The Seven Deadly Sins: Sloth
James 2:14-18 and Ephesians 2:8-10
Bubba sits on the couch watching the
ball game with a beer in his hand and a bowl of chips on his belly. Now that’s sloth, right? Wrong.
Bubba’s little sister, Bubba, sits
on that same couch watching The Price Is
Right with Bob Barker every day for six hours a day. You might wonder how she finds six hours of The Price Is Right when it only airs on
network television four times daily? She bought the videos and watches the
reruns. Now that’s sloth, right? Wrong.
Many years ago youth from this
church went to Appalachia for a mission trip.
While our kids busted buns to patch and paint a run down home, five
healthy men in their early twenties sat on the porch and watched our kids
work. Now that’s sloth, right? Wrong.
If all of the above are not sloth,
then what are they? They are
laziness. And there is a difference
between sloth and laziness.
*****
Now as a Presbyterian Church we are a
part of a theological heritage known as “Calvinism,” so called after one of our
founders, John Calvin. Among those
calling themselves Calvinists are the Pilgrims and Puritans who helped settle
our nation. It is from the Puritans
that we get the term “Protestant work ethic,” which describes the way we are
called – or so the Puritans taught – to work hard, be diligent, be disciplined. They worked hard because they wanted to
demonstrate that they were among the elect whom God had chosen for salvation! You know the definition of a Puritan, don’t
you? A Puritan is someone who worries that someone, somewhere is having fun at
this very moment. The Puritan form of
Calvinism in this country is the kind that infected most mainline Protestants
in general and us Presbyterians in particular.
I mention our Calvinist, Puritan
heritage because I think it gets in the way of our understanding sloth. When we hear the word sloth, we naturally
think of it as it is defined in the dictionary: “habitual disinclination to
exercise; indolence; laziness.” We hear
the word sloth and we might be tempted to say to ourselves, “That’s not
me. I work hard.” And this is all true. In fact, we probably work harder than we
should. When I was thinking about what
to preach about for this sermon, I mentioned to several friends that our problem as Presbyterians is not that
we don’t work hard enough but that we work too hard; it isn’t that we do too
little but that we do too much; it’s not that we have to add stuff to do but
build in Sabbath rest – to be still and know the Lord is God. In every church I have ever been,
Presbyterians are among the hardest working people I have ever met. So what
does it mean to be a “slothful Presbyterian”?
Sloth is a form of spiritual
laziness and throughout the centuries Christian thinkers have focused on the
word spiritual as the key component in understanding sloth. Consider.
V
Thomas
Aquinas defined sloth as “that which becomes evil because it doesn’t begin the
good.”
V
Gregory
the Great defined sloth as “apathy toward the great possibilities of God.”
V
Kathleen
Norris defines sloth as “a profound weariness of soul.”
V
Evelyn
Waugh defines sloth – and her’s, I think, is my favorite – as “not merely the
neglect of duty but the refusal of joy.”
[NOTE
TO READER: Before continuing with the sermon, read the above definitions again,
perhaps several times, and let them sink into your consciousness.] You see, then, how sloth differs from mere
laziness. Laziness may be a problem, to
be sure, but sloth will eat away at our soul.
Sloth is the absence of zeal for the Lord; it is being very busy with
many things or no thing but neglectful of the one thing – the only thing – the
makes a difference in our lives. Sloth means doing much work or no work but
little kingdom work. Above all else,
sloth is the refusal of God’s joy in our lives.
I
hesitate to tell this next story but I think it illustrates well what Christian
writers mean by sloth. I came from an
interesting congregation in Brenham.
The vast majority of the congregation and I, 98% of the folks, got along
famously. But as it is with virtually
all pastors in every church, there was a small percentage with whom I did not
see eye to eye. It was a strange
disconnect with which I struggled from day one to the time we packed our truck
to move to Pueblo.
The
small number of folks with whom I never connected were all “country folks”;
that is, they had lived in Brenham for decades and their families had lived
there for generations. They were
comfortable living a certain way. But
then the rest of Texas discovered what a delightful place it was and the town
started to change. “City folks” from
Houston, Dallas and San Antonio started moving in. The population increased.
The schools had to adjust. The
traffic got busier. New businesses were competing with the old shops. Even the grand old parade, Maifest, had to
change; in the mid-1980’s the first blacks were allowed into the community
children’s parade because of certain “federal regulations” (aka, the fourteenth
amendment to the Constitution). You can
imagine how all this change played in small town Texas: some folks adapted
easily, some folks adapted uneasily, some folks didn’t adapt.
It
is scary – and I mean flying out of y’er boots fearful – to have all of your
social markers change in such a short time.
But fortunately for the country folks, they were the patriarchs and
matriarchs of all the churches in town because they had been there the
longest. I say it was fortunate for the
country folks because the one place they could keep things from changing was in
their church. And they did a good job of keeping the
change to a minimum. We were singing
from the same hymnal that was purchased in the 1950’s, reading from the same
Bible translation purchased in the 1950’s, using the same order of worship as
was used in the 1950’s. Can you imagine
reciting the Apostle’s Creed for 3,000 weeks in a row? In many ways we were caught in a time warp:
we were a church of Eisenhower’s America.
