About Sunday morning....

The conventional wisdom in the Christian community is to equate Sunday with Sabbath. To do so is to equate Sunday with the Seventh Day, the final day of creation in which God rested within and with all creation. In the Ten Commandments, the Seventh Day is set aside as sacrosanct--God’s people shall rest with God--no work shall be done--and in orthodox circles there was great parsing as to what exactly constituted “work.” It was a day of prayer, meditation, and reflection. It was a day of quiet devotion and sharp awareness that all of life is lived in the presence of God. 

It was also the LAST day of the week.

Looking at how the day was to be used, we can see why there was a move in the community of Christ to see Sunday as this dedicated day for worship and contemplation, and what led to the experience of many of us growing up in the South to knowing that on Sunday, whole towns would lock up--you needed to stock up on Saturday with whatever you needed to do. That even included going to the movies or eating out. Everything was supposed to be focused on getting to Church, and our Baptist kindred made sure you spent the whole day there, too, with morning Bible Study, worship, home for lunch, then back for evening worship. 

But scripturally, Sunday is NOT the Sabbath. It is still firmly fixed on Saturday as the last day of the week. Look at all four Gospel narratives of Easter. The Sabbath was the day when literally nothing happened. Christ’s followers huddled and hid in prayer. Their Jewish neighbors rested and went to Temple on the pinnacle of the Passover week. God did nothing on that day except be. The Apostles Creed sums up Holy Saturday as the day on which Jesus descended into hell, abiding in a state of non-being, redeeming even the most alienated forms of existence any of us could imagine by being fully present in them. But non-being equals non-doing, too. Christ simply abode there. 

Then, everything burst loose on Sunday morning. The first day of the week was flooded with miracle, wonder, and newness. 

Now, cross reference to Genesis 1--the opening salvo of creation comes on the first day of the week--God separates light from dark, setting off the great ordering of chaos--the non-being that was before. God opens God’s own being in a great sharing of existence, throwing being into place from God’s own Being. 

Easter morning it begins again.

Easter is the first day of the New Creation, the first harbinger that all is changed, that all shall be changed, and that all will be ordered in a new way wherein every tear shall be wiped away, pain, sorrow, and suffering shall be no more, and God will exist eternally in the midst of humanity (cf. Rev. 21:1-5). 

Therefore, instead of doing nothing on Sunday morning, we are to be witnesses to the new creation, working for its resolution, and finding all things redeemed within ourselves and the world. It is a glorious day of awakening, experiencing, and embodying the new life of Christ. 

What is my point in all of this? 

We do need days of rest. We days on which to do nothing but be in God and welcome God in us. Sabbath was part of God’s requirements for the community of God because God knew us, loved us, and recognized that there must be rest if we are to be the people God would have us to be. 

So take a day off, a day to do nothing, not as a moral duty or obligation, but simply because you need rest and God is good enough to let it be so. 

But realize that Sunday morning is the spiritual awakening to the work to be done throughout the week. Recently, a dear parishioner lamented that Sunday was not enough--they came, they heard the good news, they sat in the presence of God, then entered the craziness of life as it is, and lost all the gains made on Sunday morning. By seeing Sunday as the first day of God’s recreation--i.e., re-creation--although there is certainly sound theological reasoning to see creation as God at play. The next five days then lay before us as the days to join the exuberance of God, making things new in our lives. It is the opportunity to realize the promises of grace--that the mistakes and missteps of previous days are not final, but rather we can move into new days that are fresh and clean to get it right. We need not leave the joy, wonder, and miracle of Sunday, but see that as Act 1--the next five days become the follow-up, making it real, or, for the moderns among us, keeping it real. Embody the grace, compassion, and self-emptying of Christ.

Then rest. Find that day to do nothing whatsoever. Rest, do not make taking a day off yet another work. Just be still, rest, recover, and recoup. 

Then begin again with re-creation--recreation--and join with God, walk with God, and experience God making all things new.