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            The origins of Christianity might be compared to an ellipse.  An ellipse has two foci, and the Christian movement has two foundational events: Jesus’ ministry and his appearance after his death. 
            Scholars have tended to emphasize just one of these events, to the exclusion of the other.  Some place all the emphasis on the Easter event, which, like a nuclear explosion, is supposed to have obliterated everything before it, so that any quest for the historical Jesus becomes an exercise in futility. 
            Others regard the tradition of Jesus’ resurrection as a self-serving myth, invented by his disciples, and insist that it is only the memory of Jesus as the man for others which gives any legitimacy to the movement which derives from him. 
            As is so often the case, the truth in this matter is to be found not in “either/or” but in “both/and.”  So it is appropriate that one of today’s two readings is a parable of Jesus, “The Pharisee and the Publican”  (Luke 18:9-14), while the other contains the most ancient witness to Christ’s death and resurrection (1 Corinthians 15:1-11). 
            It is important to note that the tradition which Paul cites did not originate with him.  He states explicitly that what he had preached to the Corinthians, and what they had received, was what he himself had received.  He does not say from whom, and scholars are divided on whether this earliest Christian creed derives from the Jerusalem community or from the church in Antioch. The important thing, however, is that it does not come from Paul, even though Paul lists himself, at the very end of the passage, among those who have seen the risen Lord. 
            “Where there is no vision, the people perish” (Proverbs 29:18).  One of the two foci of the Christian movement was a vision, expressed by the single Greek word ophthe. translated either “he appeared” or “he was seen.”  This vision was then interpreted, in accordance with contemporary expectation, of the resurrection of the dead. 
            But the resurrection of Jesus is different from any other resurrection reported in scripture: it is not the restoration of a dead person to continued temporal existence, like the resurrection of Lazarus (John 11:1-57), nor is it part of a collective resurrection immediately preceding God’s final judgment (Daniel 12:2), the resurrection of the dead which we profess at the end of the creed. 
            Rather, the vision of Jesus after his crucifixion is interpreted to mean that Jesus has been raised by God to eternal life while this present age continues to run its course.  The resurrection of a contemporary person to life with God is without parallel in Jewish sources. 
            The origin of the Christian mission lies both in the memory of Jesus’ life and death and in the visionary experience reported by Paul.  The proclamation of Jesus as the Christ cannot be explained simply as the result of the disciples’ reflection on the fate of their dead master.  The Easter experience provided the necessary catalyst to turn the tragedy of Good Friday into the new reality of the Christian church.            

August 3, 2008

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