Creed: the truth about ourselves
Paul, when writing his first letter to the Christian Community in Corinth gives us a lovely window into the early church. Writing around the year 56 CE in chapter 15 Paul tells the small nascent community of around forty people of something he had learnt earlier. He probably learnt it in Antioch around the year 40 CE. So here we are given what amounts to the very earliest Christian creed. Unlike the creed that we say at each Sunday mass this little creed has just four important statements. We are told that Jesus died, was buried, rose and then appeared to his followers. These four central tenets about Jesus which we believe as Christians are simple yet profound so we would do well to explore this little creed a little more.
As well as recognising that the four movements are in Jesus own earthly life they are also the pattern of our lives as well. In our baptism as we go into the font we enter into the tomb with Christ. As Paul, writing about baptism to the Roman church states clearly, "we believe that if we have died with Christ then we shall live with him." (Romans 6:8) Such a saying takes us beyond conventional thinking into a different level of consciousness. I have been helped in grasping its meaning by an experience of a Franciscan priest friend. He has a very active prison ministry and often takes young men to live in his house as part of their process of re-entry into regular life after their release from prison. One young man who had been in prison for drug offences when staying with him asked if he could go out one evening to visit some of his old friends. My priest friend was naturally hesitant and worried but he thought he must show some trust in the young man. So he let him go. The next day over breakfast they had a conversation about what happened. The young man said that he felt so sorry for his friends who he said lived a very destructive existence thinking that you lived only for a short while and then you died. But "Father" he said, "I have learnt that you really have to die first and then you can truly live!" This young man had learnt from his own experience the veracity of Jesus own teaching that we have to die to ourselves in order to live. What has to die of course is not the true self created by the God who says to the prophet Jeremiah and to us "Before I formed you in the womb I knew you." (Jer, 1:4) What has to die is that self-centred ego-self that we tend to identify as who we are. The little creed teaches us that, with Jesus, we already share in his resurrection and are already able to live that quality which we call "Eternal Life." All we have to do is go beyond the false self which prevents us from realising it.
With regard to Jesus' appearances we do know that they do not merely indicate a visual sighting but include an experience of a living presence. Paul in recounting the creed gives the Corinthians a progression of experiences beginning with Peter and ending with himself. It seems to indicate that the experience of the risen Christ is something on-going throughout history. In other words it is possible for us today to have this experience. Indeed I think it is important that our faith does not rest just on what other people have told us or what we have read in the scriptures or any other books but what we know from our own encounter with the living Christ. I come to this belief because of the question Jesus himself asks of his disciples, "who do people say that I am?" Following their response he probes deeper with a follow up question, "But who do you say I am?" (Mark 8: 28-29). All these thoughts have come to me following a personal experience on my sixtieth birthday (nearly ten years ago!) I became aware that almost all of my priestly ministry had been relating my ideas and views of God to anyone willing to listen. They were, if you will, my pictures or photographs of God and I realised that there is a whole lot of difference in showing someone pictures of another person rather than bringing them together to introduce them. At that point I made a determination to primarily orientate my ministry to helping seekers find ways in which they can experience the reality of the risen Christ for themselves. To help them overcome the human tendency to theorise by teaching the ways of acquiring a total emersion in stillness where an intuition of God's indwelling presence can be realised.
