Today in Confirmation the ninth-graders and I will be discussing faith and sports, which is one of those intersections that is particularly strange in this American culture of ours. We're OK with professional athletes attributing their achievements to God, fans touting John 3:16 in the stands, and prayers on the sidelines and before games, but then we also have no problem with these same sporting events taking place on Sundays or Saturdays or whatever day we celebrate as apart and holy. What gives?
At least part of the answer for this strange dichotomy is the minimization of importance we place on Sabbath-taking, and this is exactly why we are talking about faith and sports in Confirmation; it allows us to enter into the 3rd commandment: Honor the Sabbath and keep it holy.
No rest for the weary
It's tough being a young student-athlete in this world we have constructed. I remember listening in high school as our baseball coach told us that during the hours of practice and games, baseball was the most important thing in our lives. Of course, that previous fall my choir teacher had said the same thing about Chamber Singers and there were going to be several times when the two "most important things" collided. Then, there were my parents telling me that school was the "most important thing," a pastor and youth director telling me that church was the "most important thing" and countless other extracurricular coaches and volunteers who at least had the wisdom to say that their area of interest was merely important. It's a wonder I made it into college with all the most important things that I missed.
Young people are busy. Up here they may have choral contest all day, return home for hockey practice, travel the next day three hours for a hockey game and then fit in homework in-between games at the hockey tournament six hours away over the weekend (meanwhile, their parents may be pulled in eight different directions with different kids in very different places). They may have made it to Confirmation (because our schools at least have the policy of no events on Wednesday or Sunday), but that is the full extent of their involvement at church, and nobody is going to claim that Confirmation is anything like a rest. Many of our young people can't conceive of actually taking a day off during sports season.
Too many people (not just youth) are rushing through their busy days to get to the next busy thing--to take the kids to sports or whatever--and then they rush to Confirmation or rush to Sunday morning worship or rush off to the cabin to get as much of it in as they can. It's too much, too fast. It's a violation of the 3rd commandment. But we have a problem with the 3rd commandment: we don't agree with it. We understand the necessity of not murdering or stealing or committing adultery, but taking time to rest? That's just inefficient.
We live in a world of efficiency, which reminds me of two things. The first is Wendell Berry, who once wrote: "The world of love includes death, suffers it, and triumph over it. The world of efficiency is defeated by death; at death, all its instruments and procedures stop. The world of love continues, and of this grief is the proof" (from Health is Membership, 1994). And secondly, it makes me think of Jesus, who once said, "The sabbath was made for humankind, and not humankind for the sabbath" (Mark 2:27).
Jesus was concerned about the strict regulation of the sabbath laws because the Pharisees were making sabbath into an obligation, but Jesus was treating the sabbath as a gift; something good that the law produces; in short, a right way to live. Wendell Berry was after much the same thing in talking about the world of love and the world of efficiency. We live efficient little lives most of the time. We go and go and go until we can go no more and then we crash, sometimes we just go headlong over a cliff in our pursuit of efficiency and end up killing ourselves much sooner than we otherwise would have died. Then, the world of efficiency has no answer to death, so we are just that: dead and gone. But the world of love does not move rapidly over the cliff. It stays awhile to enjoy its time and to rest. Then, when the time comes for the world of love to experience death, it is welcomed as a path toward resurrection. Sabbath-time allows us to leave the world of efficiency and find the world of love; it allows us to experience not just death but resurrection.
I worry that our lives are too efficient and that we are too starved for rest--authentic rest. We wear our busy-ness of our sleeves as a badge of honor rather than a scarlet letter; this is a problem. Sports and faith are odd bedfellows not because sports are inherently "bad" things. There is nothing anti-scriptural in pursuing victory in a game. However, there is a problem in putting all our eggs in that basket. There is good work and not good work. Sports can entertain us--and that is well and good--but too often sports feed a culture of pure efficiency that never takes a moment to slow down and rest and worship. Sports push athletes toward the cliff of efficiency, and, in some cases, they push people over. Again, sports are not bad, but we make of them idols and in-so-doing we forget how to take rest.
Now, I have been a bit too harsh on sports to this point, because great athletes often understand this better than the rest of us. An athlete who trains well knows that in-between the intensity of workouts something very important is needed: recovery and rest. The greatest athletes know when to push harder and when to recover; they know, in short, how to take a sabbath. Too many amateurs don't know how to get there. They run from hockey tournaments to baseball games to football season and never take a break. They never recover. Their lives begin to suffer; their relationships become strained. Then, even when they "make it" they are put on display on a Sunday afternoon or a Saturday evening for roaring crowds who have escaped the busy-ness of their own lives to vicariously experience the different busy-ness of their favorite team.
We don't change a culture easily because we often don't know where to start. But it seems to me that this world of efficiency could do with being put to a good ol' Sabbath death every once in awhile. We need to re-learn the spiritual discipline of Sabbath-taking not just because it will bring us closer to God (though I bet it will), but also because it is going to improve our living in this world and in community with one another.
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