On This Day
Psalm 118:24[1]
On this day we come together to celebrate the
heart of our faith: Jesus who died was raised to life! For those of us who have
grown up with it, we accept that Jesus rose again on the third day as the heart
of our faith. But none of us has first-hand experience with the resurrection of
Jesus. At least not in the same way that his original followers did. They
experienced his physical presence after he was raised from the dead. They ate
with him. They could touch him. None of us has that kind of first-hand
experience with the Easter miracle. But we can experience the risen Lord in our
lives “first-hand” in a different way.
We can sense the presence of the Spirit, we
can feel Jesus’ call to compassion, and we can enjoy the love of the God who is
always with us wherever we go. At the end of the day, I think that’s what our
celebration of Easter is about. We may not have the same kind of first-hand
experience of Jesus the risen Lord as his disciples did. But we do have Jesus’
living presence in our hearts and in our lives. And we celebrate Easter Sunday
because the same Spirit of the risen Christ that the first disciples experienced
physically all those years ago lives in you and in me and in all who know his
continuing presence.
If you’ve been around here for a while, you
may have noticed that I do something different on Palm Sunday. We typically use
verses from Psalm 118 for our call to worship. But one of the verses doesn’t
sound quite right. It’s the one that usually says, “This is the day that the lord has made; let us rejoice and be
glad in it” (Ps 118:24). That verse has become so much a part of Christian life
and worship that some might think it’s going too far for me to tinker with it.
But being the student of the Bible that I am, I have to read that verse in the
context of Psalm 118 as a whole.
When you do that, when you read the whole of
Psalm 118, you find that the Psalm is a celebration of a kind of death-to-life
restoration. The psalmsinger speaks of being in distress, of being surrounded
on every side (Ps 118:5, 10-11) and being “pushed hard” to the point of falling
(Ps 118:13). It sounds like the psalmsinger was engaged in battle and at the
point of what must have felt like certain death. It’s in that setting that the
psalmsinger affirms, “The LORD is my strength and my might; he has become my
salvation” (Ps 118:14). He celebrates that the Lord has delivered him from what
may have seemed like certain defeat.
Because of that, the psalmsinger rejoices that
“This is the day that the LORD has made; let us rejoice and be glad in it” (Ps
118:24). That’s the way most English translations put it. But if we pay
attention to the context, it seems like there’s more to this verse than just
celebrating God’s hand in every new day. The psalmsinger is celebrating a
special day of deliverance. And so that verse that’s so familiar to us probably
shouldn’t be read as “this is the day the Lord has made.” It probably should be
read as a celebration of “the day of the Lord’s victory” (Ps 118:24, GNT),
an act so unexpected, so “marvelous” (Ps 118:23) that all we can do is to “rejoice and be
glad in what he has done.” And so, in my humble opinion, we should say, “This
is the day of the Lord’s victory, we will rejoice and be glad in what he has
done.”
I think that’s what Easter is about. It’s a
celebration that on this day, all those years ago, God acted decisively to
break the power of everything that threatens to oppress or distort or destroy
our humanity. It’s a celebration that, on this day, God took all our pain and
sorrow and suffering and loss and death and turned it into new life. Easter is
the celebration that the new life that came into being on that day will one day
transform everything and everyone. It’s a celebration that, on this
day, God acted to demonstrate that he is constantly working to restore the
whole creation to the place where it is once again “very good,” as it was in
the beginning. When that happens, “the Lord’s victory” will be complete.
I know all of that may sound very hard to
believe, especially in the light of all that’s going on in the world these
days. But I believe it’s part of the Easter miracle that began all those years
ago. It may sound hard to believe, but our first-hand experience of the risen
Christ alive and present in our lives serves as a basis for our faith in the
Easter miracle that continues to “this day.” Because of what God did in and
through Jesus Christ, the Spirit of Christ is alive and present in all our
lives. And so “on this day” we “rejoice and are glad in what he has done.”
Because of what God did in and through Jesus, we experience the “marvelous”
work of the God who is bringing salvation—grace and peace and mercy and love
and joy and new life—into every life. And as we celebrate that “This is the day
of the Lord’s victory,” we experience that “marvelous” work of God in our own
lives. And so we “rejoice are glad in what he has done.”
In one respect what we celebrate happened a
long time ago in a land far, far away. But because we know Jesus’ living
presence in our hearts and our lives just as the first believers did, just as
faithful people throughout the ages have, we do more than remember what
happened on that first Easter. For us, every Easter, indeed every Sunday,
becomes a celebration of Jesus’ resurrection. Every Easter, indeed every
Sunday, is meant to be a celebration of the new life that God has “injected” into
this life to transform us all. It’s a day for us to celebrate that “this is the
day of the Lord’s victory, we will rejoice and be glad in what he has done!”
[1] © Alan
Brehm 2026. A sermon delivered by Rev. Alan Brehm PhD on 4/5/2026 for Hickman
Presbyterian Church, Hickman, NE.
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