Sloth: Unplugged
Sinning Like a Christian: Week 4
Rev. Marti Zimmerman
Smoky Hill UMC

Scripture: Rev. 3: 1-3, 15-19, 22  (The Message) Eugene H. Peterson

“Write this to Sardis, to the Angel of the church. The One holding the Seven Spirits of God in one hand, a firm grip on the Seven Stars with the other, speaks:
“I see right through your work. You have a reputation for vigor and zest, but you’re dead, stone-dead. 2- “Up on your feet! Take a deep breath! Maybe there’s life in you yet. But I wouldn’t know it by looking at your busywork; nothing of God’s work has been completed. Your condition is desperate. Think of the gift you once had in your hands, the Message you heard with your ears—grasp it again and turn back to God.  “If you pull the covers back over your head and sleep on, oblivious to God, I’ll return when you least expect it, break into your life like a thief in the night.

15-17”I know you inside and out, and find little to my liking. You’re not cold, you’re not hot—far better to be either cold or hot! You’re stale. You’re stagnant.

You make me want to vomit. You brag, ‘I’m rich, I’ve got it made, I need nothing from anyone,’ oblivious that in fact you’re a pitiful, blind beggar, threadbare and homeless.  18”Here’s what I want you to do: Buy your gold from me, gold that’s been through the refiner’s fire. Then you’ll be rich. Buy your clothes from me, clothes designed in Heaven. You’ve gone around half-naked long enough. And buy medicine for your eyes from me so you can see, really see. 19”The people I love, I call to account—prod and correct and guide so that they’ll live at their best. Up on your feet, then! About face! Run after God!

 22”Are your ears awake? Listen. Listen to the Wind Words, the Spirit blowing through the churches.”

Prayer

Opening visual -slug on a lawn chair

Just before Labor Day, the United Nations released a report stating, “American workers stay longer in the office, at the factory or on the farm than their counterparts in Europe and most other rich nations, and they produce more per person over the year. They also get more done per hour than everyone but the Norwegians. The United States “leads the world in labor productivity.”
http://money.cnn.com/2007/09/02/news/economy/worker_productivity.ap/index.htm?section=money_topstories

It looks like we are too busy to hear a sermon on sloth. In fact, most of us need a sermon on Sabbath, on the scripture “be still and know that I am God”. We are tired and worn out, like our amazing Trustees and a small group of dedicated volunteers who have moved furniture every night after work last week, moving boxes in and out of offices and classrooms, so that the carpet workers could get their work done in a timely manner. No sloth in our Trustees. The rest of us might have a few moments of sluggishness, but really, sloth is not our problem.

Well that’s what I thought. I mean according to the Encarta Reference Library,
a sloth spends it’s entire existence hanging suspended from the boughs of trees, descending only about once a week, to do what we work so hard to get our two year olds to do on the toilet. They sleep all day and do so little that a form of green algae grows on their hair making them indistinguishable from the leaves they live in and eat on.

If we are so busy as a culture dedicated to new ideas and the self-made fortune,
then do we really need to pay attention to the sin of sloth?

It’s week four of our series Sinning Like a Christian with help from Bishop Will Willimon. We have listened to the ancient wise ones from early Christianity who left the temptations of the city, Jerusalem, Corinth, Rome, in order to follow Jesus. They hoped that living in the dessert would help them be faithful. They discovered what Jesus discovered in the wilderness. Temptations do not go away just because we are alone.

As they faced themselves, looking at their lives and thoughts with the eyes of Christ they identified seven ordinary, pervasive sins that if not checked become the “source…the necessary first step toward other sin.” (.P. 21 Willimon) Murder is often the child of greed as we learn on Law and Order.

Gregory the Great, a Bishop in the 5th century who brought Christianity to the English, said, “From envy (one of the seven) there springs hatred, whispering, detraction, exaltation at the misfortune of a neighbor, and affliction at his prosperity. From anger (another of the seven) are produced strife, swelling of mind, insults, clamor, indignation, blasphemies.” (.P. 21 Willimon)

Certainly Hitler’s hatred of Jews started with the seven deadly sins growing into the immoral and incomprehensible genocide we call the Holocaust.

