The Lord’s Day; The Weekly Easter; The Day of Light
By The Rev. Charles E. Hocking, Ret.
The Lord’s Day; The Weekly Easter; The Day of Light
Posted on October 14, 2014 by stjamesblog
By The Rev. Charles E. Hocking, Ret.
Yes, that’s right, this blog is about Sunday and these three legitimate and descriptive labels for our weekly holy day. If you were raised in the Episcopal Church as I was through Church School, Men and Boys Choir, Acolyte Duties, and Young Peoples Fellowship (high school youth group), you were taught that Sunday was The Sabbath. On the first Sunday of the month at St. Andrew’s Church in Meriden, Connecticut, we had Holy Communion and, in “The Decalogue”, when The Rector read “Remember that thou keep holy the Sabbath-day,” we all responded, “Lord, have mercy upon us, and incline our hearts to keep this law.” And not one of us, not man, woman or child, intended to “keep this law” as fully described in the very small print, which the Rector never read to the congregation.
The small print is a quote from Exodus 20: 8-11, which begins, “Six days shalt thou labour, and do all that thou hast to do; but the seventh day is the Sabbath of the Lord thy God. In it thou shalt do no manner of work”, (not you, your son, your daughter, your slaves, your cattle, nor the stranger visiting your town). “For in six days, the Lord made heaven and earth, the sea, and all that in them is, and rested the seventh day: wherefore the Lord blessed the seventh day, and hallowed it.”
You do not have to be a biblical scholar to recognize that the 4th Commandment is about Saturday, not Sunday. The calendars of the Orthodox Churches in the East designate all Saturdays as The Sabbath. It was only in the Western Church, in Europe, that the error was intentionally made. In the Dark Ages very few outside of the monasteries could read or write, so the task of preparing people for Baptism or Confirmation fell to the monks. With the help of visual aids such as church windows and statuary, they told the Gospel Story and required the candidates to memorize the Lord’s Prayer, the Ten Commandments and the Apostles’ Creed. When teaching the Ten Commandments, they said that the Fourth commandment, “Thou shalt keep Holy the Sabbath-day” meant they were required to attend Mass every Sunday. Wrong, but easy to remember.
The error continued for centuries, into and after the Reformation. In England, following the Civil War, under Cromwell, The Calvinist Puritans took Sunday “Sabbath” to its logical conclusion: everyone must “rest”, do no work or play on Sunday. The English working people rose up in protest. They worked long hours six days a week, and, after service on Sunday, they played their sports, ran races, danced, eat and had their only time for recreation. The restoration of the monarchy and the restoration of playtime went hand in hand.
But of course, the Puritans were not deterred. Beginning in New England, the “Blue Laws” required businesses to close on Sundays, including theaters, movies and amusement parks. Living in New York City in the 1960s, I discovered that city law required Gentiles to close on Sunday and Jewish merchants to close on Saturday. One Jewish shop keeper I knew was open seven days a week, and, when I asked how he did it, he said he paid the fine every week – part of the cost of doing business.
All this because the monks in the Dark Ages made it easy to remember the Fourth Commandment: “You are required to attend Mass on Sunday.”
So growing up, I was taught that Sunday was the Sabbath Day, and I believed it until I had my first seminary class in Liturgies with The Rev. Dr. H. Boone Porter, who made it clear that Sunday, every Sunday, was the most important holy day in the Church Year except for Easter and Pentecost. Sunday is The Lord’s Day, The Weekly Easter, The Day of Light, not the Sabbath. Read your Bible. Saturday is the Sabbath. The Fourth Commandment is a Jewish cultic law and rigorously obeyed by all practicing Jews from sundown on Friday until sundown on Saturday.
Christian congregations differ from Rotarian’s, as The Rev. Jay Sidebotham said in the Grapevine article in mid-September, “to the degree that it is confronted by and attempts to form its life in response to the Word of God….” So True! But, I would add that we Christians are who we are, the corporate Body of Christ, most truly, when we gather on Sunday to offer to “Almighty God, our Heavenly Father” The Great Thanksgiving. As baptized members of The Church, the Body of Christ in this place, “we offer and present unto thee, O Lord, ourselves, our souls and bodies, to be a reasonable, holy and living sacrifice unto thee, …” (Rite I). Or, “We celebrate the memorial of our redemption, O Father, in this sacrifice of praise and thanksgiving, …” (Rite II).
And, what is it that we gather on Sunday, the first day, to offer to Almighty God in The Holy Eucharist (our holy Thanksgiving)? We gather to thank God for His three mighty acts associated in Scripture with the first day: 1. Creation: “Let there be light.”, God the Father; 2. The Resurrection of Jesus, the incarnate Son of God at the 1st light of dawn on Easter; and 3. the gift of the Holy Spirit to the Church on Pentecost, when the light of fire burned over the heads of the Apostles.
Sunday is Trinitarian. Sunday is the Day of Light. Sunday is the Weekly Easter, Sunday is the Lord’s Day. On Sunday we hear God’s Word to know Him and His will for us, we worship Him in The Great Thanksgiving, and we are fed the sacramental Body and Blood of Christ, the gift of Himself (His Body) and His Life (His Blood), and asking, “Father, send us out to do the work you have given us to do, to love and serve you as faithful witnesses of Christ our Lord…”
Saturday is The Sabbath of God. For Christians, it represents a principle to take seriously – to stay healthy, we need a day of rest, a day of change from work, a day of recreation, in order to return to work creatively and refreshed.
For further reading: The Day of Light by H. B. Porter. Published by Seabury Press, 1960 and The Pastoral Press, 1987.
The Rev. Charles Hocking is a retired priest living in the Wilmington area. When he is not writing or contemplating the intricacies of liturgy and church history, Charles enjoys reading and spending time with his wife, his children, and grandchildren.
