Today’s Scripture Reading (January 23, 2018): Acts 20
I am old enough to remember the “Blue Laws”
which prohibited certain businesses from opening on Sunday’s. In Canada, the “Blue
Laws,” in some form, were in effect until the mid-1980’s. By that time it was a
much watered down form of the law, which had once prohibited theatre
performances, movie screenings, horse racing and sports events, as well as many
stores from opening on Sunday. And I admit that I had my own brush with the Blue Laws. As a young adult
attending religious camp meetings, I remember several instances where we left
the campgrounds and drove to a small town
to find a field to play some football on
a Sunday afternoon. All sports were prohibited
on the Church grounds.
Often, Blue laws
were referred to as Sabbath Laws, which
admittedly from a legalistic point of view was confusing. The Sabbath is
Saturday, the seventh day of the week, a fact that is obvious from looking at a
traditional calendar. Sunday is the first day of the week, and to be precise it
is the Lord’s Day and not the Sabbath. Yet a tradition built up that has extended from
the time of the apostles that the Christian Church would meet on the first day
of the week, treating the Lord’s Day as the Christian Sabbath. Sunday, and not the
Sabbath, was a time to break bread and sing songs of the faith and receive
Christian teaching. And this verse is really
the first evidence of this tradition.
The reason for this change is multi-layered.
Maybe, most obviously and argued, the change
recognizes that the Christian Church made a conscious change in its day of worship because Jesus lay in the grave on
Saturday, the Sabbath, and was raised to
life on Sunday. Every Sunday celebration is a celebration of the resurrection
of Christ. But there was another reality that probably led to the change. Paul
and the apostles would often use the Sabbath as a day to go to the Jewish
synagogues and teach about Jesus. This
made the Sabbath a day of evangelism, but not worship. And singing what were
becoming the traditional songs of the church and sharing in communion, the
breaking of the bread, was impossible in a Jewish setting, as were specific
Christian teachings. The other hindrance was that the synagogues, where the
apostles wanted to spend their time, did not necessarily welcome Gentiles. What
was needed was a place where both Jews and Gentiles could share in their belief
in this Messiah who had died for all of their sins, while at the same time
leaving Jewish Christians with the opportunity to share Christ in the
synagogues on the Sabbath.
Enter Sunday Worship and the idea of
worshipping on the First Day. It made sense to celebrate the resurrection of
Jesus in a way that was multi-racial and still left the Sabbath open for the
Jews to go to synagogue and talk about this very Jewish Messiah. But, as this
verse highlights, there was also a problem. Sunday in the ancient world was far
from a place of “Blue Laws.” It was a day of work, which meant that these
Christian meetings could only happen in the evening, and when you had a
preacher like Paul, that meant that the
meeting might go very late.
One more comment about the now long gone “Blue
Laws.” I have to admit that I miss them, but probably not for the reason that
they existed in the first place. I think that we need a day when everything is closed. A day when shopping isn’t possible,
and so we pick up a football or a baseball and walk outside and try to drum up
an informal game with friends. I think we need a day when we can’t do the
mundane things of life, and so we are given the opportunity
to gather and talk, laugh and have fun. The repeal of the Blue Laws made every
day mundane, and I think we are the losers in that situation. So go and create
your own. You are designed to spend one day a week just having fun and putting
a smile on your face. A day to read the book you want to read or just listen to the music you want to
hear. We all deserve that day, so don’t let the world steal it from you. And by
the way, I think that was God’s original idea for the Sabbath anyway.
Tomorrow’s Scripture Reading: Romans 1
No comments:
Post a Comment