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Commentary
GEN-X RISING: Reclaiming Sabbath might aid our faith Andrew C. Thompson, Sep 17, 2008
Andrew C. Thompson
By Andrew C. Thompson UMR Columnist
“Closed Sunday for God, family and friends.” That sign hangs on the door of Pino’s Italian Restaurant in Henderson, N.C., each and every Sunday. I saw it for the first time as some fellow churchgoers and I drove up to Pino’s on a recent Sunday, hoping to dive into some lunchtime lasagna.
But here was a restaurant whose owners gave their workers (and themselves) a break on Sunday, so they could devote their time to worship and rest.
The sight of a business in the service sector of the economy closing for Sunday nowadays is rare. Restaurants, grocery stores and department stores aren’t supposed to close on the weekends. When else can they take advantage of a customer base that has the time off to do serious shopping?
The profit motive dictates that stores should be open as long as it is economically advantageous to do so. Some grocery stores stay open 24 hours a day because they know they can get enough business during the nighttime hours to justify paying their workers and the electric bill.
Surely little old Pino’s could make a pile of money serving pasta to hungry families after church on Sundays. But that sign hangs on its door every single week, forcing potential patrons to go elsewhere.
An economist might tell Pino’s owners that they’re being foolish. But for the church, Pino’s decision says something quite different.
Closing for God, family and friends on a day that there is money to be made shows faithfulness and discipline to God’s gift of Sabbath.
It shows faithfulness because it embodies the Old Testament teaching in the Ten Commandments about Sabbath-keeping: “Remember the Sabbath day, and keep it holy. Six days you shall labor and do all your work. But the seventh day is a Sabbath to the Lord your God” (Exodus 20:8-10).
The Scriptural teaching on Sabbath indicates that it is both a day to remember God’s creative work and a day to allow rest for people and animals alike. While Jews rightly regard the original Sabbath as Saturday, Christians have long identified it with Sunday—“the Lord’s day.” Christians tend to take the Ten Commandments as serious moral teachings that we are expected to follow. We would never consider explaining away murder, adultery or stealing. But the powerful influence of the capitalist economy has knocked Sabbath-keeping down to a second-class status. So any business owner willing to forgo profits to observe Sabbath is not only making a faithful witness to the larger church; he is showing a high degree of discipline as well.
United Methodists often fret over the declining numbers in the American church. Yet we also tend to be highly resistant to adopting the very practices as a church that could set us apart from the world. We live in an ‘anything goes’ culture that holds up individualistic pleasure-seeking as the pinnacle of the good life. But what alternative does the church offer to the spiritually hungry, when the best expression of our ethic is “Open Hearts. Open Minds. Open Doors.”?
We tend to do a good job of reflecting the broader cultural values of consumerism, individualism and personal autonomy. We don’t do so well when it comes to the faithful Christian discipline for which the early Methodists were famous.
I stand self-condemned on this point. See, I thought nothing of driving to Pino’s to enjoy a lunch with friends that Sunday. But if I hadn’t been stopped by that sign on the door, my choice would have forced a whole restaurant full of employees to work on a day that God says they should rest.
Sabbath-keeping would not transform the church overnight. But if we want to reclaim the idea of the church as a set-apart community, it’s not a bad place to start.
Observing the Sabbath might mean sacrificing some extra profit. It might mean choosing not to shop or not to go out to eat one day of the week. But it would also mean exhibiting a great degree of faithfulness and discipline as God’s church in the world.
Andrew C. Thompson
