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Sloth: "The Most Religious Sin"

Seven Deadly Sins Sermon Series—Greed and Gluttony
March 2, 2008
I Timothy 6:2b-12
Seven Deadly Sins Sermon Series—Sloth
March 9, 2008
Hebrews 6:1-12

Therefore let us go on toward perfection, leaving behind the basic teaching about
Christ, and not laying again the foundation: repentance from dead works and faith
toward God, instruction about baptisms, laying on of hands, resurrection of the dead,
and eternal judgment. And we will do this, if God permits. For it is impossible to restore
again to repentance those who have once been enlightened, and have tasted the
heavenly gift, and have shared in the Holy Spirit, and have tasted the goodness of the
word of God and the powers of the age to come, and then have fallen away, since on
their own they are crucifying again the Son of God and are holding him up to contempt.
Ground that drinks up the rain falling on it repeatedly, and that produces a crop useful
to those for whom it is cultivated, receives a blessing from God. But if it produces thorns
and thistles, it is worthless and on the verge of being cursed; its end is to be burned
over.
Even though we speak in this way, beloved, we are confident of better things in your
case, things that belong to salvation. For God is not unjust; he will not overlook your
work and the love that you showed for his sake in serving the saints, as you still do.
And we want each one of you to show the same diligence so as to realize the full
assurance of hope to the very end, so that you may not become sluggish, but imitators
of those who through faith and patience inherit the promises

As I was studying our Biblical text for today, I was thinking back to my some of college
and seminary studies about one of the great issues that plagued the early church, one
that quite literally tore at the fabrics of the churches of the Roman Empire in the second
and third centuries. As we’ve talking about in the book of Revelation Bible study, the
persecution of Christians in the first 300 years of Christianity’s existence was sporadic
and uneven—it really did depend on where you were, and what kind of governor you
might be living under, what region you might find yourself, that determined whether or
not you and your church might catch the eye and the wrath of the local Roman
authorities. If you happened to be lucky, well, you probably could practice your faith
without many problems, but in other places, the persecution, the harassment, could
lead to the problem of Christians leaving or deserting the Christian faith, because of
potential threats to their livelihood or even their lives.   But often these times of
persecutions would come in waves, and usually after an especially difficult time of
persecution, the authorities would let up, or the local government or governor would
change, and things would get back to normal. And then those who might have left the
church during that time would want to come back to the fold of the church—the
persecution would be too much for them, but when it was over, they would want to be re-
embraced back into the life of the church.

If you search the writings of the early church, you’ll find a lot of conversations about
what to do with these people—do we let them come back home, or do we reject their
pleas for a homecoming? It was a difficult thing to judge, I think, though I suspect that
there was great passion on both sides of the debate. One side surely said that if the
church can’t count on these people when things got hot and heavy, can we ever really
trust them—and by their betrayal of the faith, haven’t they re-crucified the Son of God
again, and made it seem to others that this faith was clearly not one worth dying or
even living for, to reference some of the thoughts found in our Hebrew passage for
today?   And then there was the other side that argued, that even though these men
and women had fallen away and betrayed the faith, we should welcome them back into
the fold, perhaps with some public punishment or reckoning, and encourage them to
work even harder on their journey with Christ. It was a hot issue during this period,
because there were many who clearly did not stand fast during the difficult times, and
were more than willing to walk away from their Christian faith when the times got hot
and heavy, when they knew it might require more of them than they had initially signed
up for. I have often wondered myself about what would happen if I ever had to make
that decision, what would happen if my Christian faith required that I might have to die
for it—I’d like to think that I would have stuck it out, and perhaps paid the ultimate cost,
but I have to admit that I don’t know…I don’t know if any of us really do, until we are
asked to do it, to go to our own literal cross, so to speak. But I do think that I would
have probably been on the side of those of those who cried out for grace and
forgiveness for those who had fallen away during the difficult times, because, well, you
never know, and its better to give away the grace you might need someday, rather than
being unmerciful to those who chose what I might have chosen in their circumstances.
If I was in the Garden of Gethsemane on that night when that they came to arrest
Jesus, would I have run for the shadows like the disciples did? I hope not, but I don’t
know, I don’t know…

