THOUGHT FOR THE WEEK

Things are still not back to normal, but the story of the tragic train crash at Paddington is now receding from the foreground, at least for those of us who were not there. 

The organisation Railtrack put out a notice advising that Paddington station was closed because of an ‘incident’.  As simultaneously we were being shown scenes of soaring flames, it was hard to imagine a more inappropriate use of language.  Indeed, ‘beating about the bush’ in modern-speak surely qualifies as one of the sins of our times.   Politicians immediately sprang to the fore replete with wisdom to enforce this and that and blame the previous administrations for what they had failed to do, thereby reminding one of the scribes and Pharisees of St. Matthew’s Gospel: “If we had lived in the days of our fathers, we would not have taken part with them …”

Perhaps the most extraordinary thing was the great discrepancy between estimates and reality over the number who had been killed.  One can hardly say it was a ‘relief’ to discover the figure was lower than expected, but it certainly was lower.  And one of the reasons was the number of people who were reported ‘missing’.

No doubt some took a long time to report in safe, but the fact is that others are missing.  But they are not missing because they have been pulverised at Paddington.  They have just gone missing.  They were probably never on, or near, the trains to and from London.  But they wanted, or needed to go missing, and here was an opportunity.  In the aftermath of a great disaster, they disappear; the wires go silent, and their friends and relatives assume why.  But they go missing for various dark and hidden reasons: insurance fiddles, imminent financial collapse, escape to the Continent with a mistress.  It may be morbid to say so, but it is what really happens after every catastrophe where people’s identities can just be ‘lost’.

It is a chilling reminder of the secrets that lie in every human heart: “man is a profundity, and his heart is a great abyss” Psalm 63: 6.  It is also reminder of the battle between fantasy and reality which, to a greater or lesser extent, we all have to wage, whether that reality is a life of boredom, unpopularity, failing health, lack of good looks or general absence of ‘cool’.

The Gospels also contain the story of a missing person: Jesus.  After the Jerusalem pilgrimage of the year AD8 [?] he could not be found.  Not because he was on the 5.5 from Jerusalem Central, but because he was in the Temple.  And when rebuked by Mary, he answered – to our way of thinking rather haughtily – “I had to be about my Father’s business”.

Now the Father’s business is total reality, the complete absence of anything false or fantastical.  And such is the business of every Christian.  People often say Christianity is a cop-out, a make-believe.  In its distorted form, it can be.  But when lived as its founder intended, it involves the most searching look at the self and the total acceptance of reality, human and divine.   A Christian who is a Christian has certainly not gone missing; he is well and truly found.