A sermon on Luke 15: 1-10  & 1 Timothy 1: 12-17 by Nathan Nettleton

Now all the sinners and outcasts were coming near to listen to Jesus.  And the religious types were grumbling and saying, “This fellow welcomes sinners and eats with them.” So Jesus told them some stories, two or which you’ve just heard. Let me tell you a similar story. It took place in Thredbo sixteen years ago, and I’m sure those of you who are old enough remember it as vividly as I do.

It was a cold night in the little alpine town. Of course at that time of year they were all cold nights. At midnight in the mountains it makes very little difference that you’re below the snow line. That night was much like any other night at the height of the snow season. Many of the visitors were up raging in the bars, but by midnight most of the mountain work force had bedded down for the night. Another full day of catering to the recreational needs of thousands of visitors would have them up again by 7 am.

Some of the long term mountain people said they’d known for years it was only a matter of time, but that night there was no way to know anything was wrong. No warnings. No tell tale signs. Nothing. It just happened. Suddenly it seemed like half the mountain gave way. It wasn’t half the mountain by any means, just a bit about thirty metres by 80 metres really, but that represents hundreds of tonnes of dirt, rock and vegetation and for no obvious reason something gave way and it all came rushing down the hill towards the town. In the pictures on the TV the next day it just looked like a big brown scar a couple of hundred metres long with a pile of debris at the bottom. But the locals knew that right where that scar ended there had been two ski lodges when they’d gone to bed.

There are little fault lines all over our world. Places where something is brewing under the surface and at any moment without warning something just gives way and the foundations we’ve built our culture and communities on just slide out from under us. There are plenty of voices shouting warnings but most of us just go right on living and learn to shut out the gloomy voices. There are ecologists telling us that the planet’s ecosystems are poised to slide into oblivion. There are economists telling us that the global monetary system could give way any time and take out most of our social institutions in the crash. There are sociologists and psychologists telling us that the changing culture of the workplace is careering down a direct collision path with the emotional and relational health of workers and their families. But we go about our daily lives as best we can and leave the worrying to the experts.

It didn’t take long for the alarm to be raised, of course, because the sound of such a slide is thunderous, but in the dead of night in the freezing cold with most of the people who were still up and about significantly inebriated, it took quite a while for the enormity of what had happened to really register. And it was quickly apparent to those who know about these things, that there was a serious danger of further slippage and so you can’t just charge in and start digging. Anyone who’s ever done a first aid course knows that the first thing you check for at an accident site is further danger. There’s no point in starting CPR if there’s another hundred tonnes of debris crashing down towards you. But when everything you thought was solid and dependable has just caved in without warning and without explanation, how can you know whether the danger has passed? No one really knows what will help or what will make things worse. So several hours had elapsed and dawn was shedding some light before any real decisions could be made.

A man called Stuart Diver lay somewhere underneath. He had no idea what had happened. One minute he was lying in bed next to his beloved wife and the next minute after a brief rumbling sound outside all hell broke loose. It was a bit like the feeling of rolling a car – he’d done that once – only worse. Seconds later it was all still again and pitch black. He could hear a few muffled screams, but they seemed a long way away and they quickly faded and soon died out completely.

He stretched out his arm. It didn’t go far before he felt solid blocks of what he assumed was concrete. He reached up. About 10 centimetres above his face – solid. Was it a wall? Was it the ceiling? There was no way of knowing in the blackness. It might have been the foundations of the earth for all he could tell. It might have been the cold immovable blocks of bigotry that weigh down on people and crush the spirit out of them. It might have been the granite edifices behind which executives plot marketing strategies to entomb people in impossible appetites for affluence, sex and status. It might have been the unyielding debris of despair and degradation left as families fragment and communities crumble before the onslaught of decadence, greed and cynical opportunism. Whatever it was he couldn’t budge it.

He reached out to the other side searching for Sally. Please God let her be OK. He found her. She was still breathing but she wasn’t responding. She seemed to be even more wedged in than him and was somehow down lower at half arm’s length. With not even enough room to roll towards her all he could do was hold her hand and pray that help would come before it was too late.  He had no way of knowing if or when that might happen.

In the safety of our homes we watched what was going on above on hourly news updates.

We saw the rescue teams assembling. Police. SES. Emergency Services. Experts on various things. And of course media units. Those of us who’d ever been to Thredbo felt grateful to be alive. We watched hour by hour as the painstaking task of determining the risks involved in excavating were assessed. We saw the anguish of friends and relatives forced to watch helplessly, not even allowed to start searching in the rubble. We heard the count of the missing climb with each successive broadcast. We heard reports of cries for help from beneath the debris – cries that had fallen silent. We heard the operations commander saying that finding survivors was unlikely given the sub-zero temperatures, but that every effort would be made once the safety of the rescue workers could be assured. And we held our breath. And we prayed.

Four slabs of concrete and a small mountain of rubble beneath the surface, Stuart knew nothing of all that except the cold. Cold that seems to gradually eat into you. All he could hear was the occasional sound of running water.

