continues to make; I mean, he makes every day as follows: he makes his sun
SERMON 229B
PREACHED ON HOLY EASTER SUNDAY
Date: uncertain1
Live good lives, and you are the day which the Lord has made
1. The Lord has indeed made every day—and not only has made, but also continues to make; I mean, he makes every day as follows: he makes his sun rise on the good and the bad, and sends rain on the just and the unjust (Mt 5:45).2 So we are not to imagine that this ordinary kind of day, which is common to good and bad alike, is meant in this place, where we heard, This is the day which the Lord has made. A particular sort of day is being proclaimed more formally, and our attention is being drawn to a particular sort of day by its saying, This is the day which the Lord has made. What sort of day can it be, when it says, Let us exult and be joyful in it (Ps 118:24)? What sort, but a good one? What sort but a very choice, lovable, desirable one, the sort about which Saint Jeremiah said, And the day of men I have not yearned for, you know it well3 (Jer 17:16)?
So what is this day which the Lord has made? Live good lives, and you will be this day yourselves.4 The apostle, you see, was not talking about the day which begins with sunrise and ends with sunset, when he said Let us walk honorably, as in the day (Rom 13:13); where he also said, For those who get drunk are drunk at night (l Thes 5:7).5 Nobody sees people getting drunk at the midday meal;6 but when this does happen, it is a matter of the night, not of the day which the Lord has made. You see, just as that day is realized in those who live godly, holy, and religious lives, marked by moderation, justice, sobriety; so too on the contrary, for those who live in an ungodly, loose-living, proud, and irreligious manner—for that sort of night, the night will undoubtedly be a thief: The day of the Lord will come just like a thief in the night (1 Thes 5:2)—that's what's written, after all.7 But after reminding us of this testimony,8 the apostle turned to those to whom he had elsewhere said You were once darkness, but now light in the Lord (Eph 5:8)—that is where the day was made which the Lord has made. He turned to them, after saying, You know, brothers, that the day of the Lord will come just like a thief in the night, and he said to them, You, however, are not in darkness, that that day should catch you out like a thief. For you are all children of the