Exodus 31.12-17, Mark 2.23-28
What was Sunday like when you were a child? Was it different from all the other days? It was for me! My parents were probably a bit old-fashioned, but we weren’t allowed to play loud noisy games outside, and for a time we weren’t even allowed to watch the football highlights on ITV, even though they sometimes featured our local team, Grimsby Town.
My grandparents would have liked us to spend the day either in church or reading an improving book. They were harking back to the Westminster Confession, adopted by the Puritans after their victory in the English Civil War. Most secular work was forbidden on Sundays - opening shops, making things or working on the land. Puritans weren’t even supposed to think secular thoughts, but had to devote themselves to worship, prayer, Bible study or - for a bit of light relief - they could dip into a book of theology or religious poetry.
In the Nineteenth Century there were even popular movements set up to protect Sunday as a day of rest. No doubt people were just glad to be given one day a week off when they didn’t have to work for twelve hours!
So where did all this start? How far back in time can we trace the keeping of the sabbath day as a holy day, different from all others?
It probably doesn’t pre-date the exile in Babylon. Perhaps it was while they were living in a foreign land, and desperately trying to remain distinctive from the people and culture around them, that Jewish people first started keeping the sabbath and formulating the sort of traditions which come down to us in this passage.
Before that time, Jewish people probably didn’t set one day of the week apart, but only took time off to worship God at special holy times of the year like harvest or Passover. Even after the return from exile, keeping the sabbath was clearly not a universally popular idea. The two harsh warnings about putting people to death for breaking the sabbath commandment show that many of them must have been seriously tempted not to bother!
In Jesus’ time the struggle between sabbath observers and sabbath breakers was clearly still going on, with the scribes and pharisees seeking to enforce the sabbath in the face of a lot of indifference and outright opposition. Jesus himself opposed its strict observance, pointing out that one of the justifications which Exodus gives for the sabbath commandment is humanitarian - the sabbath was instituted for our sakes, not simply for its own sake.
Notice that he doesn’t rule out sabbath keeping or even seek to delegitimise it. Jesus mostly chose to keep the sabbath too, but he allowed humanitarian considerations, like hunger, illness or need, to override the obligation to keep it holy. In point of fact, so did his opponents, but he was just more lenient than they were. He felt it was legitimate to heal someone on the sabbath if they were in pain, whereas his opponents may have felt that it was only legitimate if someone was at the point of death.
In the end, of course, a fairly strict pattern of sabbath keeping prevailed, partly because Jewish people found themselves in exile once again and partly because it was now one of the things which most clearly set them apart from the new and growing Christian community. But even Christians can agree with the writers of Exodus about one of the reasons for keeping the sabbath holy - as a reminder that really everything is holy. Our world belongs to God. It was made by him. Our work and our whole lives, including our rest times, should honour the creator and complement his mission to make the world a perfect place to live.
For a while Christians went further than Jewish people. They observed Saturday as the day to remember how God created the world, and Sunday as the day when they celebrated the work of Jesus and his resurrection. Imagine that - two holy days each week! Perhaps it’s no wonder that, quite soon, most agreed that Sunday was the more important day, and so it has remained.
For most of Christian history, however, there’s been a contradictory point of view - that Jesus sets us free from having to observe a special holy day each week. Instead, we should use our time off to make ourselves feel better, not to beat ourselves up. As we’ve seen, Jesus didn’t go quite as far as that but it’s easy to see why that view has gained traction throughout my lifetime, to the point where anything goes on a Sunday now.
The trouble is that one person’s good day out means that another person has to work to make it possible. Sunday observance has declined sharply, and so have church congregations. At one time people were excommunicated if they missed three services in a row, now we’re delighted if they can manage to come to worship once a month.
It’s no good lamenting what’s been lost. Instead we have to respond creativelyfind an imaginative way to respond. If every day is holy, then we can worship on any day of the week. Perhaps we can make a virtue of the shortage of ministers and local preachers by organising more midweek services. Or perhaps, like Roman Catholics, we could sometimes worship on a Saturday night and then have Sunday to ourselves.
In the past, when I’ve worked in churches which tried this approach, it didn’t really work. People seemed to feel that if they couldn’t worship on a Sunday then they wouldn’t worship at all. I just wonder if that isn’t the worst kind of Sabbath observance - only one day can be holy, all the others don’t count. That’s the opposite of what Exodus teaches us. Perhaps it’s time for us to get inventive!
The other issue caused by the demise of Sunday observance is the unrelenting nature of modern life. It’s what we now call the 24/7 society. For many people the hamster’s wheel never stops.
I don’t want to do any special pleading because, as I’ve already said, people who work in the leisure industries and in retail or the supply chain are equally affected, but Sunday working means that ministers and their families seldom see much difference between their weekdays and weekends. Some people might say that means ministers do very little for most of the week and not much more at the weekend, but even if that were true it means that successive weeks blend into one another in a monotonous and unbroken routine, without the sort of pause, the time to stop and reflect and give thanks, which Exodus envisages.
As churches and congregations I think we need to be inventive and creative in helping people make their own pauses for reflection and fill them with uplifting things to do and think about. At Saturday coffee mornings, and at special events like the Christmas Tree festival, as well as offering the ever popular bacon butties, could we offer a prayer space where people could pause to reflect? And I don’t just mean putting a semi-circle of seats in front of the communion table, but designing a little corner where people could pause and find a little peace and an opportunity for reflection. Perhaps we need a prayer Christmas tree or a tree decorated with striking Christian symbols. Or a quiet day, now and again, perhaps where we take people to a retreat centre.
As Exodus says, the more frenzied modern life becomes, the more we need to make opportunities to remind ourselves of God’s goodness and grace and to join him in resting and being refreshed.
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