Archive for the ‘Holy Innocents’ Category

Holy Innocents

January 5, 2026

Holy Innocents – 2025

Matthew 2:13-23

Marian Free

In the name of God Earth-maker, Pain-bearer, Life-giver. Amen.

This morning I would like to begin with a story, the story of Marmour an Anglican priest in the Diocese of Brisbane. He shared the story in Anglican Focus and I’d like to use his own words. 

He wrote: “I fled South Sudan for Ethiopia when I was 11. The journey across the desert without clothing or shoes was very bad. We travelled for many days – we walked for more than a month across the desert to escape the persecution of the Khartoum government who wanted to abduct boys so they couldn’t join the rebel groups once they became older.

More than 20,000 boys walked across the desert as unaccompanied minors. We are known as the ‘Lost Boys of Sudan’. There were seven from my extended family and we walked with 13,000 others. I left my parents with only the food I could carry, which my mum packed for me, and a two litre container of water. My mum packed simsim for me, a sort of produce like peanuts that doesn’t need cooking so it was easy to eat. I didn’t see my parents again.

We travelled at nighttime, mostly so the Khartoum government military in helicopters could not find us. We ran out of food quickly and ate wild animals, although not all of us would get a portion. It was a struggle.

The desert was very dry and it was dangerous. We could be abducted. Some children were eaten by lions. Most children who died just fell asleep and did not get up as they were too weak to walk any further.

Arriving in Ethiopia was another bad experience. We had no food at all and we arrived in Ethiopia with no place to go. So we had to sleep under trees. There was nowhere to go to the toilet so the children defecated anywhere, which spread cholera. Children also died of tropical diseases, which spread quickly because we lived close together. Many of us also died of malnutrition.

It took three months for the United Nations to come with food and medical supplies, although the strongest medicine they had was Panadol and hydration salts. They did not bring water so we had to keep drinking from the diseased river. There was no clean water until more than four years later in 1991.

Around 1991 we were forced back to the Ethiopian-Sudanese border to Pochalla. The United Nations moved us out because of the threat of the Eritrea-Ethiopian rebels’ movement. Because there was no airstrip, the United Nations could not fly us in food. We left the Panyido refugee camp in Ethiopia in two groups, going in separate directions. It took me and my group three weeks to get to Pochalla on the border. It was easier the second time for me as I packed more food and was a few years older. Many of the children in the group that went in the other direction were shot at by rebels and either died in the gunfire or drowned as they tried to escape across the river Gilo. Some managed to get safely across the river.

We lived in Pochalla for a couple of months. The Khartoum government bombed the area from helicopters a few times and sent troops to attack us on the ground. Because of this, the United Nations decided it was an unsafe place for children so we had to move again, this time to Kenya.

The walk to Kenya was more than two months. It was bad. There wasn’t much food. We walked at night to keep safe. The United Nations did not have enough vehicles to transport the children so we had to walk across Kothngor desert. They did not plan well.

We arrived in northwestern Kenya at the Kakuma refugee camp in 1992. Over 15,000 of us had travelled there. We were very weak when we arrived, but life was better in Kakuma.

In 2003, more than 15 years after I first left my parents, I came to Australia. When I first came here, I went to Tasmania. So – I went from Kenya, which is extremely hot every day of the year and where I lived for over 10 years to Tasmania. As the Tasmanian weather was too much for me, after two months I moved to Sydney.

Can you imagine being a parent so desperate to keep their child safe that they would send them into the desert alone knowing that they might never see them again? Or imagine watching your child slowly fade away from hunger because war, drought or other natural disaster means that you cannot find enough food to feed them? What must  it be like to be the parent of a daughter kidnapped by ISIS or Nigerian ISIS fighters – knowing that they will almost certainly be forced into a marriage with their captors? 

On the first Sunday of Christmas, we are brought down to earth with an awful jolt. The account of the slaughter of all the male children under two stands in distinct contrast with the irenic scenes of the Nativity. All the hope and possibility that Jesus’ birth represented seems to have been a false promise. But, as we witnessed in Australia just three weeks ago, the world is a cruel and unpredictable place – joy can turn to tragedy in a moment and as the last few years have illustrated there is far too much tragedy in the world.

There is no historical evidence for the account of the slaughter of the innocents but this story, on this Sunday is a reminder both that faith is no protection from the .. of the world and that God is not unaware of the cruelty of which humanity is capable.  This story is for every parent who has lost a child to preventable disease, to a bomb or a terror attack, for every parent who has held a child whose stomach is swollen thanks to malnutrition, for every parent who this Here, in our holy scripture is a story that tells them that their story is part of the story.

