Some helpful thoughts on the 3rd commandment from James Kushiner

We Are Invited

Too often Sunday worship is thought of as a religious obligation to be fulfilled lest God be disappointed at our absence, even counting it as a strike against us. Grudgingly we go, maybe after sleeping in later than we do on other days of the week.

It is true that the sense of obligation is difficult to erase--not that we should attempt to erase it. But the sense obligation toward God should be lost in the joy and gratitude and anticipation we can experience when we realize that in coming we are responding to a divine invitation to receive more than we can ever bring. Indeed, especially coming to the Table of the Lord in Communion, we come as the invited "poor, the maimed, the lame, and the blind," who cannot repay the One who invites us, but we receive healing in our coming.

We believe and we confess that apart from Christ we can do nothing, and also that we have no life in us apart from having His life in us (John 6:53). 

Admittedly, the world presses in on us throughout the week, including on Sundays, so that we find it a struggle to serve God, rather than mammon, and hard to love God and not the things of the world. 

Sunday can be our touchstone. Sunday worship can put us in touch with our true home and the table around which the saints through all eternity enjoy the fellowship of the Lord. We receive the words of the Gospel and the forgiveness of sins; we gather with the heavenly hosts, in the heavenly Jerusalem. We are invited to a rich feast provided for us by a gracious Lord, who blesses us beyond anything we can imagine or deserve.

Sunday is, then, first and foremost a Day of Invitation. If the King invites us to his table, it is natural that we should be very pleased to attend. It's an obligation only when the obvious has to be pointed out to us--that it's not only for our own good, but also for our very best good. It is a day of Rest in the Lord, a foretaste of the Wedding Supper of the Lamb.

Yours for Christ, Creed & Culture,

James M. Kushiner

Executive Director, The Fellowship of St. James