This piece was published in the August 25, 1992 issue of Gospel Herald, a Mennonite Church magazine.
“Eating Out on Sunday (or Why You Shouldn’t Pray in Restaurants)” by Shirley Kurtz
I’m under the impression that during the Dark Ages and even much later, even after the Reformation and Christopher Columbus and Daniel Boone and as recently as the early 1900s, religious people tended to behave in a cringing manner or else mean-spirited. They sat on hard-backed chairs all Sunday afternoon and read only out of the Bible. According to Laura Ingalls’s Pa, her grandpa got spanked one Sunday for going sledding instead of staying in his chair. The ride must have been worth the consequences, for partway down the hill a stray pig ambled into the sled’s path. It isn’t every day that you get to go sledding with a pig.
By mid-century, children were allowed to run and play on Sunday and maybe even roller skate. Certain constraints remained, but attitudes had relaxed considerably. It was suspected by some that Sundays were meant to be good for you. Not going to work, not shopping, not buying gas—these periodic restrictions could possibly prevent or at least forestall nervous breakdowns (stress wasn’t invented yet; people just had nervous breakdowns).
Folks didn’t eat out on Sunday, either. Pious folks, I mean, ones who could have afforded to do so. But this, too, was hardly a deprivation, for anybody not stuck in the kitchen churning out the fabulous main dishes and desserts that constituted Sunday dinner.
By now, we religious people are even easier on ourselves. Nobody has to fix food. Fresh from our worship services, fresh from praising the Lord of the Sabbath, up out of dark sanctuaries and blinking in the bright noon, we pile into our vehicles and head for the public eateries.
Oh, it’s so lovely, your food coming to you all organized on your plate, and lots of tiny tinkling ice cubes in the water, and your coffee creamer in little crinkly pleated cartons.
The trouble is, somebody is still hovering at the stove.
Why should entire crews of workers be punching time clocks and scurrying around taking orders and juggling dishes and cooking steaks, livers, hams, even live crabs in pots, so that we—of all people—might enjoy our holy rest?
Now, I do want to be logical about this. “Logical” is, I think, different from “rigid,” “traditionalist,” “mean-spirited,” or whatever (a person who wants to convince must, above all, come off as logical). It’s probably fair to assume that restaurant employees need their jobs. It’s conceivable they even find pleasure in their jobs. But these individuals aren’t exactly lunkheads, incapable of perceiving particular ironies. They deserve to be forgiven for taking a jaundiced view of sanctimony, if such happens to be the case.
As a newcomer to Mt. Pleasant, Michigan soon after I married, waitressing at the Texan and desperate for more lucrative employment, I wasn’t all that thrilled about being people’s gofer. I don’t remember having to work Sundays. Sundays would have been worse, I bet—putting myself at the beck and call of stiff-suited, shiny-shoed churchgoers. What would’ve it been like to stand before such washed-in-the-blood patrons looking down their arched noses and choosily ordering? People who could take Sundays off—people who thought it was God’s will for them to take Sundays off? I suspect I would’ve hated it.
I’m not being unkind, am I? Logic, by its very nature, is hardly a matter of “kind” versus “unkind.” If you think hard on it there are a number of good things about eating at home. No vinyl booth benches. No Styrofoam doggie containers. Maybe food out of your garden. Any hairs in it, at least they’re yours. In the bathroom there’s sure to be soap, toilet paper, and honest-to-goodness thick terrycloth towels. Surprisingly, you can even invite company home instead of everybody crowding together into a business establishment. Everybody loves pancakes. You’re allowed to use your regular dishes—just put a candle in the middle of the table and maybe a few weeds in a jar. But never ever on a Sunday cook the dinner all by yourself, or clean up afterwards by your lonesome. Where would be the justice in that?
I can give you a good reason why religious people should eat out on Sunday, but it’s not one you would ever imagine.
One weekend a few years ago, I was in Pennsylvania with my 12-year-old. It was supposed to be a special outing, and it was, for a while—we slept at the relatives’ and went to see a play. On Sunday, however, Jennifer came down with the flu, the throwing-up kind. I feared it might hit me next, and there was only me to drive us home.
You know how you feel when somebody else is throwing up. A little bit queasy, yourself.
I put Jennifer in the backseat of the car, along with a bucket, and lit out for West Virginia. Of course, I wondered if this was the right thing to be doing. Hurtling down Route 283, I thought about turning back. Now was the time to turn around, before I’d gone far enough to get stranded, sick as a dog, between destinations. But I kept on going.
It was after we got on the turnpike that the car started jerking. True, we expected the bottom to fall out of this car any day, but now was not an appropriate time. I pulled over onto the shoulder of the highway, got out, lifted the hood as best I could, and peered at the motor. I didn’t know what a motor was supposed to look like. A hose of some sort seemed to have fallen apart—had this just happened?
I climbed back into the car, and as we jerked along down the highway, I considered my options. If I had to stop for repairs, how could I avoid getting ripped off by some wily mechanic? Didn’t mechanics rip off ignorant travelers? Wasn’t this how some of those off-interstate repair shops operated? By now, paranoia had replaced quease.
The contingency plan was simple.
I’d drive to a truck stop, walk into the restaurant, and just stand there, right near the doorway. And I’d peel my eyes for someone who was praying over their meal. That would be the person I’d go to for help.
We lurched on down the turnpike. As it turns out, we lurched the whole way home. I never got sick. But you can see, now, how I think a person modestly religious (but not modest in times of emergency), and well-intentioned, and just, could logically defend a Sunday restaurant habit. In fact, a rigid traditionalist might get away with doing so, too, for even the Pharisees saw nothing wrong with pulling a poor unfortunate oxen out of the well on the Sabbath.
On the other hand, rescuing oxen or people in broken-down cars is hardly what we have in mind, gorgeous in our Sunday clothes and clambering into our vehicles after morning services. Which would be why we shouldn’t pray in restaurants, at least not on Sunday.
