What to do with the Lord's Day?

"Between Two Worlds" (http://theologica.blogspot.com/) is a great Reformed website run by Justin Taylor ... he recently linked this blog by Iain Campbell about the Lord's Day. Hope you enjoy!

http://creideamh.blogspot.com/2008/03/case-for-sabbath-observance.html

The case for Sabbath observance
I have noticed that there are two subjects which never fail to provoke a response in my columns. One is psalm-singing, of which I am convinced that there should be more, and not less in our churches.

The other is the issue of Sabbath observance, perennially controversial and deeply divisive in the landscape of modern Lewis. I could wistfully look back to a past day on the Isle of Lewis and ask why the former days were better than the present; however, as my number two son reminded me when he gave a public talk recently, the Bible explicitly forbids such retrospection.

So we must face the issue as it confronts us in the present. Unfortunately, the debate seems to focus on the wrong issues. Simmering away is the subject of Sunday ferries to and from the Isle of Lewis, and the subject of Sunday sports facilities in the town of Stornoway. Travel and sport: these are the emotive and important issues which currently threaten to secularise our communities.

Up to this point we have infamously bucked the trend of contemporary British culture, in which Sunday travel and Sunday sport are fixtures on weekly routines. We have sold out our national Christian heritage to an industry of sport and leisure. The pursuit of these pleasures has pursued our national soul, and we have dived right in. But that is no reason why we should sell out our local Christian heritage.

I have said it often: there is no earthly reason why being different is a bad thing. Actually, in many ways it is our contemporary British culture, with its 24/7 madness that is bucking the trend; in many places throughout European towns and villages one would be hard pushed to find a shop open on Sundays.

My position, as a local minister, however, is that the case for Sabbath observance is not made by appeal to local tradition or to social custom. It is that such a case can be made, and has to be made, by direct appeal to the Bible. My argument, therefore, is a theological one before it is anything else, and consequently becomes a moral one.

The principle of one day in seven being observed as a day of rest and worship is built into the fabric of the universe. According to the Bible, God rested on the seventh day, and bequeathed a pattern to humanity. By enshrining this principle into the commandments, God made the principle of the sanctity of the Sabbath as important as the sanctity of life or the sanctity of marriage.I t is on this basis that the principle of Sabbath observance becomes a matter of conscience and a matter of principle, binding on all mankind everywhere.

The same categories in which the Old Testament seventh-day Sabbath are described apply to the New Testament Lord's Day Sabbath - same principle, different application. Now, post-resurrection, the first day of the week has become the Christian Sabbath. That point of doctrine, I have discovered, is attacked more fiercely within the church than outside it. Any suggestion that the Sabbath principle carries over into the New Testament is regarded as legalistic at best and heretical at worst.

It's part of a trend of course, in which the best doctrinal emphases of Puritanism have been thrown out with the rejection of formal theology by modern evangelicalism, which seems more interested in experience than in doctrine. It has become a truism among many evangelical Christians that Jesus is our Sabbath, and that the day is a type of the rest we have in him. We ought to meet on whatever day is convenient for us. If there is any distinction to be made, it is not between work and worship, but between work and rest.

That is a theology I reject. The Sabbath principle is too fundamental a part of the structure of biblical theology to be thrown out in this way. Jesus has not abrogated his claim to be Lord of the Sabbath; it is not now that his death and resurrection have shed light on the deeper meaning of the principle that we should jettison the day he has given for his worship.

And why should we? There are positive blessings to having a day that is different from all the rest. Our families need to spend time together. Our bodies need rest from the routine of the week. Our society needs protection from the trend towards round-the-clock shopping. And our employees need protection from the exploitation of employers who will work them into the ground for a profit.

But above all we need sacred times to remind us of the bigger issues. We really don't need Christmas to remind us of the birth of Jesus, or Easter to remind us of his resurrection if we have a weekly Sabbath to remind us of these things continuously. A weekly Christian calendar is of far more benefit than a yearly one. A society, however, which does not need a Sabbath, is a society which has declared its independence of God, and which has turned itself into a secular institution.

We have already begun a process of bringing up our children without the idea of God, marginalizing the relevance of Christianity, and making peripheral the thought that we may, in fact, be accountable for what we do with our lives. We have indoctrinated our children in the atheism of our contemporary culture. We have taken the Lord's Prayer out of their daily routine, Bible stories out of their regular practice, church-going out of their weekly habit. We have shown by our example that Sunday is a day for travel, leisure, shopping and sport. God is not in their thoughts at all.

So are we really surprised when our society cries out for help? Do we wonder why a secular society requires so much Child Protection legislation? Or why an atheistic culture needs a Suicide Prevention Week? Are we so blind that we cannot see the correlation between our contemporary humanism and our contemporary despair?

Let's get real. Let's not kid ourselves into thinking that this is an issue of human rights and freedoms. The case to preserve the standards of our contemporary culture in Lewis, including our distinctive approach to Sunday issues, is strong, both theologically and practically.

Having said all that, this is not a debate I expect to win. All I can do is hope that we will learn the lessons of our Island's past. Our economy was never stronger, family life never more stable, and communities never more cohesive, than in the days when God was given a primacy of place in the weekly routine. Could there, after all, be some truth in the maxim that those that honour God, He will honour?