Our scriptures don’t sugar coat what it means to be human. In its pages are almost every human experience. THE story is our story, in scripture we can find a story that matches our own and which tells us that we are not alone but part of the vast expanse of human experience. THE story tells it how it is, and in so doing reminds us that no detail of human existence – however awful is beneath God’s attention.

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Falling from grace

December 28, 2019

Christmas 1 – 2019

Matthew 2:13-23

Marian Free

 In the name of God whose ways are not our ways and whose thoughts are not our thoughts. Amen

Recently I listened to an interview with Timothy Spall the actor who, among other achievements, played the part of the artist J.M.W. Turner in the movie of the same name. I first came across Spall when I watched the extraordinary 1996 movie Secrets and Lies in which he played the lead role. During the interview, he was asked to tell the story of why he missed going to Cannes for the showing of that movie. As he tells it, Spall was at that time experiencing a certain amount of lethargy and, thinking that it was exhaustion, he went to the doctor expecting to be given some sort of tonic or pick-me-up. Within days, while he was in the midst of filming an advertisement, Spall received a call from the doctors’ surgery asking him to come in. Not wanting to spare the time or to leave the filming halfway through he insisted on speaking with the doctor. The doctor also refused to share the news over the phone. When Spall presented at the surgery, he was informed that the cause of his tiredness was not overwork or poor diet, it was a particularly aggressive form of leukemia – acute myeloid leukemia. Had he not been diagnosed and immediately begun the treatment; he might have been dead by the end of the week! Instead of going to Cannes he went to hospital for chemotherapy.

The fact that he was being interviewed indicates that the cure was successful, but Spall’s story is a reminder of how quickly our lives can change. An accident, a diagnosis, a sick or dying child, a change in the world economy, falling victim to a scam, any number of things – whether of our our making or from completely unrelated events – can turn our lives and our fortunes upside down in a heartbeat.

As Matthew tells the story, such was the case with Jesus. His birth was facilitated by the Holy Spirit and heralded by an angel. A new star signalled his arrival. News of his birth reached the centre of power. Wise men or kings travelled a great distance to see him, to kneel before him and to give him gifts that were both rich and rare. This, Matthew leads us to believe was no ordinary child. He was born in the symbolically significant town of Bethlehem – the home of King David. As an infant he was recognized as King of the Jews and worshipped as God. Yet, barely had the wise men left, when Jesus and his family were forced to flee, not only the city, but the country. From being identified as royalty they became as fugitives. From having the world at their feet, they were forced to seek shelter from strangers. From being worshipped as God to being just another refugee fleeing cruelty and oppression. From having the power to strike fear into the heart of Herod and of Jerusalem to being completely powerless in the insignificant, barely known village of Nazareth. From being at the center of the Jewish world to being at its very edges, considered as little better than a Samaritan. Overnight Jesus and his family went from recognition to ignominy, renown to obscurity.

It was a dramatic turn of events, albeit one which has lost some of the impact in its retelling over the centuries. Unlike Luke for whom Jesus was born in a stable and revealed to the poor and lowly including shepherds, who were considered no better than thieves, Matthew places Jesus’ birth among the rich and powerful. Yet, hardly has he established Jesus’ credentials as king and God than he turns the story on its head. Jesus will not, as his beginning suggests, be identified with kings and rulers. He will in fact take his place among the most helpless and vulnerable of his community. Kings will not bow down before him, instead they will oppose him. His followers will not be the wise men from the east or even from among his own people, but the marginalised and the outcast, those with no status at all.

Jesus’ apparent fall from grace turns out to be anything but. As Matthew tells the story, everything that happened was going according to plan. Jesus is a king but, as the readers will come to see, he is a king like no other. Jesus is God, but as God he fully identifies with the plight of humanity to the point of becoming one of and one with them. Jesus’ change in circumstance is full of symbolic meaning that more fully spells out who and what he is, and, through the fulfillment passages, Matthew shows that God had seen how things would work out and that God’s hand had been with Jesus every step of the journey.

Life does not always work out the way that we hope and plan. Sometimes a curved ball is thrown in our direction and we have to re-think who we are, what we are doing and where we are going. At such times we must follow Joseph’s example and believe that, however bleak things appear, God is with us, guiding us through the darkness and helping us to accept and to work with the way things are. Sometimes, with hindsight, we will see that God has moved us through the pain and difficulty to where we were always meant to be.

