Episode Transcript
[00:00:00] Speaker A: Pray with me, oh gracious God, would you open our hearts and our minds by the power of your Holy Spirit, that as the Scriptures are read and your Word proclaimed, we may hear your voice and pay attention to what each of us needs to hear so that our lives might be transformed by your love and your grace.
Amen.
Our Scripture reading this morning is from from Paul's Letter to the Ephesians, chapter 4, verses 14 through 28.
We must no longer be children, tossed to and fro and blown about by every kind of doctrine, by people's trickery, by their craftiness in deceitful scheming, but speaking the truth in love. We must grow up in every way into him who is the head into Christ, from whom the whole body, joined and knit together by every ligament with which it is equipped, as each part is working properly, promotes the body's growth in building itself up in love.
Now this I affirm and insist on in the Lord. You must no longer walk as the Gentiles walk in the futility of their minds. They are darkened in their understanding, alienated from the life of God because of their ignorance and hardness of heart.
They have lost all sensitivity and have abandoned themselves to licentiousness, greedy to practice every kind of impurity.
That is not the way you learned Christ, for surely you have heard about him and were taught in him as truth and is in Jesus. To put away your former life, your old self, corrupt and deluded by its lusts, and to be renewed in the spirit of your minds, and to clothe yourself with the new self, created according to the likeness of God in true righteousness and holiness.
So then, putting away falsehood, let each of you speak the truth with your neighbor, for we are members of one another.
Be angry and do not sin.
Do not let the sun go down on your anger and do not make room for the devil.
Those who steal must give up stealing. Rather, let them labor doing good work with their own hands so as to have something to share with the needy.
This is the word of the Lord.
Thanks be to God.
[00:03:02] Speaker B: So at Knox we have been in a sermon series on the seven Deadly Sins, also called the seven Deadly Vices. And I'm grateful for the preachers who've joined me in the sermon series for Pam King, who preached on envy, Linda Peake, who preached on gluttony, and Josiah Marroquin last Sunday who preached on wrath. Today, the final sermon in the series, I get to tackle sloth.
So here is the sloth.
Jill and I got to see some of these creatures up Close during a trip to Costa Rica some years back. And they are impressive creatures from the time they're little, like this baby sloth. They learn and spend most of their time hanging from trees. And because of those great claws, it doesn't take much energy to hang. They can just use those claws to do it. And they spend most of their time doing just that. The sloth is a master at preserving energy.
90% of their time is spent motionless. Isn't that kind of awesome?
And because of this, their bodies just don't need a whole lot of protein or energy, or that the sloth can survive on a diet of nothing but leaves. The sloth is a happy vegan.
They don't have to chase down other animals or even insects for food. Now when they do move, it's really slow. It would take a sloth about a full minute. And that's at the end, fastest pace a sloth can muster to get from the pulpit over here to this lectern, a full 60 seconds or more. They are very slow, but they don't need to move a lot. They can spend their time just hanging out, enjoying the goodness of creation, not hurting anybody.
So how do I preach against the sloth?
I wonder instead if the sloth doesn't have something to teach us, you know, in a place and time where capitalism, you know, and the values of capitalism are so dominant, where a market driven mentality can bombard us with the message, you must do more, act more, earn more, accomplish more, produce more. We're told we are what we produce, what we earn.
And this can lead us to overwork on one hand and to undervaluing the full humanity of others and the beauty of all creation, so obsessed we can get in accomplishment, earning and production. Of course, a scriptural antidote to all this is Sabbath.
Sabbath and its emphasis on resting, refraining from labor for all creation, even the land and animals.
Sabbath reminds us it's by God's activity, God's work, creating, redeeming and sustaining creatures and all creation that we and our world are saved. You know, in Costa Rica, I could almost hear Jesus tapping my shoulder and saying, matt, and why do you worry so much about the future, what you will eat and what you will wear?
Consider the sloth, how she hangs.
Has God not beautifully clothed her?
Is she not wondrous like the lilies of the field and the birds of the air?
Now there is of course a point where rest becomes avoidance, inactivity, a failure to answer God's call, to do justice, love mercy and walk humbly. With God. Active words.
But how do you distinguish what you might call good sloth, Sabbath rest and bad sloth?
Laziness, inactivity, inattention to God's call.
Well, going all the way back to the 4th century, a word was used for this ancient sin or vice that I think is more helpful than the word sloth today. I like this older word in part because it doesn't call to mind that majestic creature, the sloth.
The original older word for this vice or sin is acedia.
Acedia.
In the Iliad, Homer used acedia to refer in particular to lack of care, particularly lack of care for a comrade who had fallen. If another soldier didn't care about that comrade, and particularly how they were buried, that was determined acedia or acadia in Greek, which means literally lack of care.
