If we’re honest, our lives, our emotions, even our faith can often feel like the experience of being on a teeter-totter. Down and up. Up and down. So hard, almost impossible, to find and hold onto the point of equilibrium, poise or balance. Up and down we go, down and then, if we’re lucky, up again.

For 40 days of Lent we prepared for the drama of Holy Week. We prayed, we fasted a little, and maybe were a little more generous in our almsgiving and outreach. We celebrated Jesus’ entry into Jerusalem with cries of “Hosannah” then watched the tide turn swiftly, suddenly. A last, dramatic supper began with the Master kneeling on the floor, washing his disciples’ feet. It evolved into a Passover seder that prefigured the sacrifice of the Lamb of God, who left his disciples the sacrament of his Body and Blood. An agony of crushing doubt in the garden of Gethsemane was followed by a betrayer’s kiss, the religious leaders’ complicity, Herod’s scorn and Pilate’s ennui. The long trudge up the hill, the longer afternoon raised high on the darkness, and the slow descent into death and a borrowed grave. Up and down.

Then up into light again: we share the wonder of Mary Magdalene encountering the Risen Lord at dawn in another garden. As evening falls, two wayfarers meet a curious but somehow familiar stranger on the road to nowhere, and recognize him in the breaking of the bread. Poor depressed Thomas can’t believe until he sees, and Peter’s three-fold declaration “Yes, Lord, I love you” raised him out of the despair of his own betrayal into a place of reassuring relationship. Down and up.

And just as they all began to relax and think the drama has concluded—“The strife is o’er, the battle won…”—Jesus goes before them up the mountain, and is raised up, up again to return to the Father, leaving below only the promise that his Spirit and the Father’s, holy and transforming, will come down upon them and lift them up again. The wind blows, sparks of grace descend on them, their spirits are lifted up, kindled by God’s spirit. Down and up, set on the road to tell good news and witness what they have experienced. They baptize and break the bread, they endure their doubts and pains and even persecution, and something wonderful is rendered possible by his ascent to the father and the descent of his Spirit: a community of commitment and grace, where ups and downs and downs and ups can be celebrated together, in hope, we hope, more often than in despair.

We live teetering and tottering between up and down, down and up. We try earnestly to hold on to the revelation that in the incarnation Jesus descended into the depths of creation, even into the darkness of death, and rose up again. Ascending the mountain he showed us the pathway home. Grace continues to descend. We have only to recognize it, but and follow where he leads. Up.

Breaking of the Bread, Greek Chapel, Catacombs of Priscilla, Rome, late 2nd cent. AD