 

 

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Not our our watch?

February 16, 2019

Holy Innocents – 2019

Matthew 2:13-18

Marian Free

In the name of God who uses love, not force to ensure obedience and trust. Amen.

Some of you will have seen the recent movie, “Mary, Queen of Scots”. Mary was the legitimate daughter of James the V of Scotland, but more importantly, she was the great, granddaughter of England’s Henry VII, and, after the childless Elizabeth, she was the legitimate claimant to the English throne. Mary who at only 6 days old was declared Queen of Scotland as a consequence of the death of her father, was sent to France for her education. At eighteen Mary, a Roman Catholic, returned to a Scotland that in her absence had embraced Protestantism and did not welcome a papist Queen..

Her troubles in Scotland were one thing, but it was the fact that Mary was a threat to Elizabeth’s reign and and the fact that her presence might be the catalyst for civil war or war between the two nations, that led her to her imprisonment and finally to her execution. As long as Mary was alive, she could be a focal point for dissent in the realm and beyond, and Elizabeth’s grip on power was weakened as a result.

The history of the British monarchy is littered with stories of intrigue – of people seeking favour with the king (or queen) to increase their wealth or to bolster or secure their power; or of competing heirs to the throne who must be destroyed lest they pursue their claim by force or become figureheads for those who want to depose the crown. As a consequence, the queen (or king) learns that no one can be trusted, that power must be maintained by force and that any and all opposition must be eliminated so that they no longer pose a threat.

Given our own history, it should come as no surprise to us that Herod, whose position is entirely dependent on his relationship with Rome and his ability to maintain control over a people who despise and reject him, should be agitated when he learns from the magi that a king has been born and not only a king, but the legitimate king of the Jews. The child presents a double threat – he could become a focal point for the unrest that was always just below the surface or he could raise an army and make a claim for Herod’s throne. From Herod’s point of view there is only one way to avoid conflict and loss of face (not to mention loss of power). The child has to die. The problem, in this instance, is that Herod has no way of knowing when the child was born, so just to be safe, he kills all the boys who were born in Bethlehem in the two years before the magi’s visit.

There is no external historical proof that Herod did in fact slaughter the children of Bethlehem, but history has demonstrated time and time again that despots deal with threats to their power in only one way – by ruling tyrannically and by ruthlessly crushing any hint of opposition. Those who challenge, resist or protest oppressive and unjust regimes are usually arrested, tortured and killed – not only in the distant past but also in our present time.

News reports tell us in Venezuela today – a country in which inflation is out of control, medicines are impossible to source and food is scarce – the military is sent to into the slums to quell unrest, with violence if necessary. Protesters who are arrested simply disappear. In Turkey in 2016, an attempted coup against the government led to the imprisonment – not of students, and rabble rousers, but of lawyers and judges and military personnel. Anyone who was critical of the government or who was perceived to be a threat, was arrested and imprisoned. According to a CNN report, more than 110,000 people have been incarcerated since – a number that includes 200 top Turkish court officials. Many have been taken into custody despite the fact that there is no evidence that they had any involvement in the coup. The President was not and is not taking any risks.

In any time and place leaders who do not have the support of their people use repressive and violent means to suppress and eradicate opposition. Stalin’s Russia, Hitlers Germany, Apartheid South Africa, Pol Pot’s Cambodia, the list goes on and on. Brutal repression of revolt, the silencing of dissidents, and the scapegoating of those who are different is justified by the need to keep law and order and it gains support by the vilification and denigration of those who dare to expose injustice and oppression.

So, is Matthew’s account of the slaughter of the innocents simply a commentary on the abuse of power or – does it have something to say to those of us in twenty first century Australia who have the right to choose who governs us and the freedom to criticise our leaders and to protest decisions that we feel to be unreasonable or unfair?

I suspect that we have to recognise that there is a little bit of Herod in all of us, concern for our own welfare, fear of the unknown and a desire to maintain the status quo and in every age there will be those who abuse their power.

It is important that we do not become complacent. We have to be careful that our silence does not give legitimacy to acts of cruelty and torture, that our need for stability and security does not lead us to shore up unjust systems and oppression governments, that our own need for security and peace does not make us indifferent, or worse, deaf and blind to the legitimate complaints of others and that our desire to protect and preserve what we have does not make us fearful of the claims others might make on us.

In other words, let us be on our guard and let us do all that we can to ensure that the innocent are not slaughtered on our watch.

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