Worship on Sunday, the Eighth Day
Worship, specifically the Celebration of the Divine Liturgy, where Christ Himself, appears on the altar of Christians around the world and shares his Body and Blood with those who believe and follow Him, is especially celebrated on Sundays and Feast Days.
The early church fathers give us many examples of the Ancient Church's practice of celebrating Divine Liturgy on Sundays. For those Christians who do not celebrate the Divine Liturgy, their "worship" is a secondary form, more like the "Hours Prayers" of the Church and it matters little what legalistic rules they have invented to worship on this day or that, since for this type of worship, everyday is appropriate. But we are talking about the weekly celebration of the Divine Liturgy, the center point of the Christian Community.
Why did the Ancient Church come to view the eighth day as special and choose it for this especial Celebration? It was to celebrate Jesus Christ, the Son of God, and God, who rose from the dead, on Sunday Morning, trampling down death by death. The Eighth Day, Sunday, was immediately the New Sabbath for the earliest Christians, stepping outside what had been before. Many early Jewish Christians attended the Synagogue Worship that actually began, in our time keeping on Friday night at sunset. And following the Jewish Sabbath they would attend the "New Sabbath" which began, at Sunset on Saturday, the beginning of the first day according to the old tradition of counting days. The Church continues this practice, with Vespers at sunset on Saturday and Divine Liturgy Following, either late in the night or some time after sunrise. Some have framed this as an anti-Jewish reaction of the Gentiles of the early Church, but what is ignored in this assumption is that it was primarily Jewish Christians who created this practice. This Eighth Day Sabbath was as common in the Jerusalem Church as it was in the Church of Antioch or Rome.
Yes, it is clear that the early Christians knew that the sacrifice of animals in the Jewish Temple was over. That was of one era, and a new era had begun. "Your new moons and your Sabbaths I cannot endure." Wrote the Jew, and Apostle Barnabas. What was he saying? He is telling his fellow Jews, it is not your present Sabbaths that are acceptable, but the Sabbath which Jesus Christ has made..."when I have set all things at rest, I will make the beginning of the eighth day the beginning of another world, the world of the New Creation in Christ Jesus. Therefore, we keep the eighth day for rejoicing, in which Jesus rose from the dead, and having been manifested ascended into the heavens. Moreover I will tell you likewise concerning the temple, how these wretched men, being led astray, set their hope on the building, and not on their God that made them, as being a house of God." - Barnabas 15:8-16:1 (Ante-Nicene Fathers Vol 1 page 146)
The Didache, which many scholars date to be older than sections of the New Testament, and to record the first commonly accepted "practices" of the Church, the second earliest example of the exercise of Apostolic Authority (a book the Orthodox Church has never rejected) also speaks of worship on the Lord's day, a reference to Sunday (Didache 14:1)
Ignatius of Antioch - the third Bishop of Antioch after the Apostles Paul and Peter also makes the centrality of Sunday worship obvious. "If, therefore, those who were brought up in the ancient order of things have come to the possession of a new hope, no longer observing the Sabbath, but living in the observance of the Lord's Day, on which also our life has sprung up again by Him and by His death - whom some deny, by which mystery we have obtained faith....Let us not, therefore, be insensible to His kindness...Therefore, having become His disciples, let us learn to live according to the principles of Christianity. For whosoever is called by any other name besides this, is not of God. Lay aside, therefore, the evil, the old, the sour leaven....It is absurd to profess Christ Jesus, and to Judaize. For Christianity did not embrace Judaism, but Judaism Christianity... Ignatius - To the Magnesians (The Ante-Nicene Fathers Vol 1 page 62) To claim as the Seventh Day Adventists do, that Saturday observation of the old Sabbath is mandatory for Christians, one has to ignore the practices of the Apostles themselves, since had Ignatius' practice been any different than the previous two Bishops of Antioch, the Apostles Peter and Paul, he would have cause a scandal. But no where is such scandal recorded.
The first Church apologist also confirms Sunday as the New Sabbath:
"And we afterwards continually remind each other of these things. And the wealthy among us help the needy; and we always keep together; and for all things wherewith we are supplied, we bless the Maker of all through His Son Jesus Christ, and through the Holy Ghost. And on the day called Sunday, all who live in cities or in the country gather together to one place, and the memoirs of the apostles or the writings of the prophets are read, as long as time permits; then, when the reader has ceased, the president verbally instructs, and exhorts to the imitation of these good things. Then we all rise together and pray, and, as we before said, when our prayer is ended, bread and wine and water are brought, and the president in like manner offers prayers and thanksgivings, according to his ability, and the people assent, saying Amen; and there is a distribution to each, and a participation of that over which thanks have been given, and to those who are absent a portion is sent by the deacons. And they who are well to do, and willing, give what each thinks fit; and what is collected is deposited with the president, who succours the orphans and widows and those who, through sickness or any other cause, are in want, and those who are in bonds and the strangers sojourning among us, and in a word takes care of all who are in need. But Sunday is the day on which we all hold our common assembly, because it is the first day on which God, having wrought a change in the darkness and matter, made the world; and Jesus Christ our Saviour on the same day rose from the dead. For He was crucified on the day before that of Saturn (Saturday); and on the day after that of Saturn, which is the day of the Sun, having appeared to His apostles and disciples, He taught them these things, which we have submitted to you also for your consideration. - Justin Martyr Apology: CHAPTER LXVII (Ante-Nicene Fathers Vol 1 pg 185)
Any claim by late legalists that any day but Sunday was recognized as the New Sabbath by the Ancient Church is clearly refuted by the writings of the earliest Church Fathers. BTW, this is one TRADITION of the Church, most Christians accept, even those who claim to accept NO "Traditions of the Church."
The Beauty of the Sunday Worship has continued to strike the cords of the Christian soul to this day. Here is a poem by a man who lived on the streets for years, homeless, yet the resonance of Sunday Worship haunted his thoughts.
What and Why
6/23/02
Today is Sunday
It’s the Lord’s day
Time to try and protect your soul
And worship his name
God must have a plan
Something I still must do
What, I just don’t know
I should have been killed
Why that truck hit me on that road
I’ve a feeling my task
Concerns people living in the street
Maybe my poems of street life
And hard times
Are the key to what I need.
This is a new skill
I just didn’t know I had
I just started writing one day
Around my birthday,
It’s a puzzle that I have to solve.
It stays in the front of my mind
It’s all I think of
The Lord will let me know,
In His own way
All I know to do
Is be patient
And pray.
Author Notes
These were my thoughts on one of the 600 sundays that I spent homeless
© Barry Whitaker.
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