Well, there is good news, of course, and that is that most of us will not have to deal with
that question, or I hope we never do, at least not when it comes to choosing between
our faith and our lives. That is a grace for most of us, and ought to humble us when it
comes to judging other people, especially when we don’t think they’re not living up to
the Christian values that they—and we—often profess, when they seem as lazy in
growing their faith as we sometimes are.   And that gets us to the sixth of our seven
deadly sins for this series, the sin of sloth, or laziness, the one that is in many ways the
most religious of our deadly sins, because all the other ones we’ve been journeying
with, well, each of them are just negative things, whether or not you are religious or
spiritual or Christian or not. Atheists, agnostics, Muslims, Christians, Hindus, etc,
probably generally agree that pride, and greed, and envy, and anger, and lust and
gluttony are negative character flaw—you don’t have to be spiritual or religious to
agree on certain moral foundations—and as I have said to others, my father was an
agnostic, a good man, one of the best of I’ve ever met, and yet he had grave doubts
about the existence of God, or a greater being, or at least one that the great religions
of the world tend to profess. Morality has nothing to do religiosity, because, on a
practical level, we know plenty of religious people who are more than willing to kill or
hurt other people, and do it all in God’s name.

So, sloth, sloth is a peculiar deadly sin, mostly because it is a spiritual sin, and yet it is
a profoundly personal sin with very public consequences.   Now, before I go there, I
want us visit the meaning of the word “sloth” a bit, because I had initially approached
this sin as having something to do with laziness when it came to work, you know,
making a living or doing the yard work or not cleaning up the house, etc. But actually, if
you look at the way the church has approached it, it’s a little more complicated than
taking the day off from doing the yard work—its actually more to do with taking a life off,
rather than a day off, from the doing our spiritual work, our ethical work, in respect
towards ourselves and the world that needs us to care about the poor, the nobodies,
the homeless, all the people left behind. And its interesting that there is poor animal
that got tagged with this sin, as if it was really lazy, the sloth, which is slow moving
animal found in Central and South America, that is noted for spending its days in the
trees, bunched up, hanging by its three pronged fingers. You can see a picture of one
in your bulletin, on page 10. The sloth sleeps all day, and is usually always silent, and
it only gets out of the trees once a week, to go to the bathroom. If you’ve ever seen a
sloth on television, one of the things that will strike you is how, indeed, it is so slow,
even when it comes to pulling food towards it mouth. Poor animals—to be tagged as
the perfect animal to describe one of the seven deadly sins!

And yet, even this animal doesn’t quite fit what the church has meant when it came to
talking about the sin of sloth. Sloth is about choosing not to work on our spiritual lives,
about falling away, and about running away when the hard times come and hard work is
before us, and there is a decision before us in the garden, perhaps, when they are
about to take our Christ from us. There is a wonderful story the Jewish midrash that
tells the story of slothful man’s excuses when it came to studying with an elder who was
going to teach him the Torah, or the holy laws of Israel. “They tell the sluggard, ‘Your
teacher is in a nearby city, go and learn Torah from him.’ He responds ‘I fear a lion on
the highway.’ ‘Your teacher is in your own city.’ ‘I fear a lion in the streets.’ ‘Your
teacher is near your home.’ ‘I am afraid a lion is outside.’ ‘Your teacher is in a room
inside your home.’ ‘I am afraid that if I rise from bed the door will be locked.’ ‘But the
door is open.’ ‘I need a little more sleep.’ You see, sloth is about not doing the work
that will strengthen us to do the spiritual and ethical work we need to do in this world—
and so we find a million excuses for not showing up, so to speak, to those moments and
spaces that will feed us the food we need for the journey.

