David A. Renwick
Second Presbyterian Church
Sermons: April 2, 2006

Speaking of Sin: "Sloth"

In our sermons in Lent, as many of you may know, we have been considering the seven deadly sins together – pride, envy, greed, gluttony, lust, anger and sloth. And we come today to the seventh of these: sloth, the seventh deadly sin. . . deadly, perhaps, because in each case it’s not always easy to know when you have slipped into sin from doing something which is quite legitimate. Each one of these sins, as it were, has a legitimate side. Something which is not evil or wrong or bad.

So, for example, when we think about anger, there’s a time to be angry. There’s are some things in this world that should make us angry, that are downright unjust and unfair and if we do not get angry about them, then there is something wrong. We call it righteous indignation. Jesus, at times, got angry. It’s okay. At the right time and at the right place. But then we slip into what we might call self-righteous indignation, where we’re angry not at something that’s wrong in and of itself, but when something which is wrong for us – somebody is in our way, stepping on our toes, and we get angry about that, then anger can be an expression of mere selfishness. But, you see, at the time, when we’re "in it"! At times we can’t see which is which: when we’re being selfish, when we’re being "self-righteously" angry, or when we’re being "righteously" angry.

And so it’s pernicious, it’s deadly, in that kind of a sense and this is true, I think, of all these deadly sins.

And it’s certainly true when we come to the sin of sloth or laziness or procrastination or whatever else you may want to call it. There is, though it may seem strange to say this, there is a good side to sloth, and there is a bad side to sloth, and it’s important to be clear about these two aspects of what we might call "doing nothing." That is, not all "doing nothing" is wrong. Not all inactivity is wrong. In fact, in our hectic world, it’s quite possible that being busy all the time is more of a deadly sin than "doing nothing."

One missionary leader by the name of Fred Mitchell put it like this. He said, "Beware the barrenness of a busy life." I’d like you to remember that phrase. Let’s say it together. . . .

"Beware the barrenness of a busy life." A life which has no margins. A life with no downtime, when God commands us at times to rest. When God gives to us the Sabbath commandment and says, "Be still and know that I am God." This is a command of God. We may quibble about what day the Sabbath day should be on. We may quibble about what specifically we ought to do or ought not to do on that day, but there is no doubt that at some time, in every week, God says to us, "Be still. Stop. Cease. Rest." A command of God. Do nothing.

"Beware the barrenness of a busy life." A life in which, for example, God commands us to take time to think, to love the Lord our God with all our mind, and yet in which there are days or weeks that go by in which we just don’t think much about anything of ultimate significance.

Dr. Mark Bauerlein is a professor of English at Emory University and recently he said these words (Mars Hill Audio Journal, Vol.78, Jan/Feb 2006). He said,

"If you ask 100 English professors who have been teaching for the last twenty years if any of them have not seen a deterioration of reading habits and writing skills, you wouldn’t get more than two or three people saying "no." The students simply do not have the habits of concentration. Their daily lives are not structured to go for two hours sitting in a chair, reading a book, without interruption. They have a cell phone that beeps, their computer over in the corner dings when an email comes through. They wear blackberries, their lives are filled with distraction. For the majority of these kids, there is no private space. There is no reading space. There is no uninterrupted contemplation time."

No interrupted contemplation time.

And it’s not just the kids, of course. It’s all of us caught up in this busyness here from time to time. No time to think. No time to rest.

"Beware the barrenness of a busy life." Or no time to listen. Ray Houghton is a physician in Berkeley, California, and he speaks of the importance of doing nothing but listening. Nothing but listening. He writes this, he says,

"When I ask you to listen to me and you start giving advice,
    you have not done what I asked.
When I ask you to listen to me and you begin to tell me why I shouldn’t feel that way,
    you are trampling on my feelings.
When I ask you to listen to me and you feel you have to do something to solve my problem,
    you’ve failed me, strange as that may seem.
Listen. All I asked was that you listen.
    Not talk. Or do. Just hear.
Advice is cheap. Twenty cents will get you both Dear Abby and Billy Graham in the same newspaper.
And I can do for myself. I’m not helpless.
    Maybe discouraged and faltering but not helpless.
When you do something for me that I can and need to do for myself,
    you contribute to my fear and my inadequacies. So please listen and just hear me.
And if you want to talk, well, wait a minute for your turn
    and I will listen to you."

Now, let’s be clear. There are times when I want somebody to listen to me and to give me advice, to help me out. There are times when I desperately need some advice! But there are times when I am so busy, when somebody comes to me, that I don’t hear what they need. I don’t hear that all they need is just my ear, my attention, and nothing more. But I’m too busy to know what’s really going on.

"Beware the barrenness of a busy life." Talking when we should listen. . . Doing when we should be thinking. . . On the move when we should rest.

So sloth, you see, is not just about inactivity. And it’s not just about doing nothing. Rather, and this is how I would like to define sloth this morning, sloth is about doing nothing, it’s about inactivity, when God has got something for us to do. Sloth is about doing nothing and it’s about inactivity when God has got something for us to do.