So
you can imagine what they thought of me!
Now as I said, most of the people welcomed me warmly, we got along great
and did some neat ministry and mission together. But those two percent and I never did connect. I remember when I first started preaching in
Brenham. I was new to preaching every
week and sometimes I would say just about nothing. I would finish up my sermon and think to myself, “I cannot
believe you inflicted that upon these good people. It was vague, formless, passionless and didn’t really say all
that much about God. Ugh!” And the two percenters would love it. It took me a while to figure out the
pattern, but every time I called the congregation to a living faith, a
passionate walk with Christ, a seeking after God’s justice for others, they
hated it. But every time I preached
something vague, formless and devoid of all passion, they loved it. You see, I think that whenever I preached
about living faith, about a passionate walk with Christ, about seeking after
God’s justice for others, what the two percenters heard was, “Even your church
– even your faith – might have to change.”
And it scared them to death.
I
had been at the church about six years when a non-denominational pastor asked
me to describe my church. I started to
give him the institutionally correct answer, complete with statistics about
size, age demographics and a program list, but he stopped me. He said, “No, that’s not what I meant. I want you to tell me about your church,” by
which I knew he meant the church’s heart, the church’s soul. What I said was this, “I think that for too
many people, and some more than others, they are living out their faith in
fear. I get the sense that they fear
they’re not doing their faith the right way, or they fear what they might have
to give up, or they fear their faith doesn’t really matter.” Then my friend asked me a question I will
never forget; he said, “In your deepest heart, what do you want for your
people?” And this is how I answered: “I
want them to live their faith out of a place of joy rather than fear.”
My
friends, as I pondered this story this past week, I realized how grateful I am
that most of you do not live your faith out of a place of fear; this
congregation is different. But one
thing is the same. What I wanted for my
friends in Brenham I want also for you: I want you to live out your faith by
claiming the joy of Jesus Christ that is our birthright. I want us all to live out our faith not
because we think we should, nor because we’re afraid of what will happen if we
don’t, but because God has put within us an irrepressible, winsome joy that
cannot be taken away.
*****
Now,
some of you may be wondering, “Brad, what does this have to do with
sloth?” Well, I think it has everything
to do with sloth. Remember the
definitions of sloth I mentioned earlier:
V
“that
which becomes evil because it doesn’t begin the good.”
V
“apathy
toward the great possibilities of God.”
V
“a profound weariness of soul.”
V
“not
merely the neglect of duty but the refusal of joy.”
These
definitions remind me of what Paul was talking about in Ephesians 2: “”We are
God’s workmanship, created in Christ Jesus to do good works.” The Greek word for “workmanship” has the
connotation of artistry or craft; we are God’s work of art, his highly skilled
and expert craftsmanship. Even more, we
are created in this exquisite manner for a purpose: to do good works. In other words, we were not created merely
to be busy, but to be busy with a purpose, busy with the one thing – the only
thing – that makes a difference in our lives. We were created not just to do
work, but to do kingdom work. Above all
else, we were created to express God’s joy in our lives.
Did
you notice what preceded Paul’s word that we are created as God’s workmanship
to do good works? What precedes this
verse is Paul’s great ode to grace: “For it is by grace that you have been
saved – through faith – and this not from yourselves, it is the gift of God –
not by works, so that no one can boast.”
Paul’s is a grace drunk soul.
For Paul, all of our living in faith is a living out of grace – the gift
of God’s love and mercy in Jesus Christ.
You see, this is where sloth and joy connect: joy is the antidote to
sloth. When we know the joy of the
Lord, we know what we are to do and we freely and gladly do it.
*****
One
of the truly wonderful characters and beloved saints of the Brenham church was
a welder named Mark. Mark literally
would give a stranger the shirt off his back: one of the nicest, kindest, most
good hearted people you will ever meet.
What made him a character, though, was that whenever you asked Mark how
he was doing, he would say, “I couldn’t be better.” It didn’t matter what he was doing or what had happened to him,
he’d say the same thing, “I couldn’t be better.” I once thought I had found the occasion in which he couldn’t say
that. He had been on top of his barn
fixing the roof after a hail storm and fell off, breaking his hip. When I saw him in the hospital and asked him
how he was doing, he said, “I couldn’t be better.” I told him, “Now I know you’re lying.” He said, “Nope. Doc tells
me it was a clean break so I won’t need surgery and I’ve been meaning to catch
up on my paperwork for the IRS, so now I’ll have some time to do that. I
couldn’t be better.”
“I
couldn’t be better.” Through thick,
through thin; in the lush forest or the barren desert; whether strong and
confident or weak, helpless and lying in a hospital bed; he could not be
better, for he knew that his life was lived in the grace of Jesus Christ. All that Mark was, all that Mark did, was a
song of joy to our Lord. When that kind
of joy is the light that shines from our hearts, there is no evil because we
don’t begin the good. There is no
apathy toward the great possibilities of God.
There is no profound weariness of soul. There is no neglect of duty nor
refusal of joy.
When the light of God’s love shines in our hearts, there is no sloth, for then we know that we are God’s workmanship created in Christ Jesus to do good works.