Up above it took most of the day before the experts gave the all clear for people to start human chain gangs shifting the rubble brick by brick. It was about forty eight hours before it was considered an acceptable risk to use heavy machinery. During that time they brought in infra red heat detectors and sniffer dogs to try to locate any life in the rubble. They couldn’t find any. They don’t penetrate four layers of concrete to where Stuart lay.

He was alone now. There’d been the terrifying sound of water gushing towards them before the breath was sucked out of him as their tiny crypt flooded with icy water. Swirling, surging, grasping like frigid fingers round his throat. By craning his neck he could just keep his face clear. It sucked out the last warmth like a deluge of shame and betrayal. Doused the embers of hope like a torrent of abuse and humiliation. And like a food-tide of death it drowned his wife. When the water drained, so had Sally’s last breath. He was angry now. Desperate to wreak revenge on the forces that had killed his beloved. But like a man with a crushing mortgage in a soul-destroying job, the fight instinct didn’t have much room for expression down there.

It was on the third morning when every radio and TV station broke their programs for the news flash we couldn’t believe. A voice could be heard in the rubble. Someone was still alive in there! One of the workers had thought he heard something, and they called for all machinery to be turned off so they could listen again. And in the quiet, sure enough, there is was. They shouted, “Can anyone hear me in there?” and back came a muffled indistinct voice, “Yes. I can hear you.” From that moment on, none of us turned off our radios or TVs – we hung on every update.

For the first couple of hours they didn’t know it was Stuart. Through tiny cracks in four layers of concrete they couldn’t make out enough detail of what he said. Now there was both extra urgency and extra need for care. They knew that whoever he was he couldn’t last indefinitely down there, but they also knew that any false move could still see him crushed to death.

A couple of hours later we marvelled at the reports of how they had managed to get a tiny probe to negotiate its way through the cracks to where Stuart was. Now he had a name to us, but the probe also revealed the bad news, there was a lot of concrete between Stuart and the outside world and no guarantees that it could be got through without setting it moving again. Six bodies had been found by now and twelve more were confirmed missing. Stuart’s name was now moved off the list of the missing but the odds were still against getting him out alive. When the world collapses around you, when all you’ve known and relied on suddenly caves in, the initial impact may not kill you, but precious few ever survive to emerge from the debris.

Hour after hour ticked by with each update bringing news of progress, but slow, slow progress. After a few hours they managed to drill a small hole through the four massive slabs of what were once the upstairs floors. That enabled them get a couple of tubes through to Stuart, one to pump in warm air and one to supply some high energy drink. A lifeline of hope in a tomb beneath a world destroyed. That improved his survival chances a bit, but the biggest danger was still something giving way above him.

Then they were ready to start cutting. Massive saws that cut through reinforced concrete went to work – slow, noisy, dirty and vibrating work. Each time the saws stopped there was one man above who kept talking to the one man below. Paul Featherstone told Stuart what they were doing. He told him about the blueness of the sky. He told him that his parents had arrived. He told him about us, all over the country, glued to our news broadcasts, holding our breath, hoping and praying, hoping and praying.

Hour after hour went by. Still we waited. Still we prayed. The saws cut a hole through one layer, then another, then another. With each layer the tension grew. Nothing had moved or fallen yet, but it could be the last piece that dashed a nations hopes. The last hurdle of a journey has no less perils than the first one.

At the final slab, they first cut a small hole through. Stuart lay underneath, his eyes closed and hand over his face against the cement dust. Suddenly there was a burst of light and the noise died down. Daylight. The first for six days! As he blinked and squinted against it, a hand came through. He clutched it eagerly in his own and he heard that now familiar voice of the contact man above, but for the first time clearly and not just through tiny cracks and holes. “We’ve reached you Stuart. We’re going to get you out!” Tough outdoorsman that he was, Stuart clung on to Paul’s hand for the next hour while the saws went back to work cutting a hole through the last slab big enough to get him through. And round the nation we sat frozen in front of our TV’s and held our breath for fear that the flutter of a butterfly’s wing in Melbourne might cause another landslide in Threadbo.

After a seeming eternity, they were through. All we could see was the ambulance waiting and a small crowd of people in hard hats and reflective vests round a hole in the rubble. And then the moment we’d all been trying to pray into existence. The crowd parted and as four men emerged with a loaded stretcher the whole site erupted in jubilant cheering and wild applause. And every eye in Australia flooded with tears. Sixteen years later, I still choke up every time I think of it – of the exhausted jubilation we all shared as they pulled him out alive.

“And just so I tell you,” said Jesus, “there is overflowing joy in heaven over one person, even be they the foremost among sinners, who is pulled alive from the rubble and destruction.” All that astonishing rescue operation has got nothing on the care and anguished urgency and tenacity with which God comes searching for each of us amidst the chaos of this disintegrating world, and all our national joy on that day has got nothing on the overflowing joy in heaven over each person, even be they the least of nobodies, who is pulled to the safety and freedom of life in God.