"And if Christ is not risen,

then our preaching is empty

and your faith is also empty."

1Cor 14:15[1]

The appearance of Christianity on the historical scene made such a great impact on the western world that this part of humanity divided its history by that –  before Christ and after Him. After two millenniums of a new Christian civilization, humanity has not stopped valuing this phenomena in the wide spectrum of its religious, philosophical, cultural, and political thought, as well as in many other layers of significance. The faith built on the witness of a handful of poor fishermen and simple women from a dusty middle-eastern province conquered the sublime philosophical speculations of the noblest and most respectful minds in the gilded metropolises of the world. Some who were persecutors of Christianity became its apostles and confessors, some who has been mocking and cursing Christ on His way to Golgotha, became martyrs for the faith in Him. Those who took Him for less then a thief left their worldly wealth for a crumb of the bread from His table. First became last and last became first[2], everything became[3] new.

Christ's followers who fled as scared children at the sight of His Passion, after seeing their teacher raised from the dead, stood in front of the pagan emperors. They were brave and unshakable as they faced legions of soldiers, blazing stakes and arenas full of roaring beasts. Their one and only strength and inspiration was their own simple faith in all that they saw, touched, and heard as they talked, ate and traveled with their teacher, Jesus of Nazareth, after He had been dead and resurrected.

Apostle Paul, who opened the doors of the new faith in the Resurrected God-Man to the gentile world, gave the earliest written testimony of this event: ''For I delivered to you first of all that I also received: that Christ died for our sins according to the Scriptures, and that He was buried, and that He rose again the third day according to the Scriptures, and that He was seen by Cephas, then by the twelve. After that He was seen by over five hundred at once, of whom the greater part remain to the present, but some have fallen to sleep. After that He was seen by James, then by all the apostles. Than last of all He was seen by me also, as by one born out of due time.''[4] These words were probably repeated a countless number of times in the earliest decades of the Christianity, all around the Roman empire. They must have been the biggest news to those who heard them. Someone died for the sins of all, and the same one resurrected! Death is not the gloomy and hopeless end of life anymore!

We have to be aware that not the whole Hellenistic world shared Socrates' calm acceptance of death as, after all, a benefit and liberation of the soul from the cage of the body. It is most likely that simple people experienced death as the ''ultimate enemy''[5], the real disaster, the end of their relations and the doom of all their endless efforts to achieve something for them and their families. The immortality of the soul, even if it had been a dominant belief outside of the Semitic world, still hadn't been enough to provide a consolation to those who had experienced the inevitable grief of the loss. Therefore the announcement that there is someone who defeated death was something completely unknown at that time and had to have had a huge impact on the souls of those who had been listening to those strange Jews, Paul and his companions, under the bright colonnades of the famous cities of the Empire.

And what did Paul had to offer to them? What was so exciting in his strange words about some man who in some strange way appeared in Judea, a disruptive and problematic province of the Empire? What was so attractive to them in that story which put the shining glory of their gods in the dusk of the past. What finally made them became Christians, putting themselves outside of the law, hiding in cemeteries and catacombs to celebrate this recently unknown God, despite the life threatening danger not only for them, but for their beloved families as well as all their modest, hard-earned goods? The only answer is that the apostles were so convincing in recounting the experience which made them leave behind their own lives to spread the echo of the rallying cry of optimism: ''Death is swallowed up in victory. O death where is your sting? O Hades, where is your victory?''[6]

Apostle Paul's words ''I have been crucified with Christ; it is no longer I who live, but Christ lives in me;''[7] express this whole change which Christ's Resurrection made on his followers. But it was not only Christ's followers who were changed. Since the Resurrection is the part of the broad soteriological Divine Plan, the apostles didn't comprehend it separately but as one step toward the completion of Christ's Divine intervention within the whole creation. The intervention of the Creator within the creation was inevitable: ''… since the fall results from the claim of created man to be the ultimate point of reference in existence (to be God), it is, in the final analysis, the state of existence whereby the created world tends to posit its being ultimately with reference to itself and not to an uncreated being, God.''[8]

