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 another
story.

It was a cold night in the little alpine town. Of course at that
time of year they were all cold nights. At two o’clock in the morning 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 soon
after 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’s 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.

Stuart 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 Threadbo 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 another 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
mortgage in a soul-destroying job, the fight instinct didn’t have much
room for expression down there.

It was four days later 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. He 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 that mans 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 a 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. 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 of
this disintegrating world."

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