Now, acedia became prominent in the Christian church at least from as back as the fourth century, because we have the words of a Christian monk, Evagrius of Pontus, writing about acedia. He called it the noonday demon. And here's what he observed with regard to monks. He said right in the middle of the day, between about 10am and and 2pm he'd see this kind of malady hit monks. They'd get restless and they'd start to dislike things. They would get frustrated that no one was coming to visit them. They'd be frustrated that the sun was hot. They'd start to dislike their cell, dislike their place, dislike manual labor and so that you have to do as a monk and they wouldn't do it. They'd start to even dislike their call to be a monk.
And so of Agrius called that acedia the noonday demon.
Now, full disclosure, I am not a monk, but I did spend a week with some Benedictine monks. Just last week, I got to go up to St. Andrew's Abbey in Vallirmo and got to hang out with roughly a dozen of the 20 some monks that call that particular monastery their home.
I got to join them for prayer each day, and other visitors got to join them too. We met in this chapel that you'll see now. And there we prayed. And while we prayed, over in the transepts would sit the brothers. And you can see them here also. You'll see one of the brothers who's playing the organ. And most of the prayer times there are five times during the day and that we pray consist in singing the psalms in a chant like form.
And during the day, after praying a couple times with them, I joined them two or three times for prayer during the Day and the rest of these days it was altogether five days, four nights. I would work on preparing sermon themes and scripture passages, doing long range worship planning, mindful of knocks. I do that in the monastery lounge. So that was my day with the monks. And here is where Acedia came.
I'm a morning person, so get up in the morning, have my coffee. I'm really with it during those morning prayers. I'm focused, you know, Then we go from that to breakfast, which is in silence. And I'm attentive to all the gifts of this food and those around me and the beautiful desert environment, the stark area where we are and the wonder of that beauty. But then it get to be about 10 or 11am and I'd be working on my laptop and I what had been inspiration suddenly became much more burdensome. You know, I'd start to look out the window, I'd start to look at my phone, I'd start to surf the Internet. My mind would wander. Then when I joined the monks for prayer, I'd be totally out of it, not focused on the psalm at all. I'd start to want to be somewhere else, maybe even be someone else.
I thought to myself, oh, this is Acedia, the noonday demon. This restlessness.
Thomas Aquinas, I think, had a great insight about Acedia when he called it aversion to the divine good in us.
Aversion to the divine good in us.
When that noonday demon hit me, I was not observing or attending to the good things God had given me to what God was doing in me, in Christ and the good work God had given me to do. I was averting my eyes from those things, distracted, restless with Acedia.
Well, in today's passage, which Nancy read, we hear of a core change that happens in a person when they become a Christian. At the beginning of chapter four, we read that the context was baptism. That's what we think is being written about in chapter four, the impact of baptism. But we also read of an aversion that can come regarding all that. Baptism involves an aversion. Aquinas called Acedia.
At the start of the fourth chapter of Ephesians, we read of a call a believer receives in baptism. And then Ephesians describes this change that happens with that call in lots of different ways. It's like a child changed into an adult. It's like one ligament getting linked up to others and forming a body together with Christ at the head. It's like you were standing in darkness and then suddenly a light was turned on and you could see what you could not see before. It's like getting a new identity or like getting a new set of clothes and you put them on. It's a change from vice to virtue, from lying to truth telling, from letting anger simmer to seeking reconciliation. Thoughts and actions inside and outside. It's all transformed, we read in Ephesians, by the work of Christ and the power of the Holy Spirit. And it is good what happens to us in baptism.
But all that change is.
Well, it's a lot.
And some days it can feel like too much change is hard and scary. And there's a part of us that just wants to stay where we were, to remain who we were but before all that change started. And that's the temptation of acedia. Aversion to the good God is doing us in, us and through us. And that's precisely the problem we read about in Ephesians as we hear this exhortation. We must no longer be children. We must grow up into Christ. We read, put away your former way of life, your old self, and have your minds renewed. Clothe yourselves with the new self Christ has given you. Speak to another not in falsehood or in anger, but in truth and love. Give up dishonest work and embrace honest labor so you have something to share with another in need.
Clearly, acedia goes back not only to the 4th century of the Common Era, but all the way back to the Christian community in Ephesus and the temptation we read there to fail to see, fail to attend to the good work God has done and is doing well. I've mentioned Elizabeth Oldfield's book throughout the sermon series, Fully Alive, she wrote about each of the seven deadly sins or vices, including acedia.
And there's a great interview with her on Pam King's podcast with and for as well as an upcoming segment I understand with, where Oldfield talks about her practice of the Ignatian examen prayer.
But another author whose writing on the vices or sins I found quite helpful is Rebecca DeYoung, who teaches at Calvin, and she wrote Glittering A New look at the seven deadly sins and their remedies. And DeYoung compares acedia to the kind of aversion that can arise in a friendship or a marriage.
