Summary: When I was growing up, Sundays meant church, family, and food. My extended family would gather at our congregation for worship, armed with giant Tootsie Rolls to keep us kids quiet during the sermon. Afterwards, we would head over to my grandmother's house for a quick snack of cream-filled coffee cake. Later we all drove over to the cemetery, where we would tidy up the graves of our relatives: planting, watering, weeding, and sweeping dirt off the headstones. Tired and hungry, we would return to my grandmother's house, where roast pork or roast beef waited--after table grace, of course. Finally, after games of hide-and-seek for us kids and lots of conversation, everyone would go home for bedtime prayers and sleep. I'm guessing that your families had similar ways of spending Sundays, and that they involved church, family, and food, too. That was the norm then. Perhaps some of you came from households where frivolous activities were prohibited on Sundays. You could read the Bible on Sunday afternoons after church, maybe play quietly, and then it was time for evening services. Many of us can remember when stores were closed on Sundays. Salespeople had a day off, and no business was transacted. Perhaps you recall times and places when it was impossible to buy alcohol on Sunday. All of these customs originated from people's ideas about how to obey the Third Commandment: "Remember the Sabbath day, and keep it holy." From the time this commandment was given by God to Moses, there has been disagreement about why we should honor the Sabbath and how we keep it holy. The book of Exodus links Sabbath observance to the creation: "For in six days the Lord made heaven and earth, the sea, and all that is in them, but rested the seventh day; therefore, the Lord blessed the Sabbath day and consecrated it." In Deuteronomy a different reason is given: "Remember that you were a slave in the land of Egypt, and the Lord your God brought you out from there with a mighty hand and an outstretched arm; therefore the Lord your God commanded you to keep the Sabbath day." The Sabbath was meant to be a gift, a time of rest and restoration, a time to worship God. But quickly that gift turned into Law, and all sorts of rules grew up about what was work and what wasn't, what it was permissible to do on the Sabbath and what was not. Keeping the Sabbath holy also meant reserving that day for worship of God, and, as you might guess, people had various ideas about what constituted worship and, therefore, exactly what kept the Sabbath holy.
