I have noticed a trend over the last decade or more. A trend in which Christians have been pulling away from gathering together regularly on Sunday mornings.
I first noticed it when a group of pastor friends announced that they were leaving their churches and starting “a new thing.” They told me they were ditching Sunday morning and they were going to meet in small house churches during the week and maybe once a month on Sunday nights.
A few years later, I noticed some of my friends starting to adjust their attendance patterns away from a regular Sunday morning habit of gathering together with other believers.
Some would stay home and have coffee.
Some would get together with their neighbours, reasoning that, this was a great time to reach their neighbours for Jesus, because everyone was home on Sunday morning.
Others already had small groups they met with during the week and felt that “this was more my real church family” than the other people they worshipped with on Sunday morning.
Others just got busy with family or business commitments and a regular pattern of attendance dropped off their radar.
About a decade later, I started to see another trend.
The people who left Sunday morning were starting to return.
I bumped into one of my old pastor friends and he shared with me that his group of house churches had hired a pastor and they were starting to meet on Sunday mornings again!
I started to meet with people who shared with me personal stories of how they had ditched Sundays for a small group, the small group then crashed and burned, leaving them with no connection to a larger body. Eventually they found that disconnect with God and with other believers left a void in their life. They were experiencing marital breakdown and other struggles and were trying to find their way back into a regular pattern of worship.
Then Coronavirus hit.
And suddenly all of our excuses became useless.
Not enough time?
Well, I’ve got nowhere to go!
Not sure which church to go to?
Well, they are all online, so take your pick!
The service time does not fit my schedule?
Hey, you can go back and watch the recorded service later!
I was happy to see, in the early days of the virus lockdown, an active engagement of Christians with not only one, but many church gatherings on Sunday mornings.
Sunday morning was “Prime Time” for Christians once again, and also for people seeking to understand who God is and what this pandemic might mean to their own spiritual journey.
My takeaway from all of this is:
1. We didn’t know why Sunday matters, so we wandered away.
2. We have an intuitive sense that Sunday matters, so we are coming back.
But why does Sunday matter? Why this strange pull toward Sunday morning?
Justin Martyr was a 2nd century Christian who had an interesting answer to this question. He said,
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. (Justin 1 Apol 67.7)
Justin Martyr made the following connection to Sunday: it was the first day of the first creation, and the first day of the new creation. Something mysteriously new had started on a Sunday morning, a new and powerful work of the Spirit of God.
On a Sunday morning, God’s redemption of humanity was made complete in the resurrection of Jesus Christ.
The work of God’s first creation was eventually marred by human sin. The work of God’s new creation was marked by the triumphant resurrection of Jesus Christ. A resurrection where Jesus triumphed over all the powers and principalities of this world and brought redemption and life to the dead human spirit.
On Sunday morning, Jesus rose triumphant from the grave with all power to save us all.
And that resurrection power is now available to you and me.
Peter wrote this.
All praise to God, the Father of our Lord Jesus Christ. It is by his great mercy that we have been born again, because God raised Jesus Christ from the dead.
We have been born again because God raised Jesus from the dead! And what’s more, we gather with an expectation of all that Jesus will do in our lives.
Now we live with great expectation, and we have a priceless inheritance—an inheritance that is kept in heaven for you, pure and undefiled, beyond the reach of change and decay.
Nothing can take the gift of resurrection away from us. We live with a great expectation that one day we will receive this priceless inheritance. An inheritance that is kept in heaven for us. Not only does resurrection mean what Jesus has done, but it also means what we anticipate he will still do when he returns!
And through your faith, God is protecting you by his power until you receive this salvation, which is ready to be revealed on the last day for all to see. (1 Peter 1:3–5, NLT)
So the simple answer is this: Christians feel an irreversible pull to gather on Sunday mornings because Jesus rose from the dead on a Sunday morning.
There is nothing special about Sunday morning in and of itself.
But Jesus himself makes Sunday special.
Jesus himself makes Sunday worthwhile. Jesus himself, our life-giver and our very breath. Jesus himself, our hope and the Rock on which we stand. Jesus himself, makes Sunday morning special.
So important was this new work of Jesus that early Christians started meeting on “the first day of the week”; the day that Jesus rose from the dead.
On the first day of the week, we gathered with the local believers to share in the Lord’s Supper. (Acts 20:7a, NLT)
Christians were still doing this at the end of the 1st century. The Didache (c.100 AD) reports this:
But every Lord’s day do ye gather yourselves together, and break bread, and give thanksgiving after having confessed your transgressions, that your sacrifice may be pure. (Didache 14.1)
Christians were still meeting on Sunday morning in the middle of the 2nd century. Justin Martyr describes the continuance of Sunday worship somewhere between 150 and 165 AD.
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… (Justin 1 Apol 67.7)
Ancient historian Eusebius reports this in 325 AD.
…they celebrated the Lord’s days as a memorial of the resurrection of the Saviour. (Hist. Eccl. 3.27.5)
So why does Sunday matter?
Sunday matters because Jesus rose from the dead. Sunday was the day that God formed the work of new creation through Jesus Christ our Lord.
Who does Sunday matter to?
It matters to people who call Jesus their Lord and Saviour. Everyone who calls Jesus Lord will find in themselves an inevitable and unexplainable pull toward Sunday morning.
My hope and prayer for all of us is that, in this season, we will increasingly say ‘yes’ to the Spirit of Jesus, tugging on our hearts, to get up, and get ready to join with Christians around the world and witness to, and remember, the resurrection of Jesus, our Saviour.
In His Grip Pastor Steve Pahl
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