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In years past, I would have been appalled at what I'm now saying. Here's how it would go if old Jam - with a evangelical anti-pharisee theology - talked to New Jam - with a more classically reformed theology...
Old Jam: Refusing to work on Sundays, New Jam? Why are you being religious in this way?
New Jam: I'm not being religious. I'm just resting on the seventh day, I was commanded. And spending the day with my church family. It's a nice command. Why wouldn't I want to obey?
Old Jam: But we're free in Christ! We're not pharisees and are not bound by laws!
New Jam: That's right. I've been freed from legalism to obey God's laws, not because I have to but because I'm am able to. Anyway, why would you want to work on a Sunday?
Old Jam: Well, you wouldn't want to work on a Sunday, ideally, but stuff happens. If you're job calls you in for one Sunday every couple of months, big deal.
New Jam: It is a big deal. Is my job more important than my Sunday commitment to my church family?
Old Jam: Why would put the two against each other like that? They so rarely clash.
New Jam: But sometimes they do clash - and then we see who wins. Up until now, it's been work. Why am I working?
Old Jam: You want to be a good employee, don't you? That's a good witness.
New Jam: It's a good witness to work hard for six days a week. Most of the time, I only need to work for five. God has created a clear order for the living on earth. Work for six days, then rest. I'd be surprised if you've got an update on that. they tried ten day weeks in revolutionary France. It didn't really work.
Old Jam: No one is saying that you should regularly work on Sundays. There's no need to be religious about it. Religion is the enemy of grace.
New Jam: Yes, but what we do is important. Why am I working on a Sunday? Because I'm afraid I'll get fired if I don't? Because I think God won't provide for me if I don't - that last one is me, because I'm self employed. Right now, I could square any amount of work on Sundays because I'm 'providing for my family'.
Old Jam: I just don't see why you need to be dogmatic about it.
New Jam: Because when I work on Sunday, I'm ultimately saying that I rely on myself rather than God. And God consistently, throughout scripture, shows how following his pattern is not only better but that he provides for you in the process. Look at the template of Jubilee. Take a whole year off from agriculture and God will make the land abundant to provide for you! Look:
Leviticus 25
18 " 'Follow my decrees and be careful to obey my laws, and you will live safely in the land. 19 Then the land will yield its fruit, and you will eat your fill and live there in safety. 20 You may ask, "What will we eat in the seventh year if we do not plant or harvest our crops?" 21 I will send you such a blessing in the sixth year that the land will yield enough for three years. 22 While you plant during the eighth year, you will eat from the old crop and will continue to eat from it until the harvest of the ninth year comes in.
Still not convinced that God provides? Look at how he provided for his people in a barren wasteland. He still tells them to sabbath. But he will provide!
Exodus 16:4
4 Then the LORD said to Moses, "I will rain down bread from heaven for you. The people are to go out each day and gather enough for that day. In this way I will test them and see whether they will follow my instructions. 5 On the sixth day they are to prepare what they bring in, and that is to be twice as much as they gather on the other days.
Old Jam: We can all quote bits of the Bible at each other.
New Jam: Go on then.
Old Jam: Jesus picking ears of corn? In Matthew 12.
New Jam: That passage is about legalism. And sort of makes my point, doesn't it? Don't be legalistic and be so concerned to keep that sabbath you become loveless, religious and hateful - because you're turning the Sabbath into something it wasn't intended to be. If I'm one of God's people, a Christian, why would I want to spend my Sunday, the Lord's Day, doing anything other than being with his people?
Old Jam: Yes, but you don't have to.
New Jam: Maybe you do have to. And we can disagree over this - it's not a deal-breaker...
Old Jam: So there is freedom. That's Romans 14, isn't it?
One man considers one day more sacred than another; another man considers every day alike. Each one should be fully convinced in his own mind.
New Jam: Yes, which is why I don't think you're heretical or worthy of excommunication for thinking it's okay to work the odd Sunday, old Jam. You didn't become a 'true Christian' when you made this decision to not work on Sundays. I should bear with you, in love. And you shouldn't call me a legalist. Secondly, I'm not sure that verse is specifically about Sundays, but holy days. The nearest thing we have to them are bank holidays. It's interesting that it's assumed I won't work those, but that I would work on Sunday. Is that because Bank Holidays, and Saturdays, are 'me' time? Whereas Sundays, being God's time, are less well guarded, rather than more so.
Old Jam: So, what's the rules on Sunday? Would you not work, but you would, say, drive someone to the airport.
New Jam: Oops, you've turned it into rules. Stop saying that that is what I'm doing. The answer, no, I wouldn't work on a Sunday. If someone called me from work on a Sunday, I wouldn't hang up. I'd politely answer their question, and then gracefully explain today isn't the day that I work. And that they can call me at 9am on Monday.
Old Jam: What about 12.01am on Monday?
New Jam: If they really want to, yes. But they've made it a legalistic rule. Not me.
Old Jam: So what about driving someone to the airport?
