In the name of the Father and of the Son and of the Holy Spirit.

Let God arise and let his enemies be scattered, and let them that hate him flee from before his face.

We hear these words at Pascha. They’re one of the more striking aspects of the Paschal services. But these words, as ancient as they are in the book of the Psalms, actually have a more ancient origin than that. When Moses was leading the people of Israel through the wilderness from the land of slavery to the land of promise, after he had been given the command to make the ark of the covenant, he had a prayer that he said every time the ark was lifted up and it led the people, and he had another prayer that he said when the ark was put back down. It says in Numbers 10:35-36:

And it came to pass, when the ark set forward, that Moses said: Rise up, Lord, and let thy enemies be scattered; and let them that hate thee flee from before thee. And when it rested, he said: Return, O Lord, to the many thousands of Israel.

Just as an aside, those that criticize liturgical worship and say that when we say the same words week after week that we are just making vain repetitions that Christ condemned in the gospels, every day Moses said these same two prayers. He said one at the beginning of the day when they started their march, and he said another one at the end of the day. The whole book of the psalms is evidence of the fact that the Scriptures are not opposed to liturgical worship, because we have an entire book of prayers that are all written out, and these have been the prayers of the Church of the Old Testament and the New Testament ever since.

In Exodus 33:14-15, God spoke to Moses, and he said, “I myself will go before thee and give thee rest.” And then it says that Moses replied to him, “If thou go not up with us thyself, bring me not up hence.” In other words, if you’re not going with me, God, I’m not leaving this spot.

And the ark of the covenant was the visible representation of the presence of God among the people of Israel. So when they lifted up that ark and that ark led the people and they said, “Let God arise and let his enemies be scattered, and let them that hate him flee from before his face,” you can imagine the courage that this gave the people, because they had an immediate awareness that God was leading them.

This prayers is also used in a slightly modified form in our personal prayers. In the evening prayers, this is one of the prayers that we say before we go to sleep, although when it talks about his enemies, it begins to talk about them as demons, because that’s the interpretation that the Fathers give to the meaning of the enemies that are being talked about here. Also, many of you have baptismal crosses that have this prayer on the back. I do. And they’re usually in Slavonic, so if you don’t know Slavonic, you may not realize that that’s what it is, but if you have a bunch of Slavonic writing on the back of your cross and it’s more than just a few words, that’s probably that prayer.

The Fathers say that this psalm was most completely fulfilled in the resurrection because God literally did arise and his enemies were literally scattered. St. Augustine points out that the enemies of Christ, those that rejected Christ, were very literally scattered in AD 70 when Rome destroyed Jerusalem according to the word of the Lord, because Christ himself had prophesied that this would happen, and those that rejected him were dispersed, in many cases sold into slavery, whereas the Christians, because they heeded the word of the Lord, they actually fled to the mountains, literally following what Christ had warned them to do in the Gospel, and the Christians, in most places, were delivered from destruction.

As smoke vanishes, so let them vanish; as wax melteth before the fire, so let sinners perish at the presence of God.

It’s a very vivid image of the temporary nature of our enemies, the demons, but also all those that oppose God. They’re here one moment, and then they’re gone the next, as quick as smoke disappears, as quick as wax will melt when there’s a fire burning it. It’s gone before you know it. St. John of Damascus compares the destruction of sinners with the word of God, because Christ said in the gospels, “Heaven and earth shall pass away, but my word shall not pass away.” Also in Psalm 11:6, we read, “The words of the Lord are pure words, silver that is fired, tried in the earth, brought to seven-fold purity.” The words of the Lord are not burned; they don’t pass away, not one jot or tittle, we’re told by Christ, will fail from the Scriptures.

And there have been many enemies of the Church over the years that have attacked the Scriptures. They’ve come and they’ve gone, and yet people remain who are believers. We’ve seen many cases where tyrannical communist governments have tried to stamp out religion entirely and have used the most vicious and cruel methods to do so, and yet in each and every case, what do we see? We see faithful people who’ve persevered despite all that, and they remain. And when the Soviet Union collapsed and when the Eastern Bloc collapsed, the only institution that was left standing was the Church. Despite the fact that many atheists had boasted that the day would come when the name of God would not be heard in those countries any more, where are they now? They’re gone. They are in the ashbin of history.

And let the righteous be glad. Let them rejoice in the presence of God. Let them delight in gladness.

These words also apply, or this contrast also apply to the righteous. The righteous live forever. Their name is not blotted out; they are not forgotten.

Sing unto God; chant unto his name. Prepare ye the way for him that rideth upon the setting of the sun.

The Fathers say that this refers to—this preparing of the way refers to the work of the apostles, who prepare the way for Christ, for people to receive this salvation by proclaiming the Gospel to those that have not heard it around the world.

