Dutch generosity and Scottish cheerfulness
[Unless otherwise noted, all quotes are from Bullinger’s Decades and have been lightly adapted.]
Do churches have to meet on Sundays? What’s the purpose of the Lord’s Day? Can I go to the pub on a Sunday? Should we have our kids in sports leagues on Sundays? Can we watch the football on a Sunday? Should we go shopping on a Sunday?
So often our discussions of what is or isn’t appropriate for Sunday focus on practicalities rather than principles. Medieval Christianity had extensive rules about what was or wasn’t permitted on Sunday. The elaborate system of feast days and fast days had a tremendous and onerous impact on how daily life was lived. Amidst all the ‘can we/can’t we’, the focus on the Lord’s Day, the Christian Sabbath, as the day of sacred rest was lost. Bullinger cuts deftly through all that debris and gets back to scripture.
In this sabbath we rest from manual labour, in abstaining from sin, and doing our best not to live according to our own wills or to work for our own purposes, but in ceasing from these, to allow God to work in us and wholly to submit our bodies to the government of his good Spirit.
We rest from earthly – though legitimate – labours, and we seek to rest from our sin and living for ourselves. We rest this way so that we can better submit ourselves to God. Already some of the questions above start to lose their urgency. Some of the practical questions answer themselves, or at the very least reframe themselves, when we begin to understand what the sabbath is and why God gave it to us.
Bullinger also points out that the goal of the sabbath isn’t rest in itself, or rather, ease. It’s not chillaxing. It’s not me-time. It’s not special time to veg out. ‘God’s pleasure is that there should be a place and time reserved for religion, which time and place are not open to those who are busy with bodily and outward works.’ We can’t practice our religion if we’re constantly busy about the shop or the home on Sundays. But ‘faith therefore, and religion, bid you to give rest to your servants and family; indeed, they command you to urge and compel them if they’re slow, to the holy and profitable work of the Lord. Moreover, the Lord’s mind is that those who labour should also refresh and find enjoyment.’
Faith and our religion urge us to keep a sabbath. As a matter of godly charity. As a matter of ‘civil humanity.’ We are men and not slaves, thus our attitudes towards work ourselves and our attitudes towards those who work for us or with us should be one of compassion, pity, affection, and mercy. Sabbath keeping is a matter of human kindness, given us by a kind and fatherly God. Perhaps that helps us answer some of the more practical questions that come from thinking about Sundays…does this activity or use of my time help me or those around me rest in a godly way? Not is it permissible, not do I enjoy it, not is it useful, not is it or isn’t it right? Is it beneficial?
Bullinger explores the New Testament basis for Sunday becoming the Christian sabbath as well as the early Christian practice of meeting on Sunday rather than Saturday. Sunday was not a product of early Christians adopting Greco-Roman philosophy or practice, they came to it in honour of their Saviour who rose again on the third day. But Bullinger also points out that sabbath observation is necessary so we can enjoy what God calls us to do each Lord’s Day. We need a day for church. How many of us would agree with that last statement? A day? Couldn’t an hour do just as well?
We are commanded to have a care of religion and the exercising of outward godliness. It would be against all godliness and Christian charity if we should deny to sanctify Sunday, especially because the outward worship of God cannot consist without an appointed time and space of holy rest.
There are also comments about how the Christian sabbath differs from the Old Testament Jewish ceremonial sabbath, but you’ll have to read Bullinger himself to see about that. How does one understand the Old Testament law without the categories of moral, civil, and ceremonial? Something about Chesterton’s fence comes to mind…
Christian sabbath observation is to consist of: godly Christians gathering together as a congregation to hear the word of God as it’s preached, prayer together as a body of believers, the sacraments (though Bullinger notes, ‘if time, occasion, and custom of the church do so require’; he doesn’t seem to think observation of the sacraments is a requirement for each weekly gathering), and finally, what Bullinger describes as ‘entire humanity and liberality’, that is, alms and offerings. How little prayer and relief of the poor figure into so many Protestant church services today… Bullinger finishes this description with the comment, ‘these are the duties with which the Lord’s sabbath is kept holy in the church of Christians; and so much the better, if to these be added an earnest good will to do no evil all the day long.’
