Easter: The Prevalence of UP!
First Congregational Church – Wauwatosa, Wisconsin
Easter – March 23, 2008
Rev. Steven A. Peay, Ph.D.
[Texts: Acts 10:34-43 / John 20:1-18]

What a different scene it must have been on that long-ago morning. For a start, there would not have been a foot of fresh snow on the ground! While the last bit of darkness still lingered, in the safety of the half-light, the women came scurrying with their loving, sad burden of embalming spices, oils and linen on their way to the tomb. Hurrying, not wanting to be seen, they headed to finish caring for the body of Jesus; came to make sure that he was properly buried. After all, they had looked after him during his short public teaching ministry, it was the least they could do now that he had died that brutal death at the hands of the hated Roman occupiers. And then they got there and someone had tampered with the grave, the stone over the entrance was moved. Mary, from Magdala, hurried away to tell his disciples.

Having received her news, it was now the men’s turn to hurry to the tomb. She had told them that the stone was moved, but had said more, something about the body not being there either; obviously a conspiracy by those who wanted to discredit Jesus and his ministry “They have taken the Lord out of the tomb and we do not know where they have laid him,” she had said. Simon Peter – with the sting of his triple denial of Jesus still on his mind – and John, the beloved disciple, came at a dead run. They got there, John the younger one first, but both held back, fearful, hesitant at what they will – or won’t – find. So, they stood there, peering in and were quite amazed at what they discovered.

I think you know what they found. We sang about it, prayed about it, and talked about it already this morning. I mean, it is the reason we’re here – isn’t it? We know the story and that it is about what happened to Jesus. Yet, when we slow down a moment, give a moment’s thought to it and read the story over again, it is about what happened to Jesus , but it is also about what happened to those women and men – and it’s about us and every one who has ever read, heard, or thought about the story

There is this great chain reaction going on; one after another, starting with Mary and working all the way up to us sitting here today. The reaction is this – they believed. They believed that something had happened to them, that they had experienced something altogether different than they had ever expected. Yes, what happened to them was what happened to Jesus. Yes, he rose from the dead. Yes, he overcame darkness and evil, and the human predilection to look down and to be down. What happened to Jesus happened to them and that is the prevalence of up. God looks to lift us up, not to put us down, even when we do it to ourselves, as we most often do. God’s will, God’s word to us in his Son is never “down,” but always, ever it is “UP!”

So the resurrection isn’t just something that happened to Jesus. It happened to those around him, too. After their experience of the empty tomb the Risen Lord appeared to them, more than once, and talked with them, walked with them, broke bread with them, even fried fish for them. And in his coming to them he made his story their story and in sharing it, year after year, century after century, it is our story, too. What happened to Jesus happens to us. They encountered the Risen Lord and believed – and so do we, so should we.

Now the question is what did they believe and what should we believe, when we say that we believe in the resurrection of the dead? Almost from the first instant, people have tried to discredit that belief. They have derided it, flat-out denied it, mythologized and de-mythologized it, thought of it as merely metaphor or as purely mystical. There is just one difficulty; this is one point where the Scriptures are fairly clear, the tomb was empty, Jesus was raised, this event really happened, period. Theologians and scholars have tried to articulate it, but it is best expressed in the simple reality of a believer’s life, because that is where the reality, the prevalence of up will be most clearly evident.

It was just such a believer who had a conversation with Joseph Donders, a missionary and university teacher in Africa, one day. This is what Donders recalls of the conversation:

Some days ago I talked with a very old lady, though she herself would not like to be called that old. She told me: “As you know, life has its ups and downs. The older you become the better you know: it is light and darkness, sun and shadow, sweet and bitter,

good and evil, sickness and health, virtue and vice, progress and regress, falling and rising, life and death, Good Friday and Easter!” [Joseph Donders Christ the Divine Network, p. 94-5.]

What we should believe about the Resurrection is the prevalence of UP. What our Easter faith declares is that God will overcome the darkness and the evil in the world and the UP of life will triumph, does triumph over the down of death.

