In Sabbath as Resistance, Walter Brueggemann writes about the restless anxiety and violent competitiveness that proliferates in society. ‘The totem,’ he says, ‘of such restlessness is perhaps professional sports … The endless carnival of those sports constitutes a dramatic affirmation of power, wealth, and virility in which “victory” is accomplished by many abusive exploitations, all in pursuit of winning and being on top of the heap of the money game.’[1]
When I first read it a few years ago I mostly dismissed it. This, I thought, is probably a bit of an American thing that doesn’t really apply to me. Surely, I can enjoy a bit of professional sport and still practice sabbath, still resist the culture of restless anxiety and live into God’s alternative values of neighbourliness, justice and rest.
But something from my initial reading clearly lodged in my mind and it has come to the fore over the last few weeks. We’ve had quite a summer of sport – the football, the rugby and the Olympics have all drawn me in. I’ve had excited conversations with friends, eagerly awaited player ratings and team selections, watched analysis and read punditry – all of it on a level that I don’t remember doing before.
I’ve tried to be sensible and retain some boundaries, particularly around work, but that has simply meant that my rest and weekends this summer have largely been dominated by the consumption of ‘the endless carnival’ of professional sport. I do not think that is necessarily a bad thing in itself and there certainly have been moments that I have enjoyed. But there have increasinly been moments where I have wondered about the influence this is all having on me. If we become what we give our attention to, then how is this consumption of sport shaping me? Who is it forming me into?
My relationship with sport has always been a little complicated. Growing up, I got fairly seriously into a number of sports. But I don’t know if I’ve ever really enjoyed playing sport. I enjoyed the winning, but I’m not sure I especially enjoyed the playing in a purer sense. The angry tears that would often come if I made a mistake on a football pitch may just about be a thing of the past, but that unpleasant competitive edge has carried from playing sport as a teenager into the more vicarious world of consuming professional sport as an adult. For whatever reasons, I seem to have especially struggled this summer. When England lost the Euros and when the Lions lost the test series my sleep was affected for days. What does it say about my priorities when I don’t lose a wink of sleep over a drug overdoses on our estate, but a few jaw-droppingly wealthy men, a ball and the inevitable ability to over-promise and under-deliver can wreck my body’s rhythms?
The capacity professional sport has to affect my mood and command my attention worries me. And so does the anger that I’ve felt – whether directed at players, coaches, officials or other nations. Again, the questions come: ‘who is this forming me into?’ ‘what in me is being appealed to here?’ Surely what is being appealed to are ugly, broken, unkind parts of me that need deep work, not casual encouragement. Surely, I am not being formed into a person of love, character, depth and integrity. Instead, I am being formed into someone who is angry, tribal and distracted – abdicating from the risk and pain of engaging meaingfully in the reality of the world and instead vicariously simulating that risk and pain through the narcotic satiation of commodified sport.
So, I have a bit of a decision to make. Do I look for ways to engage with professional sport more healthily? Or do I do something a little more extreme and abstain? I’ve tried not watching matches live but find that I just end up anxiously refreshing the live updates on BBC which may only be marginally less stressful and distracting.
And so, reluctantly, I want to experiment with something more severe. If Brueggemann is right, (it’s probably time I admitted that he might be onto something) then the practice of sabbath is the appropriate resistance to the competition, consumption and distraction glorified by professional sport. So, it is time for a sabbatical – a fast – a divestment from a form of entertainment that has been a significant part of my life for as long as I can remember.
I don’t like who I become when I consume sport. It brings out the worst in me, not the best. This might not be the solution – it could be an overreaction, but in the absence of better ideas I think this is worth a try. For the rest of this year, I am committing to be deliberately inattentive to scorelines, headlines, transfer rumours and highlights.
I will give some thought to what I do instead – old habits die hard so I am not expecting this to be easy. I expect it will be helpful to see this less as giving up something I quite like, and more as choosing something better.
‘Sabbath is a practical divestment so that neighbourly engagement, rather than production and consumption, define our lives.’
Walter Brueggemann, Sabbath as Resistance, 18
[1] Walter Brueggemann, Sabbath as Resistance: Saying No to the Culture of Now (Louisville: John Knox Press, 2017), pp. 15-16
Notes From the Potting Shed 