The weekend is not what it used to be. Many people now work on Sunday. I worked in a pub in London which opened on Sundays, and the manager was good enough to understand that I went to the 8am Eucharist down the road. Many employees don’t have such a luxury.
How sacrosanct is worship together with the Christian community Sunday by Sunday?
When I was in Algeria, Friday and Saturday formed the weekend, and the Christian community I worshipped with met on Friday.
The division of time into a week of seven days, and the ubiquitous adoption of this is phenomenal! Its origin is mysterious (cue 7-day, 24 hour Creationists head to the comments now!). Is it the closest division into the four Quarters of phases of the Moon?
In December 2011, Samoa skipped a Friday, effectively leaping over the dateline so that, mostly for economic reasons, its day of the week would be the same as (nearby) New Zealand. I predicted that it would split the Seventh Day Adventist Church there. I was right.
There were those (the majority) who counted “every seventh day from creation”, so now they moved from worshipping on Saturday to the “new Sabbath”, Sunday. Others stayed on the Sabbath=Saturday; this is called “Saturday”, so this is when we will worship…
Roman Catholics have managed a quiet revolution. Mass can now be celebrated in the evening, and Saturday evening now counts as fulfilling one’s Sunday obligation. So, those who work on Sunday, as well as those who want to get their Sunday obligation conveniently over with, can worship on Saturday night.
Has anyone else managed to complement regular Sunday worship with alternatives for people who cannot worship together at that time? Do you think this is a good idea? Or should Christians aim to meet Sunday by Sunday for worship – and if that means you lose your job, then that’s part of the cost of being a Christian?…
Swedish bishop Martin Modéus argues that Sunday worship is part of the Church’s DNA, as the celebration of the first day of the new creation and therefore should not be ommitted. One of his more convincing arguments is that Sunday was the primary day of worship for the Church long before it was a day free of work for the majority of Christians.
Stumbled across this in my newsfeed just after your post. Thought you might enjoy the humour. http://cyber-coenobites.blogspot.com/2015/08/mad-dogs-and-anglicans.html
Thanks, Claudia – LOL!
I think even if we want to keep Sunday special, reserved for worship and rest, we have to acknowledge that more and more we are dependent on others working on Sunday – at a minimum emergency workers, power workers, journalists working on the Monday news outlets, and so on. There has to be a weekday service they can attend if they wish. On the other hand there is a danger that if a congregation’s times for worship are spread across the week too broadly, 7 small congregations are going to miss out on some of the advantages of meeting together a larger congregation meeting once or twice a week can provide.
My husband and I both work 3 out of 4 Sundays and on the one we have off together we worship with God and our children. What I would love is a service time during the week that a parent could attend with the preschool children for a service and children’s bible studies. This would mean I could attend weekly not just once a month. Making ends meet these days means Sundays are unfortunately not a rest day for us.