Isaiah 63:7-9; Mathew 2:12-15

We do not hear about the Coptic Christians of Egypt very much in this country.  We think of Egypt as Muslim and Islam is the religion of the majority. But Egypt had one of the first Christian communities in the world and of course it predates Islam by at least six hundred years in Egypt.  In today’s passage Matthew mentions the flight to Egypt very quickly.  It is just one of those footnotes of Christmas.  Joseph and Mary believed their baby Son was in danger because King Herod felt threatened as “King of the Jews.” Only Matthew mentions this story.  Matthew claims children in Bethlehem were murdered by Herod because of this.  The reason why this would not be mentioned in any historical texts of that age is that Bethlehem was quite small then.  Also King Herod was widely believed to be capable of this kind of atrocity. He definitely was a cruel and jealous ruler.  Friends, we could say that the flight to Egypt is an under-told story.  Only one gospel mentions it and we don’t hear much about it.  We treat it as a little R and R for Mary, Joseph and the Baby Jesus, a forced vacation, an old version of maternity leave. The story of the Coptic Christians in Egypt is also an under-told story and so is the information that as an orthodox denomination they have a pope who is picked, not in secret by Cardinals, but by a small child, the symbol of purity, who pulls a name out in front of a large congregation.  What is all also under-told is that there are shrines in Egypt where the Holy family is supposed to have stayed or passed through.

Dear friends, St. Mary’s University in Minnesota runs a project called the “Undertold stories project.”  For instance they are shining light on a cemetery formerly belonging to an institution for what were called the “feeble minded.”  The people buried there have no name.  The gravestones simply have numbers.  Now a lot of this happened during the Great Depression but still that is no excuse for turning people into numbers.  It is amazing what people with retardation were called in those days and how they were viewed. So this project shines light on these stories.

There is a new interest in untold or undertold stories these days.  There is a project called Storycorp for which a booth is placed in a public place where lots of people pass by and selected people are asked to tell a story almost no one has heard. There is also a new way of radio storytelling where the writer and the subject take turns saying part of a sentence.  You can hear this in “This American Life” on NPR.

It makes me wonder, why this interest in untold or undertold stories?  Maybe it is because we hear some of the same stories over and over again, the stories of certain famous or powerful people, horrific events we are supposed to keep focusing on.   Also, on television these days there are all these reality shows where cameras follow around people that have very little insight about life and really follow them around because they act dumb.  So we get these overtold stories of no consequence that people spend hours and hours watching.  Then we are presented on Yahoo with the smallest details of the lives of celebrities, why some celebrity husbands for instance find it hard to go shopping for their celebrity wives- maybe because they have everything already!  We are inundated with overtold stories, but seldom hear the undertold stories.  That is why we just talked about the sisters of Mercy.  We need to be reminded that in this time when the sins of the Church as a whole are being justly uncovered after centuries of cover-up, we also remember those church workers who dedicated their life to the service of others and who behaved admirable and with integrity.  This is why the story of the Japanese consul in Lithuania who saved Jews during World War II needed to be told and why the movie “Schindler’s list” was made.  Often when untold or undertold stories are told we learn something significant about who we human beings are.  In the story of the flight to Egypt we are reminded of the dangerous world Jesus was born into and how the things he said to the authorities were without any doubt going to get Him killed.  It teaches us anew about Jesus’ dedication and courage.  Also without the undertold stories we never get the complete perspective in our Christian faith.

This leads us to our stories, especially at the end of another year.  What are the untold stories of your year or the undertold stories of your year rather?   We all have things we could put into form Christmas letters (although I don’t write any anymore): a list of our comings and goings and family accomplishments, but what is the untold story of your year: “what are the encounters and experiences that set you off in a new direction, that made you see things in a new way, that gave you an experience of God’s grace?  Friends, in the past year or the coming year what are the untold or undertold stories of God’s presence in you life.  May God give us wisdom.