St Mary's

A reading from the holy gospel according to Matthew 5:13—16

Jesus said to the disciples: ‘You are the salt of the earth. But if salt becomes tasteless, what can make it salty again? It is good for nothing, and can only be thrown out to be trampled underfoot.’ ‘You are the light of the world. A city built on a hill-top cannot be hidden. No one lights a lamp to put it under the tub; they put it on the lamp-stand where it shines for everyone in the house. In the same way your light must shine in the sight of all, so that, seeing your good works, they may give praise to God in heaven.’

This is the gospel, the Good News.

This reading is one we need to breathe in, to take it deep within, to feel the power and truth.

Then to become it – to be that light to others, and salt for the earth.

One story from the numerous we heard during the floods, captures the essence of this gospel.

It emerged from the battered, flood-ravaged little town of Grantham. I know this town well as my parents owned a small farm 5 kilometres out of town on the now infamous Sandy Creek. The town was a sitting duck for the worst of the first rising creeks inundated from the deluge of water from the previous days and days of soaking rain.

(Grantham/Sandy/Lockyer Creeks).

The story was in last weekends Melbourne Age newspaper and told by Tony Wright. There is a picture of Linda Weston and Marty Warburton standing side by side.

“THIS,” says Marty Warburton “is my angel in silhouette”.

Linda Weston seems an unlikely angel. She climbs down from a ute and bustles towards us, the energy in her small frame seeming to bleed the oxygen from the air. She turns that air blue as she vents her opinion of officialdom and its latest plan to cut off her wrecked town from the media and all outsiders for the next seven days.

“The bloody world will forget about us in seven days, for Christ’s sake,” she declares.

“And then where will we be?”

“Yes” grins Warburton, “This is the lady who saved my life. The lady in silhouette. Now she’s saving everyone else.”

There are uncounted stories about tragedy and astonishing escapes in the floods that have ripped and rolled and seeped through communities from Queensland to Victoria over recent weeks, but few tell quite so simply of the human capacity for survival and the spirit of plain generosity that characterizes what happened between Marty Warburton and Linda Weston during the night that destroyed the little town of Grantham on January 10.

It was a night when Weston was nothing more than a silhouette in candlelight, her spectral presence urging a man clinging to a roof to hang on, to live when others were dying.

Weston and her partner Paul Armstrong live in a fine old home in the style known as The Queenslander, high off the ground to catch a cooling breeze. They grow zucchinis, pumpkins, cucumbers, silverbeet and tomatoes. Their house was spared, though their sheds were crushed by debris. The floating house wedges itself against a steel structure.

In their paddock, Weston kept watch, calling encouragement from her window until a rescue helicopter lowered a saviour by winch and hauled into the sky an elderly couple and their dog, just as the evening light began to fade.

Warburton, praying that his service station wouldn’t collapse beneath him, had retreated to the highest part of his roof. He knew he was in for a hard night, and Weston knew it, too. She wasn’t about to let her neighbour suffer alone.

As night fell, she lit candles and placed tem on her kitchen window sill. She stood there, hour after long hour.

Comforted by her silhouette in the candlelight, Warburton took to firing up his cigarette lighter every few minutes to signal he was alive. Near wore out his thumb, he says.

Fatigue crept upon him and , fearful of falling asleep and rolling into the flood, he lifted the edges of a couple of sheets of roofing iron and clipped himself to them with tool hooks he wears on his belt. But still he drifted off, and each time he did so, Weston, alarmed by the absence of cigarette-lighter signals, roared at him to shape up. Around 3am, with Weston still at her vigil, Warburton unclipped himself and edged down the roof to check the water level. He cannot recall what happened next, but he washed up on a neighbour’s second-floor verandah several doors down.

Weston, seeing no more flashes of light from the service station, sat down to a breakfast of cold chips and chicken.

Marty Warburton survived because of Linda Weston’s simple gesture of lighting a candle, placing it on a window sill, keeping vigil and keeping herself awake, and her friend Marty.

In Linda’s simple action of supporting her mate Marty, she acted as a light in the darkness, providing hope in the face of a dire and life-threatening situation. In so many ways, she lived today’s gospel. Linda did not light her lamp and put it under a tub; she put it on the lamp-stand, in this case, a window sill, where it shone for everyone.

And from that we have learned of Linda’s life since the flood she is continuing to be that light in so many ways – providing practical support and comfort to so many within her small community. Linda’s story has been multiplied a hundred fold during the flood. People like Linda everywhere providing support and comfort wherever needed. Actions such as these have injected a wonderful sense of community and connectedness within communities where such connecting did not exist at all, or in very limited ways. People working and standing knee-deep in mud together; cleaning up and rebuilding shattered lives – a rebuilding which will take months and years in many cases.

So, keeping our lights shining for one another will challenge our perseverance, our patience and our ability to renew and maintain the lights within, that keep us going. And to know, if they do go out, there will be someone like Linda Weston holding a Candle of Hope alive.

Albert Schweitzer once wrote:

“At times our own light goes out and is rekindled by a spark from another person.

Each of us has cause to think with deep gratitude of those who have lighted the flame within us.”

In the song we are about to listen to, we hear the words:

“When in the cold, in troubles dark

And in the sadness of our, our deepest heart

In my longing, my darkest day,

I light a candle in Your Name”.

May we continue to strive to be lights of hope for one another.