Chapter 17 Sundays

Christian Reformed people in the days of my youth were distinguished for their observance of the Sabbath Day--actually Sunday, since it was the first day of the week that was observed, not the seventh.  Now, it is true that most American Christians had at one time given that day much more regard than they do today.  Reading the literature of the late 1800's and early 1900's will verify that.  The city of Philadelphia, as late as the 1930's, had to end Major League baseball games on Sunday by 5 o'clock in the afternoon in order, I understood, not to interfere with attendance at evening church services.

Kanawha CRC 1933 

Of course, Sunday meant going to church, and, even though that practice was not explicitly stated in the commandment of keeping the Sabbath Day holy, it was clearly understood by us that going to church was a major part of doing that.  

For us, going to church twice was an important part of that too.  To neglect the second service, we thought, indicated more of a concern about serving our own desires than in attempting to follow His will for our lives.  There were, of course, "oncers" in those days, although fewer than now, but Ma and Pa warned that the oncers would see the day when their children would attend church little or not at all.

Speaking of Sunday evening services, the practice of having them was common among most denominations in those days, the Lutherans and Roman Catholics excepted.  Even the Methodists in Kanawha had Sunday evening services, but it was said that there was not much vitality there.  My parents, Ruth and I attended one of their last such services.  There may have 15 to 20 people in the sanctuary, including us.  A short time later they discontinued the evening service.

But the Christian Reformed Church was very firm, not only on attending worship services, but on how we conducted ourselves on the rest of the day as well.  Interestingly though, the German Christian Reformed churches, of which my church in Kanawha was one, were considerably less rigid on these matters than were the Dutch churches.  I would discover that later when becoming familiar with the practices of people in Grand Rapids and Chicago.
            
Kids from our church, myself included, were given considerable freedom to play or do almost anything we could do on another day.  We could play ball in the yard, go to the creek, go swimming in the gravel pit, climb trees--almost anything.  Young people, too, were generally free to drive almost anywhere on a Sunday afternoon.  Sunday movies, however, were taboo.  Although movie attendance in the Christian Reformed church had been discouraged by a synodical decision in 1928, CR young people in my area did not let that restriction interfere much with their going to movies.  But to do so on a Sunday was considered by most a sin; and to do so during the Sunday evening service was something only a hopeless reprobate would do.

Again, playing ball and other sports on Sunday was okay; however, playing on an organized baseball team or even attending an organized game would be violating the Sabbath.  

Major League baseball, consequently, would be a forbidden vocation because they played on Sundays.  Johnny Vander Meer, who in 1938 became the first and, as yet, the only major league pitcher ever to hurl two consecutive no-hit, no-run games, was, I discovered later, a Christian Reformed boy from New Jersey.  Being a pitcher, he started out pitching only on week days. Eventually, however, he succumbed to the demands of Sunday baseball, became part of the world and left the church, at least, the Christian Reformed Church.  George Zoeterman, a 1948 graduate of Chicago Christian High School, joined the White Sox organization as a pitcher, but discovered that he could not comfortably continue in baseball without pitching on Sunday.  He, however, left baseball and remained with the church.

In the summer after my junior year in high school, some of the people of Kanawha wanted to organize a baseball team.  The boys were returning from World War II and people were eager to begin renewing community life.  To have such a town baseball team, of course, implied that many of its games would be played on Sunday.  There was, however, a problem.  The town had an ordinance which forbade the playing of organized baseball on Sunday in Kanawha.  How that ordinance was ever put on the books, I'm not sure; but it was, and now, when the promoters of Kanawha baseball swung into action, probably unaware of such a rule, they would discover that the hometown Christian Reformed Church regarded Sunday baseball a violation of proper Sabbath observance.

