The Small Sliver of Sloth

Pentecost 12

August 16, 2015

Hebrews 5:11-14

The Small Sliver of Sloth

In the name of the Father and of the ☩ Son and of the Holy Spirit.

Everyone gets slivers, those little pieces of wood that get stuck in your skin. The strange thing about slivers is that the bigger the sliver is, the easier they are to find and take out. On the other hand, when a sliver is small, it's much harder to spot and to take out.

This fact makes slivers a useful picture of our own sins. Someone who's a drunk or a drug addict usually knows what they are. They may or may not do anything about it, but their sin is a very big sliver indeed. We could picture it as a plank stuck in their own eye. That's an uncomfortable image, but again, someone is that situation knows it and so does everybody else.

Some of us do struggle with booze and drugs. Or perhaps it's a big temper. Big slivers that everyone can see. But for many of us our slivers are small and hard to spot. For many of us laziness is our most deadly sliver, our most deadly sin. The writer to the Hebrews mentioned this sliver in chapter five.

We have a great deal to say about this, and it’s difficult to explain, since you have become too lazy to understand. (Hebrews 5:11)

Slivers are usually sharp, but this laziness is a dullness that surrounds us and is inside of us. This sin isn't fatigue or being tired. It is a dullness or a laziness of such a kind that a person knows what is right and true and good, but does not pursue it as it deserves to be pursued. The person afflicted with this laziness tries to be good only halfheartedly, causally, in a bored and uninterested way.

In olden times this laziness was called sloth. It was listed among the seven deadly sins. Luther railed against this laziness in the Large Catechism.

Likewise, those fussy spirits are to be rebuked who, after they have heard a sermon or two, find hearing more sermons to be tedious and dull. They think that they know all that well enough and need no more instruction. For that is exactly the sin that was previously counted among mortal sins and is called acidia (apathy). This is a malignant, dangerous plague with which the devil bewitches and deceives the hearts of many so that he may surprise us and secretly take God’s Word from us. (Martin Luther, Large Catechism, Third Commandment, 99)

This apathy toward God's Word is seen in Jesus' parables. For example, in one story, a master gives money (minas) to three servants before leaving for a trip. When he comes back, he finds that the first two servants had been faithful with their minas. But the third servant was lazy.

Another came, saying, ‘Master, here is your mina, which I kept put away in a handkerchief; for I was afraid of you, because you are an exacting man; you take up what you did not lay down and reap what you did not sow.’ He said to him, ‘By your own words I will judge you, you worthless slave. Did you know that I am an exacting man, taking up what I did not lay down and reaping what I did not sow? Then why did you not put my money in the bank, and having come, I would have collected it with interest?’ Then he said to the bystanders, ‘Take the mina away from him and give it to the one who has the ten minas.’ (Luke 19:20-24)

Many people who have been given Baptism as their inheritance hide away God's Word. Too many of our Bibles from our first Communions and confirmations are in mint condition, but our screens, big & flat and small & bright, burn out from tens of thousands of hours of use. You discuss and research how big your next TV will be and what room to put it in and how to get a good deal. You study up on your work breaks and after getting home. Good. How about researching what kind of big Bible you'll get and where to put it? Your TV gets a mounting bracket that you use every day; how about a wooden stand or altar for your Bible where you can read it everyday? Pretty cool, yes? To our lazy ears all that just sounds weird or maybe makes you feel guilty.

We should feel guilty, because we are. But instead of trying to write off our sins, our slivers, our laziness, Christians repent and turn to Christ and receive His forgiveness.

The materialism of our day―our love of stuff―makes laziness, our sloth, easy to fall into. We have a lot of stuff that keeps us from letting the Word of God be the main thing of life. The Gospel of Christ occupies only one of the many cubbyholes in our minds and souls; work, pleasure, family, friends, even the sports page may have bigger cubbyholes. The gifts of God intended to remind us of His goodness end up being more important than the Giver; in our laziness our love of stuff stop us from gratefully adoring God and His Word. This laziness is seen in the words of the crowd that carelessly demanded stuff from Jesus.

Therefore the Jews started complaining about Him because He said, “I am the bread that came down from heaven.” They were saying, “Isn’t this Jesus the son of Joseph, whose father and mother we know? How can He now say, ‘I have come down from heaven’?” (John 6:41-42)

Like the crowd, we naturally don't want Jesus. We just want the stuff He gives to us. We even take His greatest gift, the Gospel, and use it as an excuse to keep on being lazy. You know that every sermon will end with Pastor proclaiming the forgiveness of Christ. We are so lazy we view the wonderfully inevitable Gospel as old hat, "This sermon is boring. Pastor says that we are forgiven every week." And so we continue in our laziness, holding on to our laziness that we love.

There are many who are lazy who don't even bother with coming to church. And if and when the Pastor urges them to come, well, he just don't understand. Doesn't Pastor know that you can be a Christian without going to church?

Actually he doesn't know that because it is a sharp lazy lie of the Devil. And the lazy souls who know that what is right and good and true, who know that they need to go to church, just aren't interested. And after many months and even years when they are removed from the spiritual care of the pastor and congregation (since they don't want any spiritual care from anybody), they aren't the problem. It's that mean Pastor: "Doesn't he know about forgiveness?!"

Yes, he does. Yes, I do. I am a wretched sinner covered in slivers and so are you. That's why we're here. To have Christ forgive our slivers. He doesn't remove them; He'll do that when He calls us home.

Until then, He calls us through Baptism, Preaching, and Communion to leave behind our casual halfhearted way of living. He said:

“I know your deeds, that you are neither cold nor hot; I wish that you were cold or hot. So because you are lukewarm, and neither hot nor cold, I will spit you out of My mouth. Because you say, ‘I am rich, and have become wealthy, and have need of nothing,’ and you do not know that you are wretched and miserable and poor and blind and naked, I advise you to buy from Me gold refined by fire so that you may become rich, and white garments so that you may clothe yourself, and that the shame of your nakedness will not be revealed; and eye salve to anoint your eyes so that you may see. Those whom I love, I reprove and discipline; therefore be zealous and repent.” (Revelation 3:15-19)

Be zealous and stop ignoring your slivers and repent. Trying to take out a sharp little sliver can hurt more than the leaving the sliver in. So we live in pain, bearing the cross, all the while receiving gold and white garments and eye salve from the Lord Jesus. Or as Jesus said in John 6, receiving Himself, the bread of life.

I am the living bread that came down out of heaven; if anyone eats of this bread, he will live forever; and the bread also which I will give for the life of the world is My flesh.” (John 6:51)

Christ Jesus came into the world to save sinners—of whom I am the worst. Alleluia! Amen!