Celebrating the Lord’s Day
A comment on the image: It looks pretty bleak and not particularly joyful, but consider this: you’re looking at a poor laborer who has probably exhausted himself during the past six days in his efforts to provide for his family. By modern thinking, he could probably get a bit ahead of the game if he were to work an extra day. But he would never do that, because the Sabbath belongs to the Lord and was given for rest. This is the high point of his week.
OK, here’s some background on the celebration of the Christian Sabbath or Lord’s Day. In the 1970s and 80s, Katie and I were members of a Christian community that had the practice of inaugurating the Lord’s Day with a home/family service. All households in the community were expected to gather together on Saturday nights, pray together using a set liturgy, eat a festive meal, and in general make the evening a time of fellowship and enjoyment. The practice was based on the Jewish tradition of inaugurating the Sabbath with nice meal and a home service on Friday nights. Since our family is Jewish, we have kept the Friday night Sabbath tradition and have celebrated the Sabbath home service continuously (missing only the occasional Friday night here and there) for the duration of our marriage, 28 years. It’s part of our life together, and we guard it very carefully — we almost never attend Friday evening events, for example, because they would interfere with our consecrated family time. The meal is the nicest dinner we eat over the course of the week, and we make an effort to make things special. It’s the only meal that we have a dessert with, for example, and we spend a bit more money and time on the meal’s preparation. We even try to dress a bit better for it (our pastor when we lived in Michigan used to say that you shouldn’t dress like a schlump for the Lord’s Day). In doing so, we honor the Lord for His goodness to us during the past week — the meal is a sacramental activity. (more…)