Faith in Adversity

A sermon for the Twentieth Sunday after Trinty

Fr. Tim Jones, St. Lawrence's, York

(17th October, 2010)

Luke 18.1-8

More than a billion people watched the Chilean miners being rescued last week. It was almost a perfect story: disaster, courage, resilience, determination, ingenuity, persistence, endurance, technology, friendship, leadership, humour, love, faith, prayer, drama, melodrama, rescue, and joyful reunion. No wonder that we were transfixed. No wonder that around the world people with only the faintest glimmer of faith turned to God in thanks and praise for the safe return of those thirty three men.

To give you an idea of the distance involved, I have here a Barbie doll. Imagine that this is a miner's family member, waiting on the surface. Now imagine that three of St. Lawrence church's spires were balanced one on top of the other, with the miners, to the scale of the doll, trapped at the bottom, with solid rock to the surface. That would be about the right scale model for the rescue. It was a remarkable achievement. We have every right to rejoice.

I found the whole experience deeply faith affirming. My faith was strengthened by being a witness to this rescue. This was in two main ways. First, the faith of the miners in the face of the most terrible of situations. In our gospel reading today Jesus was taking care to teach the disciples of the need to pray and have faith in all circumstances (Luke 18v1). There was, until the very end, no guarantee for the miners at all that the rescue attempt would be successful. For the first seventeen days of the sixty nine day ordeal, there was no guarantee that the men would even be discovered at all by the world above. And yet they held on to their faith, and found in it a source of real strength and hope.

One of their first requests after they were discovered was for materials to construct a small place of worship in the mine. They each requested that a Bible be sent down to them. They were tremendously encouraged by the knowledge that they were in the prayers of many millions. Some of them, at the moment of their rescue, were seen to turn immediately to God in thanks for their lives. One of the men, Mario Sepulveda, declared: “I was with God and the devil, and I reached out for God. I held onto him and never did I lose the belief that I was going to get out.”

My faith has never been tested in anything like that way. To witness the way in which faith, for thirty three ordinary men, could hold strong in the face of the most terrible death, gave me hope for our faith. Their example has been an amazing gift to us. They have been, together, a vehicle of grace.

The second way in which the events affirmed my faith was its illustration of a particular teaching of our Lord, Jesus Christ. In Luke 15v7, Jesus says,

"I tell you that in the same way there will be more rejoicing in heaven over one sinner who repents than over ninety-nine righteous persons who do not need to repent."

Why rejoicing in heaven? What is that all about, and what does it look like? On thirteenth October some one million miners around the world were brought back to the surface. Nearly one million. About 150 miners around the world died in their mine last Wednesday. Any yet of all the miners in the world, it was those thirty three whom the world was watching, because they were in such acute risk, and there was at least the hope that they were not lost. When they were rescued, there was rejoicing not just from the President of Chile, not just from their families, not just from their rescuers, but from the whole human family.

When you came to faith, when you put your life into the crucified hands of Christ, there was untold rejoicing in heaven. The angels and archangels, about whom we sing, sang for you. That your life is safe is a cause for the shouts of triumph that echo through the heavens. Never imagine that just because you are one of many billions of people on one of countless billions of rocks in space that somehow you are insignificant. Your life, your faith, your love, your story, matters enough to God that the most terrible and magnificent rescue has been mounted on your behalf. It is the cause of unimaginable rejoicing.

Just in the news this morning there are seventeen miners trapped in China, and two miners trapped in Ecuador. Since Wednesday, maybe some five hundred miners worldwide have died underground. Let us remember the grief, pray for all those who work in danger, work tirelessly for their safety, and rejoice, rejoice, when the lost are found.

CLICK HERE TO A BBC NEWS LINK TO THE ACCOUNT OF THE MINERS' RESCUE