The First Day of the Week

Reprinted from August 2015

Sunday mornings: what we could be doing with them instead of going to church! There is, of course, the allure of the golf course (to which I am immune), or for sedentary folks like me there could be a leisurely breakfast of coffee, eggs, crisp bacon, bitter marmalade, buttered toast, and a large metropolitan newspaper with a hefty book reviews and arts sections (do such things still exist? I am a bit old school in my ideas of allurement). Here on the coast there are the undeniable pleasures of boating. If we were in the mountains I suppose we could be hiking through some pristine natural landscape. And if we were parenting children or adolescents, there would be the more doubtful pleasures of a soccer league. With so many alternatives, if we must go to church, why not do it on Saturday evening? That way, we can fit our religious obligations in before going out, and have Sunday morning in which to please ourselves!

But over against the convenience of a Sunday morning pleasing ourselves, there is the witness of the Scriptures. All four gospels are most emphatic: it was very early in the morning on the first day of the week that the women came to the tomb, found it empty, and first heard the news of the resurrection. St. Matthew says: “In the end of the sabbath, as it began to dawn toward the first day of the week, came Mary Magdalene and the other Mary to see the sepulchre”. St. Mark: “when the sabbath was past, Mary Magdalene, and Mary the mother of James, and Salome, had bought sweet spices, that they might come and anoint him. And very early in the morning the first day of the week, they came unto the sepulchre at the rising of the sun”. St. Luke: “Now upon the first day of the week, very early in the morning, they came unto the sepulchre, bringing the spices which they had prepared, and certain others with them”. Likewise St. John: “The first day of the week cometh Mary Magdalene early, when it was yet dark, unto the sepulchre, and seeth the stone taken away from the sepulchre”. The texts are insistent – the first day of the week, not some other day; the morning, indeed, early in the morning – these women were not sleeping late. Of course there were circumstances explaining why it had to be this day, this time: Jesus had been buried hastily on Friday afternoon, before the Sabbath began at dusk, when the Sabbath observance forbade all manner of labour. Sunday morning early was the first opportunity the women had to visit the tomb again, and make good the hasty preparation of the body for burial. But there was also a divine necessity of this day, this time: it was on the first day God began the work of creation, calling light out of darkness; and the resurrection of Jesus is the beginning of the new creation.

The old Jewish Sabbath falls on the seventh day, an allowance of rest and leisure at the end of a week of work, a rest to which we may aspire – although a week is a long time for a sinner, and no one comes to the Sabbath justified by his works (although he may think he is). All this changed at the cross, where Jesus completed a perfect sacrifice, to atone for the shortcomings of our own works; then he rested on the Sabbath day in the tomb; and rising from the dead early in the morning on the first day of the week, “before anyone had done a stroke of work or acquired a jot of merit” (Farrer) he established a new economy of salvation, a new covenant between God and men, based not on our works but on his, received through faith alone; grounded not in the first creation grown old in sin and death, but in the new creation redeemed and perfected by his grace. “Therefore if any man be in Christ, he is a new creature: old things are passed away; behold, all things are become new” (2 Corinthians 6:17). On Sunday morning, we claim for ourselves a place in his new creation, we rest from our labours precisely so that he may work in us. It is axiomatic that we cannot attain to God if we do not begin from him: Sunday morning is where we begin.