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Any study of Church Time begins with Sunday.  The resurrection is central in the life and faith of the Church, and Sunday is the day on which Christ rose.  Where before the focus was on the end of the week and a day of rest under the old covenant, the new covenant focus is on the beginning of the week and rejoicing in the risen Lord.  The early Christians didn’t change the day of the Sabbath — instead the emphasis shifted.  If we can get our minds around this concept it is really a radical departure from law-driven relationship with God to grace-filled relationship.

We see this even on the archive calendar on our blog.  The first day of the week is Sunday.  This isn’t an accident — one of the options in setting up the blogging software is to select the day of the week the calendar should begin with.  Choosing Sunday instead of Saturday or Monday (which many calendars now begin with) can be a statement of belief.

The New Handbook of the Christian Year (Abingdon Press) states at pp 17-18:

The celebration of the Lord’s Day has from the beginning been a way in which the church has witnessed to its faith.  On the first day of creation, “God said, ‘Let there be light,’ and there was light; and God saw that the light was good, and he separated the light from darkness.  He called the light day and the darkness night.  So evening came, and morning came, the first day” (Gen. 1:3-5 NEB).  All four Gospels are careful to state that it was the morning of the first day — the day on which creation had begun and the moment God had “separated light from darkness” — that the empty tomb was discovered.

Every Sunday witnesses to the resurrection.  In making this central statement about our faith, we give Sunday precedence over all other occasions in the church calendar — that’s why Sundays within Lent are exempt from that season of penitence.  As we study the Easter cycle, the Christmas cycle and other aspects of the church year, we need to keep in mind the preeminence of the Lord’s Day as the foundation of Christian Time.

How have you viewed Sunday in the context of other days and seasons we celebrate as Christians?  How does that view affect your celebration of the Lord’s Day?