— It may be that God says to us, "Do nothing." Hey, that’s just fine. That’s not sloth. Be still. That’s fine. Listen. That’s fine.

— But if God says it’s time to move and if we know it and we don’t do it, that is sloth. If God has spoken and God’s will is clear and there are plenty of times when God’s will is perfectly clear – when we do not need a voice from heaven to tell us what God’s will is – and if we keep on putting it off, then that is sloth.

Sloth is what the disciples were guilty of, what they gave in to sleep in Jesus’ darkest hour in the Garden of Gethsemane. You remember the story from our scripture reading.

Jesus takes his dearest friends with him, his closest friends with him into the Garden of Gethsemane when he wants to go and pray. Just hours before he’s going to be crucified. And he knows what’s going to happen. He can see the course of impending events unfolding before him. And he is in great pain. And he wants to pray but he does not want to be alone. He is at his most human.

And so he takes Peter and James and John with him, off by themselves, and he says, "I am deeply grieved." He doesn’t hide his feelings here. He says, "I am deeply grieved, even to death. Remain here and stay awake with me." Not just "stay awake" but "stay awake with me." And then he begins to pray. And when he concludes the first part of his prayer, if you remember, he gets up from his knees, he finds his disciples, his closest friends, and they are asleep. They were, as it were, "not there with him." They’re in some other world but they’re "not there with him." Emotionally, they have gone. They’ve let him down. They were undependable. And that, I think, is also a good definition of sloth: when we cannot be depended on to be the people God wants us to be. Not dependable when something important, something God-given, is at hand.

And so, in the same way, we find Paul writing to Timothy and calling his young protégé to be a dependable kind of a person. Not to give into sloth.

Not to allow his gifts and his talents, which are many, to go to waste.
Not to allow his family heritage, which is substantial, to go to waste.
Not to allow his God-given experience of the Holy Spirit to fade away into oblivion.

God has called you. God has something for you to do. You need to do. Rise up and do it. His words are gentle to Timothy. He says,

"I am reminded of your sincere faith, a faith that lived first in your grandmother Lois and in your mother Eunice (what a heritage received in his family) and I’m sure lives in you. For this reason, I remind you to rekindle the gift of God that is within you through the laying on of my hands (many gifts, perhaps: the gift to preach; the gift to teach; the gift to lead . . . ). For God did not give us a spirit of cowardice but rather a spirit of power and of love and of self-discipline (if that’s what God has given you, then, says Paul, finally you need to work. You need to step up to the plate). . . Hold to a standard of sound teaching that you have heard from me and guard the good treasure entrusted to you with the help of the Holy Spirit, living within us."

As if to say: Come on Timothy, God has called you. God has something for you to do. Don’t be slothful. Don’t forget your heritage and your gifts and God’s empowering presence within you: "a spirit of power and of love and of self-discipline," . . .

The very same Spirit that God gives to you and me. To every single one of us. Calling us as well, empowering everyone of us, to have that same kind of self-discipline and dependability that Paul expected of Timothy and that our Lord Jesus expected of his closest friends, of Peter and James and John. . . the kind of self-discipline and dependability that doesn’t wait to be asked to serve, that doesn’t need to be reminded a second time, but is always on the look out to step in and get the job done.

Just like the ant in Proverb 6.

"Go to the ant, you lazy bones. Consider its ways and be wise. Without having any chief or officer or ruler, it prepares its food in summer and gathers its substances in harvest. How long will you lie there, oh lazy bones? When will you rise from your sleep?

How long? How long until you get the job done? And God has called every single one of us to get the job done. I don’t know if you know this but within any organization, including the church, that there are not only "lazy bones," but there are other kinds of bones as well? Remember?

• There are wishbones, people who spend all their time wishing somebody else would do the work.
• There are jawbones, people like me who do all the talking but never get on to doing anything in particular.
• There are knucklebones, who knock everything that happens, that anybody tries to do.
• And then there are backbones, who get under the load and get the work done.

We are blessed here at second, – there are lots of backbones in this room today! And God calls us, you see,

not to be slothful, but to be backbones.
Not to be slothful but to be self-starting.
Not to be slothful, but to be dependable.

Knowing that God’s call is real, not just for ministers but for every one within the family of God.
Knowing that God has given us gifts to use.
Knowing that God has given us, each one, a marvelous heritage and that God has given us God’s spirit, a spirit "not of cowardice," (nor of sloth), "but of power and of love and of self-discipline."

"Come away with me," says Jesus. Not just to Peter and James and John, but he surely says it to us as well. "Come away with me. I need you to stay with me, to stay awake with me. I need you," says Jesus, the Son of God, to us.

Yes, beware the barrenness of a busy life.
But, yes, beware, too, of sloth, when God has something for us to do and for whatever reason, we just don’t get around to do it.

Pride. Envy. Greed. Gluttony. Lust. Anger. Sloth.

Seven pernicious, seven deadly sins which in this season of Lent, God calls us to bring to the cross of Christ and crucify!

Let’s pray.

Holy God, help us to be your faithful people. Let us not live lives that are useless but which bring you glory. So strengthen us by your spirit, for Christ’s sake. Amen.