Religion
Eye witness
Martin Sullivan
A fortnight ago we held a memorial service at St Paul's for the Moorgate disaster. Already this tragedy has passed into recorded history and the documents have been widely read. Not one of them, of course, was written in advance nor while the accident was taking place, but instant reporting sometimes confirming, sometimes in conflict with the oral tradition, has brought accounts to our notice and people are still passing on their own stories. What we have read and heard has varied in extent and detail. We have been given vivid, large-scale pictures alongside occasional disconnected paragraphs, and we have had heartwarming descriptions of the dedication and bravery of the rescuers. We know what eye-witnesses claim to have seen.
A vignette here and there was specially touching. A mother and daughter, who together always' caught an earlier train, were separated because the girl had overslept this particular morning and so, coming later, went to her death. Two young women, regular passengers, normally sat in the front coach, but acting on a strong premonition on the part of one of them, changed to the fourth and so were saved. A whole section of this reporting was devoted to an analysis of the cause of the accident, but the final answer has yet to be found. An official inquiry ended without discovering a reason. The authors and interviewers have had two aims, the first to establish the fact of the disaster, and the second with varying preconceptions and purposes, to describe it and assess it. When this generation has passed away, it will be interesting to see what a later one will make of the documentary evidence and what conclusions will be recorded. Much of this has been in my mind as I have been reading and meditating upon the stories of the first Easter. Editing and reporting have not changed much over the centuries. Selection and arrangement are decided upon, the main facts baldly stated, and then around them are clustered the human touches. The Evangelists adopted
this method when they came to record the Resurrection. No one saw it actually happen. It is affirmed almost incidentally and then our attention is called to the statements of people who bore witness to the risen Christ. A woman said she had seen Him and spoken to Him in the garden, where His sepulchre had been placed, a testimony which the writers were honest enough to tell us was dismissed by some of her close friends as pure hysteria. Two Others, senior disciples, testified that the tomb was empty, A couple walking home to their village from Jerusalem on Easter night, heartbroken that their leader was dead, claimed He had joined them on the road, chatted to them, actually entered their house, broken bread With them and then vanished. The disciples declared that He joined them in the Upper Room twice, the second time especially to greet one of them who had been absent on the first occasion. There were, of course, other remembrances.
. Is all this reliable evidence? Does it ring as true as the statements of People concerned in our recent disaster? Is some feature writer inventing tales to try to support something which was believed to have happened but about which little was known, or is he, for the same reason, spiritualising the slender evidence which may have been available to him? And when St Paul, if he be the actual author, writing only twenty years after the event (the equivalent one might saY of twenty minutes today) declares that over 500 people (the greater part of whom at the time he wrote were still alive and presumably could be questioned) had seen the Lord, was he lying, was he speaking in parables, was he gossiping or was he telling the simple truth?
Two thousand years later we are left to make up our minds. As we do SO certain cautionary notes must be sounded. Every single statement about Christ's resurrection was made by people who lived under the influence of it and believed it had taken place. They felt its power. It IS this experience of theirs and not Just the evidence which they ask us to accept, and to make our own. For %is, as for them, the question is not, _Has He risen?" but "Is He risen?" Here is the existentialist choice we Must make, accepting, yes, or rejecting, as our deepest being responds. The evidence alone is not the ground of our belief. It helps either to confirm it or to weaken it. The threads we hold in our hands are as strong as steel. The life to Which Christ has introduced to us, and His felt presence which He guaranteed to us when He abolished death, sustain us now and Will remain with us hereafter. To doubt that would be, for many of US, to doubt our very existence.
Martin Sullivan is Dean of St Paul's
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