Easter 2                   Ps. 118:14-29, John 20:19-31                               4/18/04

                                     "It’s All Greek To Me"

One of the things I really looked forward to when I entered seminary was studying Greek. As long as I can remember I had wanted to be able to read the New Testament in the original language. I was sure that the stories and teachings I had been reading all my life would have even more meaning, come more to life when read in Greek.

Unfortunately, Greek is a very very difficult language. It has it’s own alphabet with the added complication that some letters are quite similar to English letters but stand for a totally different letter than one would expect. There are far more tenses and other grammatical peculiarities than in the English language, and if you failed to learn about things like participles in grade school, you’re sunk when it comes to getting a handle on how a Greek sentence is put together. To make all of this more fun, we were expected to learn Greek in one month of intensive study. By the end of the month the language was still Greek to me - almost totally incomprehensible. I’ve always said that I only passed the course by the grace of God and my prof.

For many people in the world what we celebrated last Sunday was just as incomprehensible as Greek. The idea that we would claim that "the right hand of the Lord has triumphed" by a man dying on a cross or that that man actually bodily rose from the dead is Greek to them. That that event means that those who believe that Christ died and rose for their sin are saved only adds to the unbelievers befuddlement.

I sometimes wonder if those who come to church only once or twice a year secretly deep in their hearts - buried far away even from their own awareness - actually don’t believe in the Easter event at all. I wonder sometimes if even the most faithful occasionally doubt the truth of what they hear on Sunday. (And if that sounds accusatory, know that I struggle with the truth claims of Scripture at times. I even have, thankfully, very brief moments when I wonder if God is real) I suspect that because we rarely if ever have the courage to face and struggle through our doubts as the apostle Thomas did, we seldom get to fully experience the wonder of the resurrection. And because of that we may never shout our alleluia’s with the fervor of the saints.

The psalmist, of course, knew nothing of Jesus and may not even have had much of a concept of salvation as we know it, but somehow he believed, and believed with his whole heart and soul that God in His mercy, had saved (and would continue to save) his people.

We read these verses with New Testament eyes, seeing Christ as the king who is processing to His heavenly temple after winning the ultimate victory over Satan. The psalm calls us, like Israel of old, to come singing God’s praise. Let’s for a moment examine some of these verses.

"There is a sound of exultation and victory in the tents of the righteous..."

The Easter event makes us righteous. Christ’s suffering and death totally and permanently removes every last bit of sin from us. His resurrection is the seal and proof of this.

If the king whose victory is being celebrated in the psalm had failed. If he had run away to save himself or if he had not had the power of God behind him, his people would have either become slaves of the enemy or been destroyed.

If Christ, our King, had run away (as He could have done) or if, as some so-called scholars claim, He was just a man - a rabbi, a rebel or whatever - and had not had the power of God with Him, we would be slaves of the enemy, Satan, and have to face our destruction in hell someday.

But, if we allow ourselves to struggle through our doubts so God can strengthen our faith, we can believe heart and soul that Christ won the great victory. We can also then bravely face how of ourselves we are anything but righteous and thus more fully appreciate what being declared righteous through Christ means for us. This then will show itself in a sound of exultation.

Sometimes I hear people express disappointment at the drop in attendance at worship or the indifference of family and friends to being part of the church. Now, while God still leaves people free to resist His call, I truly believe that if we made sounds of exultation over what God has done for us, this church would be full. There is something divinely attractive about a church where the people’s faith and joy shine forth for all to see.

But, let us proceed with the psalm: "The right hand of the Lord has triumphed..." IT TRULY HAS! We may look at the mess the world is in or perhaps, the mess our own lives are in, and wonder about the power of God. But, I want to tell you, while God may temporally allow tyrants to rule, terrorists to bomb, governments to make war, corporations to take our livelihoods away or price goods beyond our reach; while sickness and sorrow may seem to be permanently part of life, the Lord’s right hand has triumphed!

The Lord triumphed on Easter when the grave could not hold Him and because it could not hold Him, neither the grave nor any of the tragedies or wickedness of this world can hold us. Because He triumphed we too will triumph!

And the day will come when we can say with the psalmist, "I shall not die, but live and shall declare the works of the Lord." Furthermore, we don’t have to wait until the final victory when Christ returns in glory, we can place our trust in His promise now. We can believe that, not only will we live eternally in heaven, but that that life has already started. We may not be able to completely experience that new life this side of the grave, but in faith we can lay claim to it and begin to see our lives as already changed because of it. Then, as the reality of that new life grows in us we will declare the works of the Lord.

There are those who even today reject Christ and thus He becomes a stone over which unbelievers stumble. But, for those who believe He is the building block of faith upon which we can place all of the weight of our lives. If we believe that He truly had the power to rise from the grave, then we can believe that He has the power to bear our failures, our hurts, our disappointments, our troubles. We can turn these over to Him in the sure confidence that He will deal with them according to His wisdom and care for us.

This will leave us free and give us the energy to "rejoice and be glad in it" - be glad that we have a God who loves us so much that not only would He die for us, He’ll also live with us in our world.

We can trust in this because His mercy endures forever".

We don’t know which king was being celebrated by psalm 118, but we do know that Israel and its kings failed to continue entering the gates of righteousness and lost the Lord’s favor repeatedly.

We, on the other hand, know that His mercy does endure forever, because we do not need to rely on our own (or a human king’s) righteousness. God has already been merciful and sent Christ to be righteous for us.

Some may see or hear that claim and because of the human need to be one’s own Lord, say, "This salvation stuff is all Greek to me," but we can put our faith in it.

After that infamous month of Greek instruction, my prof continued to coach me in Greek for several weeks in the hope that I’d finally understand it. I confess, it continued to just be Greek to me. But in time I learned to use what I’d learned in conjunction with other resources so that Scripture could come more alive for me. May we all use the resources God has given us - our faith, our ability to take our doubts to Christ and struggle through them, and our experience of new life - as a means experience victory and thus sound our exultation. Amen.