The Land without a Sunday

I want to share with you a brief excerpt from a book that my wife and I enjoyed while preparing to become parents.  Our goal was to learn about different home-devotional practices that can make the Church Year come alive for children in the Christian household.  Around the Year with the Von Trapp Family by Maria Von Trapp (yes, the one from The Sound of Music fame) was a recommendation we took and loved. 

There is a chapter titled “The Land without a Sunday” and I would like to share some of it with you before making some comments of my own about where the United States stood before the present pandemic and where I hope we go after it is over.

The Land without a Sunday

“Our neighbors in Austria were a young couple, Baron and Baroness K.  They were getting increasingly curious about Russia and what life there was really like. One day they decided to take a six-week trip all over Russia in their car.  This was when it was still possible to get a visa.  Of course, at the border, they were received by a special guide who watched their every step and did not leave them for a moment until he deposited them safely again at the border, but they still managed to get a good firsthand impression.

“Upon their return, they wrote a book about their experiences, and when it was finished, they invited their neighbors and friends to their home in order to read some of their work to them. I shall always recall how slowly and solemnly Baron K. read us the title, The Land without a Sunday. Of all the things they had seen and observed, one experience had most deeply impressed them: that Russia had done away with Sunday. This had shocked them even more than what they saw of Siberian concentration camps or of the misery and hardship in cities and country. The absence of Sunday seemed to be the root of all the evil.

“‘Instead of a Sunday,’ Baron K. told us, ‘the Russians have a day off. This happens at certain intervals which vary in different parts of the country. First they had a five-day week, with the sixth day off; then they had a nine-day work period, with the tenth day off; then, again, it was an eight-day week. What a difference between a day off and a Sunday! The people work in shifts. While one group enjoys its day off, the others continue to work in the factories or on the farms or in the stores, which are always open. As a result the overall impression throughout the country was that of incessant work, work, work. The atmosphere was one of constant rush and drive; finally, we confessed to each other that what we were missing most was not a well-cooked meal, or a hot bath, but a quiet, peaceful Sunday with church bells ringing and people resting after prayer.’” (pages 167-168)

Following this stark description, Maria von Trapp describes a typical “Sunday” in old-world Austria.  It began on Saturday afternoon with a ringing church bell calling people to rest from their labors and to prepare for the Lord’s Day.  After describing their parish’s Roman Catholic Sunday practices, including a beautiful depiction of the walk home from Church which can never be surpassed by the efficiency of a car ride, she describes a Sunday dinner at home with family games and music. Sublime! Peaceful. Restful.

In light of Baron K.’s tale of Russia: The Land without a Sunday, Maria reflects, “It dawned on us that we had taken something for granted that was, in reality, a privilege: namely, that we lived in a country where Sunday was not so much observed as it was celebrated as the day of the Lord. This was a new way of looking at things, and the light was still rather dim, but I can see now in retrospect that a new chapter in our life as a Christian family began that very night.”

For me, the most depressing part of this chapter follows this.  One sees how sad Maria von Trapp is with what her family received when they emigrated from Austria to the United States.  We did not have Sunday taken from us by a totalitarian government where Socialism and Communism can be expected to trample on religion.  We gave it up freely.  We traded our baptismal birthright for a pot of stew. 

Really?  Sleep, sports, money, chores – oh the casual way we ignore and despise the Gifts of Grace that our Lord gives us in the Divine Service on the Lord’s Day.

I hope this pandemic brings a new chapter to light in the life of our nation. But I cannot control the nation. I would love for this suspension of the Divine Service to re-invigorate our entire congregation. Yet, I cannot “make” that happen by pastoral declaration.  What I ask is that in your household you take this lesson to heart. God has withheld “Sunday” from us for several weeks now.  May He return it to us soon!  BUT if we have not learned our lesson yet and would take it all for granted again quickly, then I pray He lengthen our hiatus according to His foreknowledge.

Over the next few weeks, or for however long this lasts, I wish to unpack what “Sunday” really means in the Church of Jesus Christ.  I hope it will edify and enliven you, and make you yearn for the return of the Lord’s Day.

Yours in Christ,

Pastor Moss