If we plan a Sunday banquet and invite our friends, do we wait until Sunday to begin thinking about it? Or do we begin well ahead of time, planning the menu, even making sure we have the right clothes to wear? Every week we prepare a spiritual feast—if we are members of a church —and we invite everyone in the neighborhood. We call it a church service. How well do we remember the day and prepare for it?
The Sunday services in a Church of Christ, Scientist, offer to all who will come a feast of Truth and Love. The subject and the Lesson-Sermon In the Christian Science Quarterly; read from the Bible and from Science and Health with Key to the Scriptures by Mary Baker Eddy are the same everywhere on a given Sunday. But the number of people who attend, and their expectations, differ according to the members' obedience to the commandment, "Remember the sabbath day, to keep it holy." Ex. 20:8;
Preparations for this Sunday feast begin at least on Monday of the week before. Aside from the work of committees to care for such important details as having the auditorium comfortable, attractive, with the best possible acoustics, caring for the grounds so that the public will know that something beautiful will be going on in the church and that they are invited, and announcing the services through available means, every member of the church has the opportunity to work prayerfully to prepare an inviting and healing mental atmosphere.
This preparation can go far beyond the daily study of the Lesson-Sermon for the week in the hope of gaining some benefit from it. And unless it does, one isn't going to gain very much from it for himself. Christian Science healing results from an understanding of the truth of God and man. God is divine Love, the one, infinite Principle of man. And "Man," Mrs. Eddy says, "is idea, the image, of Love; he is not physique." Science and Health, p. 475; Christ Jesus exemplified this truth in all he did. And he said, "Be ye therefore perfect, even as your Father which is in heaven is perfect." Matt. 5:48; Jesus' command, when applied with an understanding of what the real man is, means simply, "Be the man you are. Be 'idea, the image, of Love' and stop insisting that you are physique—good or bad."
Being Love's idea, having no Principle but Love, overcomes the claims of physique. It's the only way to gain a sense of authority over disease or discord, sin or death, whatever our troubles may be. And improving the opportunity to devote ourselves during the week to preparing a Sunday service for those in the community hungering for Truth to come and be filled shows we mean to think and act with that authority.
Every section of the lesson, every citation, has meaning for all mankind. The meaning can be felt in the community if it is mentally expressed. And it is mentally expressed when an individual who studies the lesson becomes conscious of the meaning and mentally, prayerfully repeats it, applies it to the problems of mankind, and embraces in his thought the mental atmosphere of the Sunday service to come. The effect of this prayerful preparation is multiplied as all the members take part in it. Because the spirit of this preparation isn't the mere attitudes of physical beings but the reflected spirit of the ever-present Christ, Truth, the importance of the Sunday service will dawn in the minds of people in the community who may be seeking what this lesson gives. They will come.
How they come and what they gain will depend largely upon how the members of the church have remembered "the sabbath day, to keep it holy."
The holiness of our sabbath depends upon the godliness of our concept. If we think of ourselves as ideas of Love and study daily to give of the love we reflect, our preparation of the Lesson-Sermon will be holy. The concept we entertain of the sabbath will be startlingly truthful, attractively beautiful, and amazingly practical to the thought of the community we live in— whether we think of that community in a local sense or in a worldwide sense.
The applicability of the truths to be found in any of the Lesson-Sermons makes these lessons the greatest news of the week. But the greatness of this good news must come to the consciousness of individuals in the community through the power of the divine Mind itself. It will never come through one group of people thinking of people as mortals—as physique—hoping that other mortals will somehow recognize the value of these lessons. It will come as one group of individuals recognize themselves as "idea, the image, of Love" and realize that the lesson, whatever its subject, speaks through its pastor, the Bible and Science and Health, truths imparted by the one Mind of the real man. And the recognition of themselves as ideas of the one Mind of man comes in proportion to the unselfed love expressed in the daily study of the Lesson-Sermon.
Mrs. Eddy's poem "Christ My Refuge" includes these lines:
My prayer, some daily good to do
To Thine, for Thee;
An offering pure of Love, whereto
God leadeth me.Poems, p. 13.
What better guide to remembering the sabbath and keeping it holy?