But what does any of this have to do with sloth? How can sloth be considered a serious sin in need of attention and grace? According to Rev. Don Friesen,
“Sloth is an Old English word, seldom used anymore. It suggests a sluggishness of spirit, a lack of real desire for anything, a lack of passion- …A better word might be the Latin word, “acedia,” meaning “apathy and inactivity in the practice of virtue”. A slothful person does not make it a priority to do what should be done,
or to change what should be changed. Sloth suggests a lack of depth, a lack of commitment.” (Sloth or Troth? A Maundy Thursday meditation, on Matthew 26:36-44 and John 13:1-17, 34-35. Don Friesen . March 28, 2002)

Our reading this morning comes from the book of Revelations. The writer is speaking to the church at Sardis, a church that from the outside looks good.
If we had been church shopping in those days, looking for a spiritual home,
Sardis would have looked good to the visitor.
But not with Jesus eyes. God saw what others could not.

“I see right through your work. (Rev. 3) You have a reputation for vigor and zest,
but you’re dead, stone-dead….I know you inside and out, and find little to my liking. You’re not cold, you’re not hot—far better to be either cold or hot! You’re stale. You’re stagnant. You make me want to vomit. You brag, ‘I’m rich, I’ve got it made, I need nothing from anyone,’ oblivious that in fact you’re a pitiful, blind beggar, threadbare and homeless.”

We don’t often think of God vomit. But Revelations lets us know, its full of spiritual sloth. Thomas Aquinas described sloth as a “sluggishness of the mind
which neglects to begin” to do good deeds.

John Cassian (360-435), the 4th century monk who wrote a lot about the Seven Deadly Sins, saw sloth as a low-grade disgust people feel in fulfilling obligations and duties. It’s not only negligence, but a negligence coupled with a low-grade weariness of heart, a gradual wearing away of devotion. Another commentator describes sloth as the sin that “believes in nothing, cares for nothing, seeks to know nothing, interferes with nothing, enjoys nothing, and remains alive because there is nothing for which it will die.” (Henry Fairlie, The Seven Deadly Sins Today)

Along with 7 million Jews, 4 million Gypsies, Ukrainians, Byelorussians, Poles, Jehovah’s Witnesses, homosexuals, clergy, communists, socialists, and other political enemies. Additionally, many non-Jews were persecuted because they were thought to be Jews, and of course, those caught trying to protect or hide Jews were killed as well.

Martin Niemoller, a German pastor during World War II suffered from sloth.
“When the Nazis came for the communists, I did not speak out—
because I was not a communist;
Then they came for the socialists, and I did not speak out—
because I was not a socialist;
Then they came for the trade unionists, and I did not speak out—
because I was not a trade unionist;
Then they came for the Jews, and I did not speak out—because I was not a Jew;
Then they came for me—and there was no one left to speak out for me.
(Niemoller’s famous confession to the German Protestant church in 1946)

Holocaust survivor and Nobel Peace Prize winner (1986) Eli Weisel, wrote,
“...to remain silent and indifferent is the greatest sin of all...”

Many of our high school students learn of the pain of genocide in his book, “Night”, an autobiography of what it was like for him and his family when they were taken by the Nazi’s and put in concentration camps. But he speaks to the sin of sloth in another book, part novel and part memoir, The Town Beyond the Wall” .A young man named Michael having survived the Holocaust travels at great personal risk behind the Iron Curtain to his hometown. Michael could remember the soldiers and the police who had brutalized him and those that he loved. Wiesel writes, “Michael, in a strange way, understood the brutality of the executioners and the prison guards, but what plagued him and what really caused him to want to go back to his homeland was what he didn’t understand.
There was a certain man who lived across the street from his Synagogue. This man peered through his window, day after day, as thousands of Jews were herded into the death trains. Reflecting no pity, no pleasure, no shock, not even anger or interest. Impassive, cold, impersonal.” Wiesel concludes, “To be indifferent, for whatever reason, is to deny not only the validity of existence, but also it’s beauty. Betray and you are a man, torture your neighbor, you are still a man. Evil is human. Weakness is human. Indifference is not.”