Apostle Paul teaches about the glory that God prepared for man which is lost because of the fall: ''...just as He chose us in Him (Christ) before the foundation of the world, that we should be holy and without blame before Him in love, having predestined us to adoption as sons by Jesus Christ to Himself...''.[9] But the self-centered being led creation to a state in which are revealed and actualized the limitations and potential dangers inherent in creaturehood[10]. ''Turning from eternal things to things corruptible, by counsel of the devil, they had become the cause of their own corruption in death.''[11] But although man turned his back to the relationship with his Creator and the source of life itself, God didn't leave creation to its own faith. St. Athanasios says that it would be monstrous and unfitting[12] for God to leave man on his own. ''It was unworthy of the goodness of God that creatures made by Him should be brought to nothing through the deceit wrought upon man by the devil; and it was supremely unfitting that the work of God in mankind should disappear, either through their own negligence or through the deceit of evil spirits.''[13] St. Athanasios' bold words on the situation in which man put God explain in a most dramatic way how deep the downfall of man would be, both for himself but also for God if He had left man in that condition: ''Surely it would have been better never to have been created at all than, having been created, to be neglected and perish; and, besides that, such indifference to the ruin of His own work before His very eyes would argue not goodness in God but limitation, and that far more than if He had never created men at all.''[14]

But God created man out of His inexhaustible love and although man rejected His love, the Logos of the Father took on Himself the humiliation of a corruptible body by entering the world to recreate the corrupted relationship: ''And the Word became flesh and dwelt among us, and we beheld His glory, the glory as of the only begotten of the Father, full of grace and truth.''[15]

The Chalcedon formulation of complexity of Christ's God-Humanity is the best way to explain how this relation has been recreated. The Logos assumed human nature and transfigured it from existence under the dominion of the flesh to existence in the grace of the Holy Spirit. That's why Luke and Cleopas on the road to Emaus[16] didn't recognize the teacher until He made that communion visible in the breaking of bread.

The Apostles are aware that Christ in His own incarnation recreated the communion between God and man. Until the Resurrection, His human nature was in the same condition as of the all mankind and therefore Luke could say ''And the Child grew and became strong in spirit, filled with wisdom; and the grace of God was upon Him.''[17] He was getting older, both in His outer and in His inner man. But thanks to His divine nature alongside this human nature, He ''...condemned sin in the flesh, that the righteous requirement of the law might be fulfilled in us who do not walk according to the flesh but according to the Spirit''[18] as Paul teaches. Christ fulfilled both the law of Moses and human nature by becoming flesh Himself. He did not sin, for He came in the likeness of human sinfulness, but did not succumb to it. The God-Man destroyed the power of sin over humanity and in Himself showed the final victory of human nature over sin.

The Apostle Paul says further: ''But now Christ is risen from the dead, and has become the first fruits of those who have fallen asleep. For since by man came death, by Man also came the resurrection of the dead. For as in Adam all die, even so in Christ all shall be made alive.''[19] Christ showed Himself to the world in a body which was glorified by the Holy Spirit. His humanity was not under the dominion of the flesh anymore. He was passing through  walls and ascended into Heaven. But what did that mean to those who received the apostle's teaching? Did they believe that they wouldn't die, and how did they reconcile what they believed with what they experienced, since dying didn't stop. Wasn't death defeated? Hadn't the Resurrection already begun?

Believers, according to the conviction of the first Christians, shouldn't die anymore: this was certainly their expectation in the earliest days. It must have been a problem when they discovered that Christians continued to die. But even the fact that men continued to die no longer has the same significance after the Resurrection of Christ. The fact of death lost its former significance. Dying was no longer an expression of the absolute dominion of  death, but only one of death’s last contentions for lordship. ''Death cannot put an end to the great fact that there is one risen Body.''[20] Apostle Paul taught Corinthians that if they are righteous when they receive the bread and drink of the cup, they wouldn't experience any illness or weakness, nor they would fall into sleep.[21] ''For if we would judge ourselves, we wouldn't be judged.''[22] But although Christians have been aware that death still is taking its prize, they didn't  cease to believe that Christ is coming again soon.