The team had already been organized and two or three games had already been played, when Reverend Plesscher, our pastor, mobilized for the counter attack.  An informal reminder to the town council that the No-Sunday Baseball ordinance was being violated produced no results.  Rev. Plesscher then preached a powerful sermon on proper Sabbath observance, the blessings which would result to those who observed the day, and called attention to the serious violation of the day and of the town ordinance that was occurring with the introduction of Sunday baseball.  The next week the consistory met and drew up a formal protest against Sunday baseball in Kanawha.  The protest was printed in the weekly paper, The Kanawha Reporter, citing how the Sabbath should be honored and how playing organized baseball was a violation of such principles and should be discontinued.  The protest was signed by the names of the members of the church consistory including, among others: Ed Assink, Fred Abbas, John Peters, and the president, Rev. D. H. Plesscher.

My father and others on the consistory, I'm sure, were not eager to put themselves on record as opposed to something that most people in Kanawha regarded as a wholesome and innocent way to spend a Sunday afternoon.  These were, after all, people who were sometimes friends or neighbors, and people we interacted with on a business or casual basis.

Everyone knew each other in small town America.  Nevertheless, sometimes you must stand up for the Lord and do the right thing even though you may become the object of scorn and ridicule by the people of the world.  And scorn there was, though the ridicule, as far as I know, was not openly directed toward us.

My high school coach was the first to inform me of the protest which appeared in the paper.  I was in the town cafe and The Reporter had just come out.  He along with some of the promoters of the team had apparently been discussing it at their table.  Coach Thomson, with whom I was on very good terms, came up to me and showed it to me, asking if I had seen it?  I hadn't.  He waited for a reaction as I read it.  But what could I say?  Sometimes the right simply has to be contended for and the unpopular stands must be taken.  And what could Coach say?  It was apparent to me that he would not be able to understand such a "senseless" position.  But then, what can you expect from a person of the world

Whatever opposing political moves, if any, were attempted by the proponents of Sunday baseball after that, I do not know.  In any case, the town council apparently honored the protest, because immediately a new baseball diamond was constructed just outside the town limits along the highway heading north.  The Kanawha baseball team would play its Sunday games there.

Was it during the first game played at the new location?  Or was it later?  I am not sure.  But on a Sunday afternoon, while there was a crowd down at the new diamond, several of us from the Kanawha and Wright Christian Reformed churches were in town looking for activity.  The town diamond was vacant, so soon we became involved in a scratch baseball game of our own.  Among those in the game were Paul Assink, son of a signer of the protest against Sunday baseball; Donald Abbas, son of a signer of the protest; Harry Peters, son of a signer of the protest; plus others whom we need not identify.  The inconsistency of our doing this did not impress us greatly; However, such inconsistency was not lost on those who, after the game on the other diamond had ended, drove by our diamond and saw us, protesters of Sunday baseball, playing baseball on Sunday on the town diamond, while they were being relegated to playing on a make-shift diamond out of town.  No doubt, many eyebrows were lifted, many foreheads were furrowed and many lips pursed in indignation as fuming words passed through them. But, there is a difference between organized baseball as opposed to informal games, is there not?

Like the kids, adults in our church were not under severe sabbath restrictions either.  

It would be all right for us to have a large gathering of relatives over on a Sunday afternoon as long as the Sunday evening church service was not neglected.  As a matter of fact, it was our practice every year or so to leave early on a Sunday morning and drive 35 miles to Titonka to visit the Alkes, my father's sister's family.  The Alkes had several children our age and these periodic visits were among the highlights of our growing up years.  We would go early enough in the morning to attend the Lutheran church with them and leave in time to attend our own church at night. They would do the same when their turn came to visit us, except they had no evening service to crimp their plans.  In later years, these visits would often include other families of the Assink clan so that it became a virtual family reunion.

But in the summer of 1942, my parents faced a real dilemma.  Uncle Bill and Aunt Annie  took it upon themselves to plan an official Assink family reunion to be held on a Sunday, not at one of the farms of the family members, which had been done before, but at the Clear Lake town park.  Now, that was going too far.  Not only might it be difficult to get back to do the chores and get to church on time at night; but, even more important, having it in a public park in a recreational city like Clear Lake made it a much more worldly thing to do on the Sabbath.  It did not take my parents long to debate this matter.  We would not attend.  Uncle Henry also felt that this was not proper.  Uncle Ben's family--they sometimes skipped the evening service anyway--decided to go, and so did Aunt Gertie's family, the Freerksens.  But we stood on principle: Sundays were not appropriate days for family reunions in public parks at a lake nearly 40 miles from home.

