Sunday
Sunday
Keeping Sunday Special
God blessed the seventh day and made it holy.
Genesis 2:3
What does it mean that God “blessed” the seventh day and sanctified it or “made it holy?” Clearly the day itself has not experienced any inherent change; only its use has changed. For God has set it apart from the other six days of the week for special purposes.
In 1985 in the United Kingdom a campaign was launched called “Keep Sunday Special.” It stressed the need to protect the workforce from being obliged to work on Sundays in any but essential jobs. At the same time it sought to safeguard Sunday for rest and recreation, worship and family. It nearly succeeded. It has now been refocused to ensure that everybody has “a regular shared day off.”
This campaign has nothing in common with repressive sabbatarianism. The rabbis in Jesus’s day calculated that the law of Sabbath observance contained more than fifteen hundred regulations. But Jesus had no sympathy with such casuistry. Claiming to be “Lord even of the Sabbath” (Mark 2:28), he meant that he had the authority to give a true interpretation of the fourth commandment. It was always right to “do good” on the Sabbath day (Mark 3:4), he said. He would have been in full agreement with the divine sentiments expressed in Isaiah 58:13–14:
If you keep your feet from breaking the Sabbath
and from doing as you please on my holy day,
if you call the Sabbath a delight
and the LORD’s holy day honorable, …
then you will find your joy in the LORD,
and I will cause you to ride on the heights of the land
and to feast on the inheritance of your father Jacob.
For further reading: Mark 2:23–28