Then Bullinger moves into a discussion of how we can abuse the sabbath. We sin against the sabbath – against the fourth command of God’s moral law – by using the rest God intends for us on the sabbath instead for our own ‘fleshly pleasures.’ These are anything which ‘feed our lusts with the vanities of the world’, whatever draws us away from the ‘holy congregation’ or ‘also defiles our bodies, which we ought instead to sanctify and keep holy.’ Unnecessary secular work (though permitted on other days) is another abuse, as is anything else which distracts us from spiritual concerns. Bullinger is jealous for us to rest from our labours and our sins on this one day a week. Though his appeals seem strange to our modern ears, there is much in them that rings true of God’s character. Our heavenly Father gives us one day in seven to rest, to find true and genuine rest for our souls. And I complain that I can’t do what I want to on Sunday…
But perhaps most helpful in this sermon are Bullinger’s pastoral notes on legitimate sabbath breaking. This leads us, I think, towards a New Testament understanding of the Lord’s Day rather than a belligerently Reformed sabbath marked by all the generosity of the Dutch and the cheer of the Scottish. He comments that even on a Sunday it is self-evidently permissible to prop up a house that’s about to fall or for farmers to bring in a crop that will be ruined by impending weather.
For those who live in the country as well as those who live in towns are both looking for the due honour of God and the keeping of the fourth commandment; only this must be remembered, that liberty is granted in causes of necessity. But a godly mind and charity shall be excellent dispensers and mistresses to lead us in such cases as these, lest, under a false pretence of liberty and necessity we do unnecessary deeds on the sabbath day, and we exercise ourselves with greedy and covetous works, not works of sincere holiness.
In a previous congregation, we would frequently have Sunday picnic lunches together at a nearby park. This time was between our morning and our evening services. Someone would inevitably bring a ball, and the kids would, after eating, kick it around for a bit, with the fathers joining in soon after. I spent rather longer than warranted mulling over if this was an appropriate use of the sabbath. Were we engaging in unnecessary recreation? My soul was genuinely concerned about honouring the Lord’s Day but without unnecessarily alienating myself from my congregation. Then the penny dropped: I could sit quietly on my picnic blanket working out exactly whether or not plucking and eating grain on the sabbath was permissible, or I could join my brothers in kicking a ball around and continue the discussion we were having five minutes prior about the sermon we’d just heard or some other matter of how we could care for each other’s souls (while also giving the mothers an opportunity to fellowship together without the constant clamour of children around). In other words, viewing the sabbath through Jesus’ lens of having been given this day for our good, for our rest, for our spiritual enjoyment, gave the necessarily pastoral and ethical framework to avoid both legalism and antinomianism. Maybe that’s slightly overselling it, but you get the picture.
In other words, sabbath keeping is far more about what we do than it is about what we avoid. It is important to know what to avoid (Bullinger helps in this), but many Christians, many conscientious Sabbatarians (myself included!), are far more easily preoccupied with the external duties of sabbath keeping, the precise dos and don’ts, than we are about how we may use this day for our and others’ spiritual good. Of course we must know our hearts as Bullinger mentions above. ‘It’s for my spiritual good!’ hardly justifies ignoring God’s people to binge on the latest show or excuses our laziness in preparing for the Lord’s Day. And we do, if we’re honest with ourselves, fill our weekends far too full in an effort to squeeze every last drop of me-time or carnal rest out of those precious hours.
But maybe reflecting on the kindness and compassion of a gracious Father – a Father who has put us under a curse of exhausting labour and futility in this sin-cursed life yet has also given us one day in seven in which we may rest from that labour and futility – can help redirect our focus towards what we truly need for our rest and enjoyment: God himself and his people.
Next, on the honour due to parents
