This Is the Day! Sermon for the 19th Sunday after Pentecost

Nineteenth Sunday after Pentecost
October 8^th, Year of Our + Lord 2023
Our Redeemer and Our Savior’s Lutheran Churches
Custer and Hill City, SD
This Is the Day!  Psalm 118, Philippians 3:4-14, Matthew 21:33-46

   “This is the day that the Lord has made; let us rejoice and be glad in it!”

    Wait a minute, that’s just how the sermon started last Sunday.  And, despite the cheery sound of that verse, things took a humble turn.  Humility, not rejoicing, was what we talked about.  Or better said, we talked about humility first, and then how Christian humility leads to rejoicing. 

   “This is the day that the Lord has made; let us rejoice and be glad in it.”  This verse, Psalm 118:24, has been on my mind a lot lately.  I’m not sure if we still have it, but for years, through many moves, Shelee kept a window cling of Ps. 118:24.  It looks like stain glass, but it’s soft plastic, or latex, or something, so it sticks to glass.  There’s a rainbow, I think, and the verse: “This is the day that the Lord has made; let us rejoice and be glad in it.”   At our last home in Spain, it adorned the window in our kitchen, which has been its usual location through our many moves.  As far as I know, we don’t have it up right now.   

   I really like that window cling, because of the verse.  Each day is a gift from God, given to us for our joy and celebration.  This a Christian truth.  We know God the Father, and we belong to Him, and He provides for us, day by day.  As we recited a few minutes ago, this is how Martin Luther explains the 1^st Article of the Creed.  God is our Creator and Sustainer and Provider, every good thing comes from Him, freely, from His merciful heart.  And so it is most certainly true that I should always thank and praise, serve and obey Him.  Easy-peasy.  You always feel that way, right? 

   Many days are wonderful, but not all of them.  On Wednesday afternoons, the young faces piling out of the van and into Our Redeemer for CSC² are usually full of smiles and happiness.  But not always.  Some days, even their young hearts are weighed down.  At the other end of life’s chronology, plenty of the members of Our Savior’s and Our Redeemer have remarked that the golden years aren’t so golden.  Unless of course you’re referring to all the gold you have to pay your doctors and the pharmacy.  Life is good, except when it isn’t.  At any age, sometimes the not-so-great days can pile up, and make the verse “This is the day that the Lord has made; let us rejoice and be glad in it” a little hard to take. 

   Last week I used this verse as pivot, to talk about humility.  This week, we’ll dig into Psalm 118 itself, to see what more the Lord means to teach us with this verse.  What kind of day is this day, which the Lord declares is worthy of our rejoicing?  Can we figure out if God is referring to some specific day?     

   Would you believe that the marvelous day God has made for rejoicing is the day the wicked tenants murdered the lord of the vineyard’s son?  Or, probably better said, that day, combined with the third day, when the Son was raised victorious from the dead.  The Son’s Resurrection Day can never be separated from the day of His death.  Without the once-for-all death that preceded it, the Empty Tomb has no good meaning for anyone except Jesus.  But combined with the death of the Son, the Resurrection means everything, for you, and for me, and for all people. 

   Listen again to verses 22 through 24 of Psalm 118, which served as the heart of our Introit, our entrance Psalm, this morning.   

The stone that the builders rejected, has become the cornerstone.

This is the Lord’s doing; it is marvelous in our eyes.

This is the day that the Lord has made; let us rejoice and be glad in it.

   This is a great and difficult mystery.  The rejection of the Stone is a work of the Lord, along with it’s elevation to the head of the corner.  The Crucifixion of our Lord, even as it is terrible, is also marvelous, wonderful in our eyes, the eyes of faith.  Jesus’ interpretation of this Psalm as the explanation of the terrible parable of the wicked tenants makes this connection inescapable, as does the context of this conversation and the events which followed soon after. 

   I wonder how the people of Israel understood Psalm 118:24 down through centuries.  As they sang it in the Temple, the Synagogue, and while they went about their days, did they ask who or what exactly was this stone rejected by the builders?  And what is the structure for which the rejected stone became the head of the corner, the cornerstone that holds it all together? 

   That Psalm 118 was seen as a messianic psalm, a song about the promised coming Savior, is evidenced by the Palm Sunday crowds shouting the next verses from it while Jesus rode the donkey’s colt into the city.  From verses 25 and 26 the crowds cried out to Jesus:  Hosanna!  That is, “Save us, we pray, O Lord! ²⁶ Blessed is he who comes in the name of the Lord! We bless you from the house of the Lord.” 

