You do know that Sunday is the first day of the week don’t you? I won’t blame you if you didn’t. Most diaries and planners start the week with Monday and end it with Sunday. You have nice long strips of planning time for Mondays to Saturdays. Saturdays and Sundays are cramped into smaller spaces at the end of the week. (Unspoken implication — work is more important than rest?) But Sunday is the first day of the week. (See Acts 20:7; 1 Corinthians 16:1) And I am beginning to think that we have lost something very fundamental when we forget that.
What is the significance of Sunday anyway? Sunday commemorates the resurrection of Jesus Christ.
Starting the week on a Sunday means starting the week strengthened by the recollection of the victory of God over the forces of darkness and death. The resurrection is THE reminder that God had taken everything that evil had thrown at Him, and had come out victorious.
Indeed that same power that raised Jesus from the dead now dwells in us and works through us (Romans 8:11). Armed with this knowledge we go into the week with boldness, ready for whatever life has in store for us.
Starting the week with Sunday has other implications as well. Just imagine. You start the week with a holiday, Sunday, the off day. You start the week reminded of God’s work rather than your own. Can you think of a better reminder that life is predicated on grace? (We are saved by grace and not by work(s) aren’t we?) What better way to commemorate this liberating truth than by starting your week with a holiday? Compare this with how we normally experience our weeks.
We begin our week with Monday. Our week begins with the blare of the alarm clock on Monday morning. We wake up and rush into the week. We do what we need to do, and more and more, we seem to need to do more and more, just to survive. We hit the weekend exhausted. We take whatever rest we can. TGIF. We have worked hard. We deserve our weekend rest.
Beginning the week with Monday puts us square in the driver’s seat. We plan our week. We do our work. We take our rest. And God is relegated to being a bit player.
But what if we begin our weeks with Sunday? We begin the week with God. We begin the week worshipping Him, reminded of His Lordship over our lives. We begin the week with a holiday, reminded that God has done all the hard stuff. We begin the week reminded that God is our heavenly Father. We begin the week with a foretaste of heaven. We begin our week with fresh instructions as to what the Lord requires of us.
What about Monday then? No, we are not in heaven, not yet anyway. We still need to labour and toil this side of heaven. But nourished by worship and the fellowship with God and man, work becomes the fruitful outflow of a life rooted in Christ. Having being blessed, we now bless others through what we do as the week unfolds. We bring our Sunday into the rest of the week. And as the week ends we look forward to the Sunday celebration that marks the beginning of a new week.
What’s wrong with this picture? Only one thing. We have secularized our Sundays.
For those of us who are “serious” Christians, our Sundays are more about what we need to do for God than about God Himself. Just think of how your last Sunday went. You woke up with the blaring of the alarm clock. You rushed to get the kids ready for “church”. Your mind was on the things you needed to do that Sunday — usher, teach Sunday School, play for worship etc. And since Sunday is the only day you get to see some people, you also had your list of people you had to see that day. A lot of the time after service was spent tracking those people down.
How much of Sunday was spent really reconnecting with God and His people? How much of Sunday was spent recalling the really big things of life, like who God is, who you are, how much God loves you, what He wants you to do with your life etc.
The truth is, instead of allowing our Sunday life to invade and redeem our Monday life, we have allowed our Monday way of life to backflow into Sunday. We have secularized our Sundays.
It seems then, the battle to allow the rhythm of life to better reflect the reality and victory of Christ has to be fought on two fronts.
We need to return Sunday and all that it means, to its rightful place as the first day of the week. But we first need to return the Lord to how we commemorate the Lord’s Day.
May this Sunday be special for you as you begin a new week in His grace.
Your brother,
Soo-Inn Tan