As it developed, that Sunday turned out to be a rainy, cold, miserable day.  And then, the aftermath:  Uncle Bill became very ill with a kidney infection, and within a week he was dead.  Some conjectured that he had become overly chilled at the reunion.  In any case, did this happen because God had been shown disrespect for his day?  The occurrence of these events in such emphatic fashion made that conclusion seem reasonable. 

Whatever one may conclude from an episode such as that, our CR community was not terribly rigid about enjoying Sundays.  We simply could not take that enjoyment too far.  Within the family?--okay. Out in the public?--no.  A large family get-together on a member farm?--okay.  At a public park next to a lake?--no.  Sixty or seventy people gathering as family?--okay.  Forty or fifty people as a neighborhood gathering?--no.

Abstaining from work, as may be expected, was also a major focal point of Sabbath observance, however.  Some work, of course, was necessary.  The cows had to be milked; the eggs gathered; the pigs, cows and horses, fed and watered.  Occasionally a calf would be born on Sunday requiring additional attention.  Or the cows might break into the corn field.  In such a case the fence might need some temporary fixing.  The crucial factor:  Was it really necessary?  On Sunday, field work was never necessary.  Castrating pigs, putting in a new fence, repairing machinery or buildings, likewise, were blanketed by a prohibition.

Occasionally some fine distinctions might be called for.  One such case occurred when, on a late October Sunday morning, we woke up to a surprise snow storm, and we had some of our growing heifers grazing on Doc Stewart's fenced-in pasture land along the Boone River.  My dad faced the question of whether this was one of those situations where the biblical ox had fallen into the pit.  Even though rescuing the heifers would require hiring a trucker, making him work on Sunday, paying him for his services, as well as missing church, Pa felt this fell within the boundaries of necessary work and was, therefore, justifiable.
But what about those Sundays when there was hay in the field ready to be brought in and the threat of almost certain rain to come later in the afternoon?  Or when the season had been too wet to cultivate the corn, and weeds were beginning to take over; but along came a Sunday in which the ground had dried just enough between rains to get out there and cultivate?  Or when the oats were ripe in the field and stormy weather was predicted for Sunday evening?  Could we go out there and cut as much as possible before the winds and rain would flatten it and destroy a good portion of the crop?

In all my years on the farm, never did we go out to do field work on Sunday even though situations similar to the above occurred from time to time.  

Somehow, we had to have faith, trust that the God who could quiet the storm on the Sea of Galilee for the disciples, could also prevent one here.  And the God who could create a dry path for the Israelites to cross the Red Sea could also dry up the fields so the corn could be cultivated during the week.  No, Sunday was the Lord's day.  We would keep it holy and let him provide for our needs on the six days in which we would labor and do all our work.

In later years, as I matured and became a loyal member of the CRC community, I would adopt the common CRC view of the Sabbath.  That view, though largely commendable, had its weaknesses.  It focused too much, I believe, on the Old Testament view of refraining from doing various things.  It also had the tendency, though unintentionally, of making church-going an end in itself.  The New Testament emphasizes more the celebration of God's completed work on that day, the day in which our salvation was completed in the finished work of Jesus in the resurrection on the first day of the week.  It was a day in which we could celebrate rest, not primarily the rest from physical activity, but from attempting to gain our salvation from our own works, and rely instead on what Christ had done for us.  A day would come, many years later, when I would understand Sunday in a less legalistic, more positive way, a way more in accord, I believe, with what the New Testament teaches.  But the Sabbath I grew up with had, in spite of some inconsistencies, a disciplining and positive influence on our lives.  It taught us to take God's will, as we understood it, seriously.  It taught us that seeking God was best pursued in faithful attendance at worship with his people.  It taught us that this was, after all, God's world, and, if we took his commandments seriously, he would somehow provide, in spite of losses that might result from our efforts to keep them.  For these lessons I shall always be grateful.


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