Paul taught them that the Resurrection is for everyone: ''But each one in his own order: Christ the first-fruits, afterward those who are Christ's at His coming. Then comes the end, when He delivers the Kingdom to God the Father, when He puts the end to all rule and all authority and power.''[23] The soteriological Divine Plan will bring immortality to all, but again, having His love for the man as his first priority, God will not annul man's free will. Therefore, mankind will again be in a position to chose between communion with God or its own self containing. The beloved disciple therefore announced: ''...the hour is coming in which all who are in the graves will hear His voice and come forth – those who have done good, to the resurrection of life, and those who have done evil, to the resurrection of condemnation.''[24] In this way, the communion between God and man recreated through the Liturgy – the icon of the Kingdom, will be affirmed ''face to face''[25], and at the same time, ''in this will be completed the tragedy of the human freedom''.[26]

We cannot come very far in trying to understand this miraculous power of the apostles to change the whole world by their words, if we do not understand the power of the change that happened in the existence of the world, of which they have been witnesses. That change gave them the new identity, the new life, new and previously inconceivable courage and determination. And not only to them, but through humanity, to the whole creation. Humanity is to use this new dawn, to live this new life, to reach and accept this open hand, and taste the fruits of this new reality. That is why apostles, inspired by the Lord's Spirit left their previous lives, imitating their teacher and sacrificing themselves for the good of the world, as He did.

Thanks to their unwavering and fearless conviction that they met the God's Anointed One, Christ Himself, after twenty centuries of painstaking journey began with the embarrassed visit to the Christ's tomb after their escape from Golgotha, today the church bells are ringing each Sunday morning in every village or town of the western world. For twenty centuries the Church has existed and has been shaping civilization, drawing its identity from these men faith in the event of the Resurrection of their beloved Teacher.

Many things are not the same as they were in those days long ago. Many times the Church had to struggle through its own Golgotha and confess its own faith in front of new emperors and judges of this world. At the same time, the Church is constantly fighting against the blazing stakes and raging beasts of its own uncertainties and doubts. But throughout this endless journey on its own Via Dolorosa, the Church has always been humble and carried its cross steadily, believing that everything is worth to enduring for its faith in the Resurrected God-Man.

Rev. Fr. Sasha Cholich

St. Sava Serbian Orthodox Church

Flemington - Sydney

Bibliography

• Alfeyev Hilarion, Christ the Conqueror of Hell, St Vladimir's Seminary Press, Crestwood, New York, 2009
• Athanasios the Great, On Incarnation, Web presentation Christian Classics Ethereal Library (www.ccel.org) May 12 2011

• Calivas C. Alkiviadis, Great Week and Pasha in the Greek Orthodox Church, Holy Cross Orthodox Press, Brookline, Massachusets

• Cullmann Oscar, Immortality of the Soul or Resurrection of the Dead?, Web-presentation Verujem: www.verujem.org, May 13 2011

• Florovsky Georges, The ''Immortality'' of the Soul, in Creation and Redemption, Nordland Publishing Company, Belmon, Mass., 1976

• Hall Christopher A., Learning Christianity with the Church Fathers, IVP Academic, Downers Grove, Illionois

• Palamas Gregory, Mary the Mother of God, Sermons, Mountthabor Publishing 2005

• Romanos the Melodist, Kontakia on the Person of Christ, Translated and annotated by Marjorie Carpenter, University of Missouri Press, Columbia

• Rubin Miri, Mother of God, Yale University Press, New Haven & London

• The Lenten Triodion, Translated from the original Greek by Mother Mary and Kalistos Ware, St Tikhon's Seminary Press, South Canaan, PA, 1994.

• The Orthodox Study Bible, Old Testament text: Septuaginta, New Testament text: New King James Version, St Athasaius Academy of Orthodox Theology, Nashvile – Dalas – Mexico City – Rio De Janeiro - Beijing

• Zizioulas John D. , Being as a Communion, St Vladimir's Press, Crestwood, New York, 1985