Lord is his name. Yea, rejoice before him. Let them be troubled at his presence.

The word there in Hebrew that’s translated “Lord” in the Greek and into English is the word “Yahweh” which is a form of the word “to be”: “I am.” So it’s the Lord is the one that’s risen, the “I am,” the one who is, the eternal one. And it says rejoice before him. What are the first words that Christ spoke to the myrrh-bearing women, whose memory we commemorate today? Well, in Matthew 28:9-10, we read:

And as they went to tell the disciples (this is after the myrrh-bearing women saw the tomb with the stone rolled away) behold, Jesus met them, saying: Rejoice. So they came and held him by the feet and worshiped him. Then Jesus said to them, “Do not be afraid. Go and tell my brethren to go into Galilee, and there they will see me.”

This rejoicing is the joy that we experience on Pascha. Those that attend the services during Holy Week, those that are at the Paschal Vigil experience an undeniable joy, and it’s something that’s like no other time of the year. And that’s why, once you enter into that kind of worship, once you enter into the life of the Church on that level, you’ll never want to be anywhere else on Pascha but in church, to experience that joy of Christ’s resurrection.

Who is a father of orphans and a judge to the widows.

The Fathers, of course, talk about the literal and obvious understanding of that, that God looks out for the orphan and the widow. And the Fathers in many cases urge us to imitate God in this: we are to be a father to the orphans and a husband to the widows. In the ancient world, when they didn’t have a social welfare system, there were no people in society that were more in danger than fatherless children and women without husbands, except perhaps maybe the disabled. They were in a very precarious situation. They were at the mercy of those that were around them. But God is a father to those children; he’s a husband to those women in those kind of situations. So whenever we’re in a desperate situation, we should always look to God and realize that he is there for us. He will be there for us. But those of us that have the means to help people in that situation, we need to be God’s hands and feet, to help people that are in those kinds of situations.

But the Fathers also talk about a spiritual understanding of these words, and that’s that God is the Savior of those who are spiritual orphans and widows, whose only help is God, and they’re orphans and widows in the sense that they’ve cut themselves off from the rest of the world. They don’t have anyone else in this life but God.

God is in his holy place. God settleth the solitary in a house.

St. Cyprian of Carthage, in more than one instance, uses this verse, and he talks about how this is an image of the Church. The one who lives alone is the one people of the Church, who are of oneness of mind, because that word that talks about “solitary” could also be interpreted as the people who are of oneness of mind. These are the people who—the one people of the Church—who dwell in God’s one, holy, catholic, and apostolic Church, his house.

Mightily leading forth them that were shackled, and likewise them that embitter him, them that dwell in the tombs.

These last words we see depicted in the icon of the resurrection that we put out on Pascha, the image of the harrowing of hell. The word “harrowing” is an old, archaic word, but it means the plundering of hell, because Christ descended into Hades, and he plundered it. He released those that were captive, and we see in the icon Christ raising up Adam and Eve and breaking their bonds and their shackles and raising them up. But it’s not just the righteous that are set at liberty, but we’re told by the Fathers that even the unrighteous will experience a resurrection but unfortunately it will not be a resurrection unto life, but it will be a resurrection to eternal punishment, which the book of Revelation refers to as the second death.

Like Moses, we should always go where God leads us and seek to always be in his will. If we know that something that we want to do is not God’s will, we need to not do it. Sometimes we don’t know what God’s will is and we need to seek him; we need to pray and ask God to guide us. We also need to seek wise counsel. But there are many things, many questions that come up, where we have very clear guidance from the Church or from the Scriptures, and when that will is clear to us, we need to make sure that we are in it, because if God is leading us, if we are in his will, we have nothing to fear. St. Paul says if God is for us, who can be against us? And St. John in his first epistle, chapter four, verse four, says, “Ye who are of God, little children, have overcome them,” and he’s referring to the antichrists that were already in the world in his time, “because greater is he that is in you than he that is in the world.” And as we read in Psalm 117:

The Lord is my helper, and I shall not fear what man shall do unto me. The Lord is my helper, and I shall look down upon mine enemies. It is better to trust in the Lord than to trust in man. It is better to hope in the Lord than to hope in princes. All the nations compass me about, and by the name of the Lord I warded them off. Surrounding me, they compassed me, but by the name of the Lord I warded them off. They compassed me about like unto bees around a honeycomb, and they burst into flame like a fire among the thorns, and by the name of the Lord I warded them off. I was pushed and overturned that I might fall, and the Lord was quick to help me. The Lord is my strength and my son, and he is become my salvation. The voice of rejoicing and salvation is in the tents of the righteous. The right hand of the Lord hath wrought strength, the right hand of the Lord hath exalted me, the right hand of the Lord hath wrought strength. I shall not die, but live, and I shall tell of the works of the Lord.

Amen.