Reclaiming the Sabbath.

Growing up in New Jersey, I would often spend days on the beach at Ocean Grove. Founded by Methodists in the nineteenth century, the town went to great lengths to “keep holy the Sabbath day.” On Sundays, the beach was closed until noon, and automobiles were banned from city streets. While the city’s founders believed that “the command of the Lord is clear,” Christians have long debated whether to view Sunday as the “Christian Sabbath.”

The transfer of the obligations of worship and rest associated with the Jewish Sabbath to Sunday was a gradual process. Those obligations came under pressure as patterns of worship and work designed for an agricultural society were reshaped by the imperatives of industry. With plentiful cheap labor, factory owners saw no reason not to run their machinery seven days a week. A storekeeper who did not open on Sunday risked losing business to someone who did.

The nineteenth-century movement to reclaim Sunday as a Sabbath was in many ways a form of resistance, a demand for a more human way of life. It assessed new challenges in the light of ancient tradition and developed a creative response. Admittedly, not all of its victories endured. Today, families drive through Ocean Grove on Sunday on their way to the beach.

Yet like our forebears, we also face powerful forces that would claim every moment of our days for production or consumption. We, too, are being called by the Spirit to discern different ways of reclaiming time and injecting new meaning into an old command: “keep holy the Sabbath day.”

J. Peter Nixon. Taken from Give Us This Day.

J. Peter Nixon is a regular contributor to Give Us This Day. He holds a master’s degree in theology from the Jesuit School of Theology at Santa Clara University.