Sabbath

I was privy to a livestream last week of the Winchester City Commission meet­ing. One of the items on the agen­da was a motion to expand Sunday alco­hol sales in the city from 1–8 pm to 11 am-10 pm. As always, res­i­dents are invit­ed to speak to the motion, either for or against it. At least six folks stepped up to the podi­um to let their feel­ings and opin­ions be heard.

Three peo­ple who spoke in favor of the motion were there to pro­mote the pos­i­tive impact that it would have on down­town busi­ness and tourism in this city. The three that spoke against it were there to con­demn the des­e­cra­tion of the Sabbath Day by sell­ing alco­hol dur­ing the “Lord’s time,” when peo­ple were in church.

To be clear, in Judeo-Christian tra­di­tion, the fourth com­mand­ment, “Remember to keep holy the sab­bath day,” is a gift from God to the peo­ple, not the oth­er way around. This was a com­mand­ment to take your rest, as mir­rored in one of the cre­ation sto­ries in the book of Genesis, when God rest­ed on the last day.

This coun­try gives every sin­gle per­son the right to prac­tice their reli­gious faith or not. It is not up to gov­ern­ments to impose reli­gious doc­trine or prac­tices onto the citizens. 

God’s peo­ple were called to refrain from work, which not so clear­ly defined, came to mean bak­ing, cook­ing, buy­ing and sell­ing, gath­er­ing wood, plow­ing, reap­ing, writ­ing, weav­ing, and trav­el­ing, among oth­ers. I made a new friend this sum­mer, an Orthodox Jewish friend of Nancy’s, whose fam­i­ly chose the loca­tion of their house to be with­in walk­ing dis­tance of a syn­a­gogue so as not to dri­ve a car on the Sabbath.

The ear­ly colonists to the new world brought with them severe restric­tions for Sabbath activ­i­ty on Sundays – every­thing from hunt­ing, com­merce, danc­ing, laugh­ing too loud, and dis­plays of affec­tion. Many of these laws in many states have gone by the way­side, but gov­ern­ment enti­ties and the courts still see the val­ue of a type of rest for the work­ing peo­ple. Physiologically, human beings need true rest as we would wear our­selves out with “all work and no play,” or rest. Sunday alco­hol sales, how­ev­er, con­tin­ues to be an issue in many local­i­ties in the United States.

Going back to the City Commission meet­ing, one of the speak­ers declared, and I believe right­ly so, that “this is not a reli­gious debate, but a busi­ness debate.” This coun­try gives every sin­gle per­son the right to prac­tice their reli­gious faith or not. It is not up to gov­ern­ments to impose reli­gious doc­trine or prac­tices onto the citizens. 

While on the sub­ject, I think we also should do away with any open­ing prayer or invo­ca­tion at any pub­lic civ­il meet­ing unless we’re tru­ly pre­pared for the seri­ous­ness of reli­gious free­dom to be in play.

I think we all should hon­or the gift of rest – rest for the body and the soul. It might look dif­fer­ent from per­son to per­son, but we should take seri­ous­ly that we, too, are gifts from God, made in God’s image.