New Jam: That depends on the friend and the location of the airport. If it takes me away from my church family, so that they can go on holiday, probably not. But if they've had a family tragedy and they need to get abroad and they're really stuck, would it be kind and gracious to still to my rule? Probably not.
Old Jam: Well, I just think it looks weird if Christians don't work on Sundays.
New Jam: Sometimes, I don't think Christians look weird enough.
Old Jam: Okay, okay. I get it.
New Jam: I don't think you do. But you will.
Old Jam: You're very smug, New Jam.
New Jam: Well, I'm married with a baby. What do you expect?
I hope that helps.
8 comments:
Sunday the seventh day of the week? Since when? It's the first day - or if not, the eighth!
I'm wobbly on this issue, having grown up with fairly strict Sabbatarianism but working in a church body with a very different position. However, I have never come across any biblical evidence for calling Sunday "Sabbath", or claiming that Sunday has become the "new Sabbath" (D. Wilson, I think). Can you help?
Calling it a Sabbath is perhaps unusual.
The classic case for Sunday observance is John Owen's A Day of Sacred Rest
An excellent book with a very helpful appendix on the subject, focussing on what we do rather than on what we don't do, is David Hegeman's Plowing in Hope
He puts the Lord's Day in the context of our work. Six days we do cultural work, one day we do cultic work. Absolutely brilliant life-affirming, creation enjoying treatise.
One of his points is that the cross constituted a sort of Sabbatarian "Day of Jubilee." Instead of cultus at the end of the week, looking primarily back to redemption with an eye forward to glory, we now worship at the start of the week, looking primarily forward to glory, with an eye back to our redemption.
Steffen, it's not unusual to call Sunday the Christian Sabbath, is it? Doesn't Owen himself say that Christians should keep in Sabbath in his commentary on Hebrews (and no doubt elsewhere)?
Marc,
I stand corrected, thank you.
I was under the impression that we keep the Sabbath Law, as fulfilled by Christ, by observing the Lord's Day.
Steffen
What concerns me about all this is that I can't see where in the NT the transfer of Sabbath to Sunday is made. It does seem clear that the Sabbath (Saturday) is abrogated as a religious observance. Where is it reinstated/transferred to Sunday?
On the other hand, a day of rest is clearly part of the order of creation. Is this a religious duty, though, or a gift of God's creation?
And what do we say about Luther's explanation of the Sabbath commandment (3rd to us Lutherans, 4th to most of the readers of this blog, I suspect)?
We should fear and love God so that we do not despise preaching and His Word, but hold it sacred and gladly hear and learn it.
Luther translated Sabbath as Feiertag, 'Day of Rest', which corresponds to the Hebrew as well - but understood the New Covenant application of the commandment to consist primarily at least in the observance of a day of worship (any day, though Sunday is best on account of its established status). So that doing ordinary work on a Sunday is not a sin against a specific divinely ordered day, but neglect of the study of His Word.
Just some thoughts to stir the pot further.
I like the New Jam. For me "breaking" with the UK anglican evangelical sub culture was the result of going to a UK presbyterian church for 3 years, 8 years of theological study, and then living in the reformed community in the USA. So many of the arguments I used to accept uncritially now seem rather... well I don´t want to be unkind to the old me, but rather floppy.
Hi Taps,
It does seem clear that the Sabbath (Saturday) is abrogated as a religious observance. Where is it reinstated/transferred to Sunday?
I reserve the right to delete this post after I've read Owen... But just to share a brief point that came up in lectures when we had a short side-track on this.
Consider Heb 4, where rest appears 11 times. One of them sticks out in two ways:
- unlike the other rest which we're told that we don't have and that is in the future, it remains for us, v9, a Sabbath-rest
- that's σαββατισμός which doesn't appear in NT or LXX, but what does appear in LXX is Σαββατίζω which presumably is cognate? In the few references, it appears to mean quite clearly an observance of the Sabbath: see the list where I've made bold where that verb appears.
Exodus 16:30 So the people rested on the seventh day.
Leviticus 23:32 It shall be to you a Sabbath of solemn rest, and you shall afflict yourselves. On the ninth day of the month beginning at evening, from evening to evening shall you keep your Sabbath.”
Leviticus 26:34 “Then the land shall enjoy its Sabbaths as long as it lies desolate, while you are in your enemies’ land; then the land shall rest, and enjoy its Sabbaths.
Leviticus 26:35 As long as it lies desolate it shall have rest, the rest that it did not have on your Sabbaths when you were dwelling in it.
2 Chronicles 36:21 to fulfill the word of the Lord by the mouth of Jeremiah, until the land had enjoyed its Sabbaths. All the days that it lay desolate it kept Sabbath, to fulfill seventy years.
Seem fairly plain to me: there remains a rest for the people of God that consists of observing the Sabbath. Hardly surprising that this shows up in a letter one of the pastoral burdens of which is to persuade Christians to (a) keep meeting together and (b) not go back to the Temple instead (so keep Sabbath with God's people on the Lord's Day not with the apostate rejected people on Saturday).
As I say, it's a McThought but it may be useful.
None of this is to deny that there is a creation mandate to rest, but to affirm alongside it a cultic duty.
S
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