Epiphany is the season of revelation.
It is the moment when light breaks into darkness, when God preserves what power tries to destroy.
We rehearse the story every year: Magi from the East follow a star that leads them to Christ. The Messiah is revealed. But after the Magi leave, Epiphany continues with a dream, a warning and a journey — one the church too often has brushed aside.
Darrell Hamilton II
An angel appears to Joseph and says, “Get up, take the child and his mother, and flee to Egypt … for Herod is about to search for the child, to destroy him.” Joseph obeys. The family flees. And Matthew tells us this happens “to fulfill what had been spoken by the Lord through the prophet: ‘Out of Egypt I have called my son.’”
This, too, is Epiphany.
The revelation is not only who Jesus is but where God chooses to protect him.
In many Christian retellings, Egypt functions as a temporary hiding place — a narrative detour before Jesus returns to the “real” story in Israel. We rightly name the Holy Family as refugees, but we rarely pause to consider the significance of their destination.
Egypt is not incidental. Egypt is not merely a backdrop. Egypt is in Africa. And Africa becomes the place God entrusts with the life of God’s Son.
Moreover, Africa always has been a place of refuge in the biblical imagination.
“Africa is not a footnote in the divine story, but a place of preservation.”
When famine strikes Canaan, Abraham and Sarah go down to Egypt to survive. When Joseph is betrayed and sold into slavery, Egypt becomes the place where his life is spared and where his family later finds sustenance.
Even the creation story reminds us humanity is formed from warm, black African dirt. The soil that gives life and sustains generations is significant. Africa is not a footnote in the divine story, but a place of preservation.
Yet, centuries of Western theology and historical framing have severed Egypt from Africa in the Christian imagination. Black and African peoples are pushed to the margins of God’s redemptive story.
Ten years ago this year, I had my own epiphany while in seminary and I took my first trip to Africa and visited Cairo. While I was there, I learned so much about Egypt’s history. For the first time I saw hieroglyphs depicting people with sun-kissed skin. In the Egyptian museum, I gazed upon the statues of charcoal-colored pharaohs with broad noses and thick lips.
I saw paintings and iconography hundreds and thousands of years old depicting Black people with kinky hair, dressed in royal regalia, depicted with dignity and authority. For a young Black man like me, raised with an American public school education, this was an epiphany.
Moreover, this simple fact crystalized in my mind: Africa had Christ before Europe ever had Christianity.
“Africa had Christ before Europe ever had Christianity.”
Before Paul ever took Christ throughout Asia.
Centuries before Constantine baptized empire and called it faith.
Thirteen hundred years before the Western Schism solidified the papacy’s position in Rome and Gutenberg printed Scripture.
Fifteen hundred years before a slave ship called Jesus, charted by the Queen of England, landed on the shores of West Africa.
Africa had Christ! The Son of God was sheltered, protected, nurtured and sustained on African soil and by African people. African community, philosophy, ethics, perspective and imagination gave refuge to the Son of God.
And if African community, philosophy, ethics, perspective and imagination was good enough for the Son of God, then no person dare say Africa and its people are deficient.
If African wisdom — communal care, shared responsibility, protection of the vulnerable — was sufficient to guard the Son of God, then Africa cannot be dismissed as secondary in the story of salvation.
Herod’s response to Epiphany is violence. But God’s response is not to overthrow empire, but to preserve life through refuge, memory and collective power.
And here is the lesson for the church in 2026: Even though Egypt is not outside the Roman Empire, God creates spaces of refuge for God’s people. God calls us to places where we can find and experience community. And it is our task to find these places as we navigate the violence of regimes of our day.
This Epiphany, perhaps our call is not to marvel at the star but remember the road it illuminated. Taking us to a place so we can dwell among people to help us survive and outlast the attacks on our people.
And in that revelation, the church is called to remember where refuge is truly found. Until the day comes when we can fulfill the word of the Lord.
Darrell Hamilton II serves as administrative pastor at First Baptist Church of Jamaica Plain, Mass., and as Protestant chaplain at Babson College in Wellesley, Mass. He is an ordained Baptist minister and graduate of Wake Forest School of Divinity. His ministry and leadership are focused on advancing diversity, inclusion and advocacy for the vulnerable and marginalized to inspire greater justice and love for all people.
Related article:
Jesus the asylum-seeker: A visit to the Church of Abu Sirga | Opinion by Mallory Challis