Rowan Williams, the Archbishop of Canterbury and a gifted theologian, tells us that the Resurrection forms communities, that when the Church is living and acting as God intended, it becomes a community of welcome and liberation, a community freed from guilt and shame, a place where UP prevails. Part of that UP is when the Church is able to admit its own shortcomings and failure and reach out of them to embrace and reconcile others. Above all else, the Resurrection community that is the Church is where forgiveness and reconciliation are foremost and it is to be a safe, a loving, a welcoming and radically – that is at the root, at its core – a place of hospitality. Easter, the prevalence of up, forcefully tells us that we can not linger in our victimage – self or other-imposed –but, like Jesus, we are called up and back into life. For us Easter is every bit as much about the here-now as it is about the here-after, because it begins with how we live and act right here and right now.

Several months ago I was introduced to the work of a Marquette University professor, Dr. John Zemler. (Rev. Schaal has a very fine interview with him coming out in the upcoming issue of The Congregationalist magazine.) Zemler, a former military officer and a Biblical scholar, suffers from PTSP (Post Traumatic Stress Disorder). PTSP is a disease we’re hearing more and more about as veterans come home from service in Iraq and Afghanistan. Zemler has suffered with it for several decades and says, “A good friend of mine calls it Post Trauma Soul Disorder. It’s a soul wound.” Dealing with a wound to the soul means looking deep inside and Zemler has done that through his faith, through Scripture and the Church’s life of worship.

Zemler believes that he has received a healing, not a cure, but a healing. He talks about how scripture and the Church’s worship year have been the means to that healing. He says, “The liturgy goes through the lifecycle of Jesus Christ, Especially on the forty days of Lent we co-suffer with Christ. Due to the nature of the liturgy you simultaneously as an individual and as a part of the community . . . enter into mystical communion with Christ.” Zemler has said elsewhere that “Christ was there before the pain, is here just now as I am typing with the pain, and he will continue to be with me after the pain is gone and the tears are wiped away.” [“Heavenly Hope” in A Heart for the Future: Writings on Christian Hope Robert Boak Slocum editor] He has said, “I’m old fashioned. I think Jesus rose from the dead. A lot of New Testament scholars don’t believe that. I think he healed. I think he’s the son of God.” I guess I am old fashioned, too, because I believe the same thing and I’ve seen proof of it time and time again.

What Dr. Zemler has experienced, what has brought his healing is the essence of what we believe as Easter people – the prevalence of UP. The prevalence of UP – the essence of our Easter faith – is that God IS with us, renewing, restoring, reconciling, forgiving, healing and sustaining us regardless of our situation. That is what those first believers came to understand as Jesus’ story became their story. It is the same for us when we make Jesus’ story, the Resurrection story, our story, too. The whole point is that we are to live that belief, not just think about it or talk about it. We are to live it and to make it real in how we deal with people every day and not just on Easter Sunday.

The prevalence of UP speaks to us in our deepest needs – as it spoke to the women and men who sought Jesus on that long-ago morning, or Donders and the old woman in Africa, or John Zemler up the street at Marquette, or any of us sitting here right now. The prevalence of UP speaks to us through the uncertainties and scary points of the world, the shaky economy and markets, and the terrors of the nightly newscast. The message is consistent; it remains the same as it did on that first Easter morning: God is life, God is UP, not down, and the Risen Christ, his empty tomb, and those who believe testify that it’s true. UP will prevail. Easter is the prevalence of UP – now it is up to us to be an Easter people and to show that to be true.

Will you join me? Will you believe in the prevalence of UP? Then live it….live it and make the world a different, a better, a more loving place because you do. It is what happens when Easter breaks out and Easter, as you, as we now know, is the prevalence of UP!

Christ is UP….Christ is Risen! Christ is Risen, Indeed! Alleluia! Now, go live like it – that’s what makes the difference. Amen. Alleluia!