Sabbath and Sport
Last fall, I was coaching an eight year old girls soccer team. I had every quarter strategically organized so that each player would receive equal playing time while not dropping the quality of play. That well thought out plan was tossed before the game even started because of multiple no shows. It was the hottest game of the season, and our roster numbers were lacking. Three quarters finished, I look at my exhausted group of soccer girls. As I’m scanning their defeated faces, one player whose face is beet red with exhaustion, says “Coach! I can play. The team needs me! I can do it!” While I appreciated her eagerness, I also knew she had played most of the game and seemed to be past her endurance threshold. I didn’t play her in that final quarter. My kindness to her was rest.
God extends similar kindness to His people as He invites us to Sabbath rest.
To better understand the concept of rest and Sabbath, it would be helpful for us to turn to the first pages of the biblical narrative.
“...God blessed the seventh day and made it holy because on it he ceased all the work that he had been doing in creation” (Genesis 2:1-3).
The word ‘ceased’ is ‘shâbath’ in Hebrew which is where we derive the word for ‘Sabbath’. By ceasing from work, God is inviting humans to mirror Him as His image bearers.
The story continues.
In the opening pages of the Exodus story, we find an Israelite people multiplying and becoming fruitful fulfilling God’s desire for humanity. It was not long before a newly appointed Egyptian king responded out of fear.
“Come, let’s deal wisely with them… So they put foremen over the Israelites to oppress them with hard labor. As a result the Egyptians loathed the Israelites, and they made the Israelites serve rigorously. They made their lives bitter by hard service with mortar and bricks and by all kinds of service in the fields. Every kind of service the Israelites were required to give was rigorous” (Exodus 1:9-10;12-14).
God’s Provisions Meet Our Needs
What happens next in the story is pretty remarkable as God hears the cries of the oppressed and appoints Moses to deliver them out of Egypt. After the climatic action of crossing the Red Sea and escaping the Egyptians, the Israelites find themselves in new territory. The Israelites are hungry, thirsty, tired, and doubting if being rescued was worth it. It’s here that God reveals His character by providing a basic human need: food in the form of quail and manna. This provision is followed by an invitation.
“This is what the Lord has said: ‘Tomorrow is a time of cessation from work, a holy Sabbath to the Lord” (Exodus 16:23).
Here God provides another basic human need: rest. In the wilderness, the Israelites are learning a new way to be human under the lordship of a generous God that opposes the character of the Egyptian pharaoh in every way. God’s people only knew labor to be about scarcity and proving their worth through work. This way of life under the empire had poorly formed their identity and ideas about work. God gives an invitation to Sabbath to help them recover their true humanity and restore them to their identity as image bearers.
Sabbath for the athlete or coach is spiritual practice that can have the same effect. The sports world demands a hustle and grind mentality for success. The hustle, while important for progress and excellence, can have a way of poorly shaping our identity and ideas about what it means to be human. Sports culture teaches us that we are only as worthy as we are productive. Sabbath is a form of resistance to this. As an athlete or coach sets a specific time each week to cease from the grind, they’re invited into the process of healing and restoration of their identity.
So, we know we are invited to rest and set aside time each week to do so, but the question still looms “How am I supposed to rest with my demanding schedule?”
Sabbath Requires Trust
For the Israelites, the invitation to rest required an action of trust.
“Whatever you want to bake, bake today; whatever you want to boil, boil today; whatever is left put aside for yourselves to be kept until morning…. Six days you will gather it, but on the seventh day, the Sabbath, there will not be any” (Exodus 16:23).
In this passage, God honors the need and importance for work, encouraging the Israelites to prepare for Sabbath. As we set aside time each week to cease from work, we are placing our trust in God to provide. When we take a step of faith to cease from training, watching film, planning sessions, etc, we begin to realize how much life there is beyond sport. God uses Sabbath to help free us from idolizing sport and believing the lie that our teams and programs will fall apart without our constant attention.
Sabbath Requires Discipline
Maybe I’m crazy for this but I enjoy full body circuit workouts. I love the feeling of powering through a set of exercises and moving beyond the threshold of pain necessary to build muscle and endurance. As the seconds tick down on an exercise, I look at my workout app to see what the next challenge will be. It reads ‘rest’. To be honest, I’d rather push through the workout than take a minute of recovery rest. Why? Because that one minute doesn’t feel productive or sometimes necessary.
However, we all know that recovery is productive and necessary to give our bodies time to rest so that we can execute the workout to the best of our physical ability. I wonder if the same might be true for how Sabbath rest is good for our souls. It gives our souls time to recover and remember what it means to be fully human in the eyes of God. It also requires discipline and intentionality to include it into the rhythm of life.
Getting Practical With Sabbath
“Then Jesus said to them, “The Sabbath was made to meet the needs of people, and not people to meet the requirements of the Sabbath” (Mark 2:27).
The following is not meant to be an exact list to measure whether you’re resting the ‘right’ way but some suggestions to get you started.
John Mark Comer, a spiritual formation pastor, defines Sabbath as “An ancient way to find rest for your soul. The Sabbath is a 24-hour time period set aside to stop, rest, delight, and worship.”
Planning a Sabbath:
Stop - Set aside a time to cease from work. If a full 24hr period sounds daunting to you, then start smaller. Is there an afternoon or morning you could set aside? What do you need to do to prepare ahead of time for Sabbath?
Rest - What kind of rest do you need? A nap? Time away from technology? Uninterrupted time with family and friends?
Delight - What is there to celebrate from your week? What activities help you celebrate? A good example is a meal or feast. What brings you delight and reminds you of God’s goodness? Is it being in creation? Admiring art? Playing games?
Worship - Release the burden of holding everything together by engaging in worship. This could be attending your local church service, spending time in the Bible, prayer walks, listening to music - anything to help you connect with the God who is inviting you to rest.
God sees and honors the hard work you put in each week. Now, God’s kindness to you is rest. Receive the gift of Sabbath and allow God’s presence to remind you what it means to be fully human.