T. S. Elliot wrote, “Numb. Blank. Nothing. I run every morning, cook work, smile, make money. Inside there is nothing. Bankrupt.” (The Wasteland)

In Matthew 25:14-30 Jesus tells a parable about a “slothful servant” chastised for inactivity. He urges his disciples to “Love your neighbor as yourself.”
And we the modern listeners beg off, like the religious lawyer of old asking, “who is my neighbor?”

Out in the desert, the monks like us faced their demons, pride, anger, envy, greed, lust, gluttony, and sloth. Alone they could not grow in faith. It took God’s help. then It still does.

There were German pastors and lay people who did not turn away. Dietrich Bonhoeffer was one. But he did not trust in his good deeds or intent. He did something each one of us here can do today if we discover that we like the church in Sardis are neither hot nor cold, if we like the Sardis have no passion, no life.
Bonhoeffer plugged into God’s mercy,
Bonhoeffer plugged into God’s gift of grace for strength.

Hello. Tech Support; may I help you?”
“Yes, well, I’m having trouble with my computer.”

“What sort of trouble?”
“Well, I was just typing along, and all of a sudden the words went away.”

“Went away?”
“They disappeared.”

“Hmm. So what does your screen look like now?”
“Nothing.”

“Nothing?”
“It’s blank; it won’t accept anything when I type.”

“Are you still in WordPerfect, or did you get out?”
“How do I tell?”

[Uh-oh. Well, let’s give it a try anyway.]
“Can you see the C:\ prompt on the screen?”
“What’s a sea-prompt?”

“Never mind. Can you move the cursor around on the screen?”
“There isn’t any cursor: I told you, it won’t accept anything I type.”
“Does your monitor have a power indicator?”
“What’s a monitor?”

“It’s the thing with the screen on it that looks like a TV.
Does it have a little light that tells you when it’s on?”
“I don’t know.”

“Well, then look on the back of the monitor and find where the power cord goes into it. Can you see that?”
[sound of rustling and jostling] [muffled] “Yes, I think so.”

“Great! Follow the cord to the plug, and tell me if it’s plugged into the wall.”

Are you plugged in?
Bonhoeffer didn’t try to take on the Nazi’s alone. Plugged into God’s willingness to love him, he combined prayer and Bible study in small group of concerned Christian’s who would not ignore the Nazis atrocities. Their response to God’s love and power was to act on behalf of others. Unlike Niemoller, they worked at loving their neighbors.

God is the power source that allows people to make changes. God invites us to plug in, that’s called prevenient grace in John Wesley’s world. But if you suffer from spiritual sloth, if you look at your life and find you are not involved in the lives of children saying been there done that, or willing to feed the homeless, or write a letter about the war in the Sudan, or take the new refugee family home for dinner, or too busy to make sandwiches for the day laborer, or recycle your trash or drive less, or visit the homebound or make a meal for someone struggling with chemo, if you look at your life and discover you are lukewarm, not hot nor cold about anything, then you are invited this morning and every morning to plug into God’s power. It’s a gift and it always on offering you the strength to make a difference, to love our neighbors as ourselves.

And when we are plugged in, we are like the boy flinging starfish back into the sea. He knew that if he did not do his task, if in a sense spiritual sloth took control, the stranded starfish would die before the tide returned. And even with millions of starfish stranded on the beach, “it makes a difference to this one.”

Plugged in to God’s power, you can make a difference too.
Let us pray.

“Up on your feet!
Take a deep breath!
Maybe there’s life in you yet 19”The people I love, I call to account—prod and correct and guide so that they’ll live at their best. Up on your feet, then! About face! Run after God! ”
Amen!

Apostle Paul told believers in Rome,
“Never flag in zeal, be aglow with the Spirit, serve the Lord.” (Romans 12:11, RSV)

Hebrews “...we want each one of you to show ... 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.”

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