The Deadly Sin of Sloth

The book of Proverbs uses the word sloth or sluggard in various passages. For example Proverbs 26:14 states As a door turns on its hinges, so a sluggard turns on his bed. I was fresh out of Bible College and serving as a youth minister at a church in GA. One evening I got a phone call about one of the teenagers in the youth group. I was asked to head to the local hospital.  The teenage girl that I was asked to see was only 15 years old and had been in a terrible accident.  She was on her way home from a date with her boyfriend. They were traveling down a country dirt road that had a tight curve. As they went around the curve another car, which was being driven too fast for conditions, hit them head on. The Mom and Dad of the girl had received the frightening phone call about their daughter’s dreadful accident. The parent’s were told that their daughter was being taken to the local hospital. The parents quickly gathered themselves together, hopped into their car and began driving towards the hospital.

It just so happened that where the family lived and where the accident occurred was close by. The parents had to drive past the accident scene on their way to the hospital. They saw the wretched car. They saw the first responders. They saw car parts scattered here and there.
 

It is in moments like these that you remember how precious the gift of life is. It is something that cannot be measured. The Hebrews had a word –  כָּבַד  kabad  (kaw-bad') – it means weight or weighty. It was a business term. It comes from the weights and measures that were used in the selling of goods. Overtime the word came to be use more in a  figurative sense of weight. It came to mean things there were weighty like God’s glory. What we know about weight is that the things that matter most can’t be weighted. There is this precious gift of life that every one of us has been given.

In Proverbs when it talks about the sluggard asking questions like “How long will you lie there you sluggard?” or “When will you get up from your sleep? “ In Proverbs a sluggard is about a particular posture and mood to being. Being a sloth is not stillness. A sloth is not rest , play, Sabbath or reflection. We might say something like “I had a totally relaxing Saturday . We just sat around and were lazy all day.” You were not being lazy on Saturday. You were relaxing. You were resting from your work. For some people there is work and everything else is laziness. When we talk about sloth we are not necessarily talking about a healthy balance between work and rest. For some people if they are not busy then they were being lazy. Yet there are other categories like stillness, rest, reflection, prayer and Sabbath. When the book of Proverbs talks about a sloth it means more than just lazy or not busy working. A sloth is a person who is saying no to the endless possibilities of the life that God has given you. A sloth is a person who takes the precious, sacred, holy gift of life given to you by God and essentially saying “Nay!” and rolling over and turning away and rejecting all that is yours.

Jurgen Moltmann: God’s spirit is the life force of the resurrection which, starting from Easter, is “poured out on all flesh” in order to make it eternally alive. In the tempest of the divine Spirit of life the final springtime of creation begins, and the men and women who already experience it here and now sense that life has come alive and is worth living. What Moltmann is saying is that the resurrection of Jesus brings forth times of resurrection in our everyday lives when from the oddest of places new life springs forth. All of the sudden you have a renewed sense that this life is matters, it is precious, it is sacred. Moltmann continues . . It is already experienced here and now in the spirit of life, which interpenetrates body and soul and wakens all our vital powers. When you look in the Bible at the times the word Spirit is used and its working in the lives of people it seems to awake people to real life. It awakens people to a renewed sense what life is all about. In the Bible when the Spirit moves I a person’s life is it like they have been set free. A sloth is someone who refuses to be set free. A sloth is a person who does not want the life that God has given to them.

The world desperately needs followers of Jesus and his Spirit that are awaked to the precious gift of life that God has given. When you read the Gospels (Matthew, Mark, Luke and John)  Jesus does not walk down the beach to his disciples and tell them something like “I am going to go over there and do some stuff and I am going to be right back.” Instead Jesus says  “Come with me. There is some stuff I have to show you. You all need to see me do this because some you all are going to do stuff. I want you all to live the real and abundant life that I bring.”

 There are many reasons why we turn over in the bed and deprive the world of us awaking to all our vital powers. So what you will find in the book of Proverbs are these sayings loaded with implications for why we don’t do everything we are called to do.

• Proverbs 26:16 “Sluggards are wiser in their own eyes than seven people who answer discreetly.”

