewhere to go and to find asylum among fellow Jews. Returning to Nazareth also makes a lot of sense. Herod Antipas, a son of King Herod, was having his capital city rebuilt nearby which would provide plenty of work for a carpenter like Joseph.  

What about the allegorical interpretation? Well Matthew has already included connections between Old Testament prophecies and stories and Jesus’ life and meaning by quoting from Hebrew Scriptures twice. The first citation is from Hosea 11:1, there it reads in full: “When Israel was a child, I loved him, and out of Egypt I called my son.” So in the original the son was not a person, but Israel and Hosea is referring to the Exodus, to God having liberated the Israelites from slavery. And that is the point that Matthew is making, not that Hosea really meant Jesus, but that Jesus stands for a new, a second and greater liberation for Israel and for the whole world. Like Moses, the first liberator, Jesus comes out of Egypt but he is much more than just a newer or greater Moses. As we heard in last week’s Gospel from John: (1:17) “The law indeed was given through Moses; grace and truth came through Jesus Christ.” 

The second citation: “He will be called a Nazorean” (Matthew 2:23) might actually be a bit creative … at least we haven’t yet discovered and exact equivalent in the Old Testament. But Matthew might be making one of two Nazorean: It might refer to the word neser meaning branch, as in Isaiah 11:1 “A shoot shall come out from the stock of Jesse, and a branch shall grow out of his roots” – or more poetically and as sung so often over Christmas: “Es ist ein Ros entsprungen, aus einer Wurzel zart, wie uns die Alten sungen, von Jesse war die Art.”    But it might also be referring to the nazir, meaning consecrated and set apart as Samson was or the Samuel: So Jesus is set apart to serve God in a very special way and like Samson is strong to save his people – by sacrificing himself for them.

As for the moral interpretation, how can I not think of the treatment of strangers in these troubled times in which conflicts near and far, as well as hunger, poverty and climate change are the cause of the increasing number of refugees? Jesus’ parents had to flee to Egypt - as political refugees – to save Jesus’ life. Our Lord and Savior was a homeless refugee. Receiving asylum and we must assume other help in finding work and a place to stay were essential for Jesus to be able to survive to start his ministry. Let’s not forget that the first Joseph mentioned in the Bible, he of the Technicolor dream coat, found a new home in Egypt and was able to save his people Israel by providing them with a refuge from famine there. Looking after the stranger or foreigner in need is not optional folks, it is a divine mandate: “When an alien resides with you in your land, you shall not oppress the alien. The alien who resides with you shall be to you as the citizen among you; you shall love the alien as yourself, for you were aliens in the land of Egypt: I am the Lord your God.” (Leviticus 19:33-34) 

The so-called anagogic interpretation deals as I said earlier with the future events of Christian history and with the “last things,” so it is appropriate that it comes last! At one level the passage from Matthew points us to the future event of the crucifixion. Already, right after his birth, the shadow of the Cross lies across Jesus’ life and the powers that be, afraid of what following Jesus will do to their power and to their ability to rule through fear are trying to kill him. Through Jesus God promises a new Exodus, a new liberation from sin and death. We will still sin, but we are promised forgiveness, and we will still die, but we are promised resurrection and a new life in Christ. We see hints of this in the reading we also heard this morning from the Jeremiah about the new Exodus he is promising, from Babylon back to Jerusalem: “For the Lord has ransomed Jacob, and has redeemed him from hands too strong for him.” (31:11) “I will turn their mourning into joy, I will comfort them, and give them gladness for sorrow.” (31:13) It seems to me that those promises go beyond the short-term return from one earthly city to another and it is no coincidence that we find them echoed in the last book of the Bible. Revelation, when John of Patmos describes his vision of the last things: “And I saw the holy city, the new Jerusalem, coming down out of heaven from God … And I heard a loud voice from the throne saying, ‘See, the home of God is among mortals. He will dwell with them; … he will wipe every tear from their eyes. Death will be no more; mourning and crying and pain will be no more.” (Revelation 21:2-4)

In the end all four interpretations point in just one direction: God really dwelt among us as a human who shared the pain and suffering of our human condition, God wants us to alleviate that pain in the world, and God promises us through Jesus Christ the joy of eternal life in which finally mourning and crying and pain will be no more.

Amen.

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[1] http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Allegorical_interpretation_of_the_Bible