An example from my own life: I have good friends spread out all over this country, but I’
ve found that in the last 10 years that I have become very lazy when it comes to
friendships, to not putting in the effort that comes with making and keeping friends.
Part of that is that I am a highly introverted person—I like people but I also really like
being by myself—being by myself usually recharges my battery, especially if I have
been around people all day. And yet, not always, because there are times when I need
those good friends that have graciously been with me for the journey, and they need
me, and what I have noticed over the years is that I am not as connected to them as I
used to be, some because of the distance, but actually mostly because I don’t tend to
those relationships like I should. I have become lazy about them, assuming that they
are always going to be, just as they always have been, after the 5, 10, 15 years that we’
ve continued to be friends. I’ve neglected these friendships, because they were so
easy to begin with, and I guess I assume they always will be…but that’s not the case, of
course—all relationships demand work, including the ones with our friends, and
partners and spouses, and, yes, even our God.

And yet, it’s not just about all of sudden finding yourself a little alone in this world
personally because of your personal neglect of friends—sloth really does have big
world consequences, beyond the personal realm. Thomas Aquinas, the great medieval
theologian, whom I have a mostly love/hate relationship with, has said that sloth is a
“sluggishness of the mind which neglects to begin good... [it] is evil in its effect, if it so
oppresses man as to draw him away entirely from good deeds." (2, 35, ad , McDermott,
ed.) When we’re lazy in tending to our souls, we also tend to become lazy in the way
we live our lives in this world, especially when it relates to doing the right thing with
others, with ourselves, with the greater earth, all of which need us to do the right thing.
When we’re slugglish and lazy about our spiritual lives, are we really surprised that we
don’t bother to do things that will take care of the earth, like recycling and cutting back
on our waste? What about the poor, the helpless, the nobodies in this world? Do we
justify our laziness towards them and correcting the injustices in this world by saying,
“well, my little part won’t help—the problem is too big, so I’m not even going to bother
doing my little part in helping to solve it.” If God rains God’s goodness on us, in the
form of all the good things we’ve been given—a place to live, a church community to
share our lives in, a spouse, a partner, a job, children, friends—and we do not tend to
the soil that the goodness has rained on, the soil that is our souls, well, then, as the
writer of Hebrews says, what we will reap is thorns and thistles from the all that
goodness God has generously rained onto us.

So how do we do this work, this tending to the spirit, so that we will not fall into the sin of
sloth, of spiritual laziness? Well, according to the tradition of the church, the opposite
of sloth is zeal, is passion, is being eager and enthusiastic for what work has been
given to us, the work of healing of the world, and sharing the good news of God’s love.
And we become eager for this work, zealous for this work by actually doing it, by actual
practicing the goodness we want to see enacted in this world. Some wise folks have
said that the first step towards becoming something you want to become is to actually
imitate or practice that goodness we see and admire in others, to imitate the goodness
in their actions that you hope to see blossom in your heart. As I said a few weeks ago,
love is not a matter of the heart, at least in the Christian tradition—it is a matter of what
we do, not what we feel, and so we show our love for others by treating them right, by
sticking up for them, by honoring them as fellow children of God. And so if we want to
love someone, even if we do not feel it for them, we must practice that love for them, by
doing the right thing by them, even if our heart is not in it, at least not yet. The great
Jewish mystic and scholar, Maimonides tells us that it is “preferable to give alms to the
poor repeatedly, even if in small sums, than to give a large sum once. Although the
total amount given is the same in the two cases, we acquire the virtue of generosity by
repeating generous acts until they become second nature.” In being told to imitate
those who are further along the journey than us, we are asked to do what we want to
become, that is, to imitate the Christ in our life, and then let our hearts catch up to our
actions in this world. That is what the writer of Hebrews is asking us to do—to imitate
those who are generous and good and compassionate and passionate and holy, and
then let God transform the work of our hands into something that will transform our
hearts and souls. The good news here, the really good news, is that if we follow the
way of Christ long enough, there is no doubt that one day our hearts really will catch up
to our actions, but first things first: we have to get up and get going, and be good to
each other, and to this world, a world in need of people who are willing to do the right
thing. Amen.