     Sluggards are wiser in their own eyes. Sometimes people are lazy and are a sloth because of their ego. They don’t do anything because they only want to do things that they consider big enough and important enough for them to do. So when we talk about being a sloth we need to talk about our often over inflated egos. When you meet people who love what they do it is interesting how they talk about their job. They typically don’t say “Well they brought me right over to the corner office when I started.” No, what they say is “I started out in the mail room” or “I started out at the front desk.”
     One of my first jobs as a teenager was working at a grocery store. It was my duty, along with a few other guys, to unload the weekly food truck. Since I was the new guy then I got all of the crummy jobs. I remember one time while unloading the truck a box full of sliced pickles had broken and gotten a lot of the boxes under it wet. Did I mention that the truck was hot. One a 80 or 90 degree day it could reach 100 plus inside the truck. So I am in this hot truck with stinky pickle juice, broken glass and sliced pickles all over. I would also note that when cardboard gets wet it gets weak.  
     It became my job to clean the mess up. Well after getting covered in pickle juice, cleaning up other smashed jars from the wet boxes underneath and getting cut by a piece of broken glass I figured now was a good time to just walk out. This is nuts. I just don’t do this kind of work. If I did that then I would be missing out on something important. When you meet people who love what they do they started by doing the thing that was right in front them. You come alive and in all your vital powers and you throw your energies on whatever is right in front of you.
     When people say something like “You don’t understand. I am awesome. I am so awesome that I can’t start in the mail room. I have to start in a place that is fitting and worth of my time and efforts.” Well if you are that awesome then everybody in the mail room will quickly discover your awesomeness and will give you more responsibilities. Why?  Because awesomeness is contagious. If you are as great as you think you are then actually the more humble task will amplify your awesomeness or it will reveal your heart. Sometimes we just don’t give it all. We hold back and we don’t jump in because we have this over inflated sense of who we are. The invitation is to do the thing that is right in front of us.

• Proverbs 26:13 A sluggard says “There’s a lion in the road, a fierce lion roaming the streets!”

     This is the sluggard who has imagined all sorts of terrible things. This passage has a kind of mocking tone. The sluggard has created, in their own imagination, all of these possible horrible things that could go wrong. They step back and withdraw because it might fail. What if I lose money? What if this idea blows up in my face?  What if there is a fierce lion roaming around? Here is the truth. Some people do not awaken to all their vital powers because they are worried that something is going to go wrong. Worry and fear come from an unknown about the future. You don’t have to worry about something going wrong. You never ever never have to worry about something going wrong. Why? Because it is going to. You don’t have to worry you can just know that it is going to go wrong. There is no need to wonder about what can happen because it will. So what happens is that we become terrified about what might happen if we try this thing and end up doing nothing. Don’t know about you yet it seems to me that the best stories in my life and in the lives of others that I have heard come from failure. You may end up face down in the mud. You may lose money. You might have to fill out lots of paper work. You might have to try more than once. The sluggard is the one who imagines all the ways that things could go wrong. They turn back over in their bed and go back to sleep.

When you believe that God has awakened you to your vital powers then you realized that this God is simply bigger. Sometimes we are a sluggard out of ego. Sometimes out our imagined fear and sometimes is it because of the stuff below the surface. In Matthew 16:2-23 Jesus’ ministry is gaining a bit of steam. More and more people are following Jesus. This movement is gaining followers. Jesus informs his followers know that he is not like other rebel leaders. He is not gathering an army to march on Jerusalem and kick out the Romans. Jesus is not interested in establishing an earthly kingdom like those of David or Solomon. Jesus knew that you don’t resist systems of oppression and injustice without those systems pushing back.

 Some of you have experienced this. You stood up at your job over some injustice and the system pushed back. Jesus is telling his followers look I am going to die and then come back to life. Peter stands up and says no way Jesus. I don’t think so. Jesus tells Peter to get behind me Satan. Often this passage is read as a sort of – Come on Jesus. This is a very intense situation and the whole get behind me Satan sounds a bit strong. Yet I think there is something going on that is more profound. Jesus is giving himself fully to the healing of the world. He is using all of his vital powers. He is going to give himself and resist to the very end. And in resisting he is going to forgive. He will die for the sins of the world. He will take on the worst that evil can do and come out victorious.

However, there is a cost to his actions. There is a sacrifice that he must make. So when Jesus says to Peter get behind me perhaps Jesus is saying there is a cost when you act in the world and it must be paid. I am going to pay it. You can’t get to Sunday without going through Friday.

Sometimes we are lazy because we don’t want to pay the cost. What if we are misunderstood? We may have to shell out lots of resources, money and time. We don’t want to pay that cost. Sometimes we withhold because we don’t want to be criticized. The secret to criticism is that you just keep doing (in all your vital powers) the work that is right in front of you. Criticism does make you question. Criticism does make you count the cost and deal with your baggage. Yet stay on the path. Because sometimes you have to go through Friday to get to Sunday. Might we followers of Jesus through ourselves into the tasks that we have right in front of us and not roll over in bed and say no.