Swallowsrest

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.