Commandment 4 - A Day Off

COMMANDMENT 4 - A DAY OFF

I used to hate Sundays when I was a child. It was the one day of the week when I had to wear my best grey suit. I cannot recall how I spent the day, except that I was not allowed to play either with my friends, or with my toys, though my parents and grandparents were allowed to play cards.

You therefore have no idea what a relief it was to join a church choir at the age of 7 years. I now had a wonderful excuse to escape from home for at least 4-5 hours each Sunday since there were three services and it was a long walk!

When I look back to those days, I am reminded of an old Tony Hancock (Hancock's Half Hour) programme which consisted of yawns and groans as he moaned about it being Sunday. Like me, he just could not wait for Monday to come.

Surely, this is not what the fourth Commandment is about when it says "Remember the Lord's day and keep it holy".

The origin of the sabbath, probably goes back to when the Jews were prisoners of war in Babylon. There, a festival called 'sabbath' was observed every seven days.

After their liberation by Cyrus, King of Persia, they returned to their homeland and continued to observe the 'sabbath'. They also began to associate it with the day of rest that God enjoyed after the strenuous six days of creation, and added a humanistic flavour to it by prohibiting work.

The observance of rest on the Sabbath soon became the hallmark of Jewish life and by the 2nd Century B.C. Jews were prepared to be killed rather than break the sabbath by fighting. Needless to say, their enemies, on at least one occasion, took full advantage of this.

It was not long before the rabbis found it necessary to define what was meant by 'work' on the sabbath. By the time Jesus came on the scene, there were 1,521 things one could not do on the sabbath, including lighting a fire, cooking a meal or wearing false teeth.

No wonder Jesus often fell foul of the religious leaders when he healed on the sabbath day. But, as he reminded his critics, "The sabbath was made for man, and not man for the sabbath".

Since the first Christians were Jews, they would have kept the Jewish Sabbath as a day of rest. However, once non-Jews began to become Christians, the practice developed of observing Sunday as the weekly day of rest, since Jesus rose from the dead on the first day of the week.

Sunday became therefore a day of rejoicing, which is something I never experienced as a child; no more than did a poor young girl in the 17th Century who was brought before the Scottish courts for smiling on a Sunday!

So how do we "remember the Lord's day and keep it holy"?

Don't forget that the word 'holy' means 'different from'. It's about how Sunday is to be kept different from the other six days of the week.

I remember when I was confirmed, being told it was essentially a day of joy.

'J' for Jesus. For a Christian, the first claim on the first day of the week should be to meet with Jesus at the Holy Eucharist where he makes himself known through bread and wine Sunday by Sunday.

'O' for others. It is a day to spend with one's family and friends, and for those unable to meet with them personally, to establish contact via letters, the telephone or e-mail.

'Y' for yourself. It is a day to recharge one's physical, mental and spiritual batteries by engaging in some activity which one would not normally do the other days of the week.

Alas, the keeping of Sunday special appears to be on the decline,

Up until 5 years ago, one used to be able to buy a copy of Playboy magazine on a Sunday from the corner-shop, but not a copy of the Bible!

However, that has all been changed by the deregulation of Sunday trading by parliament which now permits retail stores to be open for 6 hours on a Sunday.

Some Christians wring their hands in distress at this further erosion of the observance of Sunday. Before we do likewise, we would do well to recall the words of a leading article in the Church Times in September 1999.

It said: "The level of Sunday observance by many Christians is not heart-stopping". "A Sunday free of labour, but not consecrated by worship, is possibly worse for a supposedly practicing Christian, than a Sunday spent in honest toil".

It concluded: "Lacking discipline in church-going is one of the ways in which Christians help to weaken the local church and to imply that their religion is not of first importance to them".

Of course some people, other than clergy, are obliged to work on a Sunday, but this does not prevent them from transferring their would-be observance of Sunday to another day of the week.

So the Old Testament says "Remember the Lord's day and keep it holy". And the New Testament says, "Christ is risen from the dead: set your hearts on things that are above; not on things on the earth".