NOTES for Co1 15:1-11
Paul's words about the Resurrection in today's reading are the best illustration of what in church practice is called tradition or handing down. First of all, at the center of genuine tradition there is always a foundational fact without which Christianity as the experience of the life of the Kingdom could not exist: the fact of the resurrection of Jesus Christ (vv. 3-7). And tradition confirms this fact through the testimony of eyewitnesses, thanks to whom it becomes not simply a story about a historical event, but the gospel in the original sense of the word, good news for everyone seeking the Kingdom (vv. 1-2). The testimony of eyewitnesses is fundamentally important here, because if the Resurrection is only some mystical event that does not touch anyone concrete, if no one has ever experienced it as the reality of his own life, then we, living millennia after the events described by the evangelists, have even less reason to hope that the Resurrection can have anything to do with us. But if it once really changed the lives of those who accepted the Messiah risen from the dead, then we too can hope that the Resurrection will enter our life, changing it and joining us to the Kingdom. No less important are the testimonies of those whose meetings with the Risen One, like the apostle's own meeting with Him, occurred after Pentecost, when the history of the Savior's earthly ministry had already ended (vv. 8-9).
Indeed, without such meetings, we could quite reasonably suppose that the possibility of meeting and directly communicating with the Risen One was limited only to those forty days after the Resurrection about which the evangelists speak. In that case we would have to accept the thought that the Kingdom was a reality related to our world only during those forty days, and hope that it would be opened to us again at the end of time with the Savior's return. But Paul's own experience, like that of many other witnesses who lived later, says that the Kingdom did not disappear after the Ascension, that it is still open to everyone who seeks and will remain open until the end of time, when it appears in all its fullness. And if that is so, then it is possible to live in the Kingdom already today, just as it is possible already today to meet the Risen One, if only one truly wants this meeting. Paul's own example confirms the possibility of new life (v. 10), becoming a convincing illustration of the words he spoke and making them part of that living tradition which is founded not on books describing the Kingdom, but on people living in it.