She writes this for all its joys, any intense friendship or marriage has aspects that can seem burdensome.
There's not only the investment of time, but an investment of self that's required for a relationship to exist and grow and flourish. Even more difficult than the physical accommodations are the accommodations of identity no longer thinking just in terms of me and I, but we and us.
Seen in this light, it can seem that staying at arm's length and not engaging or investing would be easier and safer, even if ultimately unhappier, than risking openness to love's transforming power and answering its claim on us.
That's what DeYoung writes. And you see what she's saying, right? If you compare that notion of a friendship or a marriage and the challenges it involves to open ourselves up to that, think of baptism that way. In baptism, we are called into claimed by Christ in a relationship with the God we know through the grace of Christ, by the power of the Holy Spirit. And that relationship makes demands on us. It changes us. We think in terms of us, we, we, not just me. And not only does it transform our relationship with the author of all things, it also impacts our relationship with others. They become sisters and brothers, part of a body that we're joined together with. And it even impacts our relationship with creation. Suddenly, all that God has made the animals and the ecosystems flourishing is tied to our own flourishing. For we are connected in relationship through the God who is our creator, redeemer and sustainer. Acedia is that restlessness with all those relationships demand on us. Acedia is the temptation to just run away and flee.
So what's the answer to the noonday demon? What do we do when acedia rears its head and we're tempted to go back to who we were before all this change started and all these relationships emerged?
And the answer we read time and again in Scripture is to persevere in being who we are, who we are, and to direct our attention back to the good God not only has done, but is doing and will do Theologically, a classic framework for this is to distinguish justification from sanctification. In baptism, we are justified, made one with God through Christ by the power of the Holy Spirit forgiven. We even say in baptism we die to sin and rise to all that is good, justified through Christ.
But then there's sanctification. There's this ongoing work where God is at work in us, shaping us, molding us, where we become and embrace that faith, full identity, understand our particular call, what relationships and work we in particular are called to embrace. We call that sanctification. And that is a journey through joys and challenges, frustrations and a lot of just showing up.
But that showing up and persevering we read time and again is the way through.
When that acedia emerges, the noonday demon, De Young compares it to what you do in a friendship or a marriage. Your emotions may be all over the place and you still say, I love you, I care about you. You might not feel like serving your partner, but you do because you persevere in this call and claim on you.
It means being honest when part of us wants to be false, staying engaged when a big part of us wants to run. Relationships are hard work, but the truth is, relationship is worth it.
Life together is worth it. And if you don't believe me, just ask the sloth.
Even they know life is so much richer with others in community.
Yes, it can be tough when someone else is in your space.
It's hard to shift our focus from just me to us.
But life is so much better when it's shared, isn't it?
For Christians, we're given the gift not only of new life with others bound by the Spirit of God as one body in Christ, but we're given rich relationship with the author of all things and a new relationship with creation. Remember the gift of those relationships when Acedia raises its head, attend to those good things. Stay with your relationship with God and others, bound as you are together in community. Stay with your call.
Whatever work God may have given you to do, do it with all your might and share what you earn generously with others.
Now, should your deepest sense of God's call lead you to a new place, new relationships, a new job, heed that call.
Go boldly, not as an escape, but as an answer.
But if your call has led you to where you are, be there, attentively engaged, right there.
Maybe it's a monk's cell.
Maybe it's an office, a hospital, a courtroom, a dance or art studio, a classroom, a house, an apartment, a concert hall, a workshop out protesting injustice, hammering away on a house.
Or maybe doing worship, planning and praying in the lounge of a monastery.
Some days you'll get restless being where you are, being who you are. But if God has called you, stay the course and the noonday demon will pass.
Nearly 300 years ago, a hymn writer named Isaac Watts was reflecting on the call of Christ and how it changes a person. Several verses from Galatians struck him. Galatians 2:20 caught his eye, which reads, it's no longer I who live, but it is Christ who lives in me. And then his eye fell on Galatians 6:14 May I never boast of anything except the cross of our Lord Jesus Christ.
And he penned what many consider the greatest Christian hymn ever written in the English language. It was a departure from many hymns of his time, which were simply paraphrases of Scripture.
Instead, this hymn took you on a journey through different scriptural insights. It begins reflecting on the cross, then moves to how little our own human accomplishments seem compared to that, to what God has done in Christ.
If there's cause to boast, then it is in Christ. The hymn concludes, and the hymn then draws us back to reflect on the sorrow and love, the pain and the crown evident in Christ's love shown to the world. And then, I love this hymn's ending. It's as if Isaac Watts was confronting acedia directly.
He writes, love so amazing, so divine, demands my soul, my life, my all, even when it demands things of us. May we not avert our eyes from God's good work.
In the name of the Father, Son, and Holy Ghost, Amen.