   The crowds believed John the Baptist and Jesus were at minimum Godly prophets.  On Palm Sunday they went further and praised the Nazarene as the promised Messiah, the Christ come to save and rule forever on King David’s throne.  Jesus in His teaching to the Chief Priests and Elders affirms this association.   He is the Son, sent by the Lord to receive the harvest of souls that the Father desires.  But by the parable, Jesus prophesies His elevation, His vindication, in surprising, frightening terms.  As the Lord of the Vineyard’s Son was killed by the tenants the Lord had left in charge, so also Jesus would be killed by the Elders, Priests and Pharisees, delivered to death through false accusations presented to Pontius Pilate, the Roman governor. 

  And yet, this is the day that the Lord has made.  So let us rejoice and be glad in it!  Every day is now a day for rejoicing, because the frightening death of the Son and the glory of His Resurrection create a new reality.  And we live in this new reality every day. 

   There are many troubling things happening in the world today, from Ukraine to Israel to San Francisco, to the halls of our schools and the homes of our communities.  Our ubiquitous screens bring all of it before our eyes, instantly, and constantly, if we let them.  But your reality is not determined by today’s bad news, nor by the fraying and decaying of our society.  I’m not suggesting these things aren’t important.  I’m not saying we don’t need to recognize the times and repent of the many ways we go along with the debauchery.  God’s people are to live in this world as long as the Lord wills, but we are not to be of this world. 

   We are called to be holy, set apart, to stand out by the message we carry, the Gospel message that gives life.  It is certainly true for me, and I suspect also for each one of you, that we would benefit from more of God’s Word in our ears, and less of the world’s distractions and temptations.  God’s Word will lead us to pray, and to serve our neighbors, and to remember who we are in Christ.      

   I’m not saying that the world is not in trouble, that the days are not dark in many ways.  What I am saying is that nothing can change the fact that your ‘today,’ Christian, is always defined by the events of those three special days almost 2,000 years ago.  The Stone has been rejected, and has been elevated to the head of the corner.  That Stone is Jesus Christ, and the building He holds together is His Church, the Temple of living stones that the Spirit builds by the washing of Water and the Word. 

   This day, the New Day of the Crucified and Resurrected Christ, is what shaped the Apostle Paul’s radical perspective.   Paul’s past as a Jewish scholar and zealot was impressive.  In his present circumstance, as a persecuted and imprisoned missionary for this strange new sect called the Christian Church, Paul might well have been tempted to long for his prior days as a Pharisee of Pharisees.  But no, they are garbage to him, worthless. 

   From prison, Paul declares:  “whatever gain I had, I counted as loss for the sake of Christ. Indeed, I count everything as loss because of the surpassing worth of knowing Christ Jesus my Lord. For his sake I have suffered the loss of all things and count them as rubbish, in order that I may gain Christ and be found in him, not having a righteousness of my own that comes from the law, but that which comes through faith in Christ, the righteousness from God that depends on faith—that I may know him and the power of his resurrection, and may share his sufferings, becoming like him in his death, that by any means possible I may attain the resurrection from the dead.”  

   If Paul’s ‘today’ was a good day, a day when he could teach and preach and enjoy the fellowship of his Christian brothers and sisters, then Paul rejoiced in the salvation he received as a free gift from Jesus.  If Paul’s ‘day’ was full of rejection and suffering for the Gospel, he still rejoiced, because this rejection was also a sign that Paul was connected to Jesus.  Every day was an opportunity to hear and rejoice again in the gift of Christ’s righteousness, which gives forgiveness and salvation to every sinner who hears and believes.   

   What was true for Paul is also true for you.  This day, and every day, is the day that the Lord has made for you, the day of your salvation.  So without question we should rejoice and be glad in it!  Because you have already won.  Your future and your today are both secure in the nail-scarred hands of the Christ. 

   In one sense, we only celebrate Good Friday and Easter once every year.  In another sense, every Sunday that we gather here we return to Calvary, and the resurrected Jesus comes to us with His peace.  And so we cry out, “Hosanna, blessed is He who comes in the Name of the Lord.”  And, in between Sundays, every day that you wake up and remember that you are a child of God, this day is also a celebration of the Cross and Empty Tomb.  Every day is truly the day the Lord has made, the day of Jesus Christ.  Rest and rejoice in His victory, for you, Amen.