Sloth: The Cause of Little or No Concern
September 6, 2026
15th Sunday after Pentecost
MINISTER
Rev. David J. Wood
SCRIPTURE
James 1: 22-27, 14-17 & 4:17; Philippians 3: 12-14
“Sloth: The Cause of Little or No Concern”
by Rev. David J. Wood
15th Sunday After Pentecost, September 6, 2026
First Congregational Church of Camden
Scripture Readings: James 1: 22-27, 14-17; 4:17 & Philippians 3:12-14
As most of you know, we are in the midst of a series on The Seven Deadly Sins. So far we have dealt with Pride, Envy, and Anger. Still to come are Sloth, Greed, Gluttony, and Lust. Today we take up SLOTH.
I recall seeing a New Yorker Cartoon of two men seating lazily in wing back chairs with drinks and cigars in hand.
One says to the other: “Do you think sloth is a sin?”
The other gentleman replies, “I don’t know and I don’t care.”
For most of us, talk of SLOTH brings to mind that small furry mammal that moves very slowly and spends most of its life hanging from trees.
Sloths move so slow, algae has been known to grow on its furry coat. It can sleep up to 15-20 hours a day. Sloths have been known to retain their hanging grip even after they die.
With a image of a sloth in view, it’s easy to equate slothfulness with laziness.
I think I’m on pretty safe ground when I say that laziness is not a condition that afflicts anyone sitting here today. You’re an incredibly industrious and active group of people. No algae growing on your backs.
So maybe we can just pass by this sin and call it a day and move on to communion.
Maybe. But, before moving on, let me complicate SLOTH just a bit…perhaps in a way that is more likely to implicate us. (Doesn’t let us off the hook so easily)
The Latin word for Sloth was Acedia…which means literally, “Lack of care”. In medieval Christianity the indication of ACEDIA was spiritual listlessness and lethargy, apathy, a condition of carelessness, indifference..
When cast in spiritual terms, it harder simply to equate SLOTH with lack of activity.
Hyperactivity, keeping oneself busy can be a kind of anesthesia to deaden the nagging pain of a deteriorating spiritual condition.
Sometimes it takes less effort to keep moving than to stop and think.
The theologian Jean Bethke Elshtain: “I take sloth to mean not simply inactivity but acquiescence to the conventions of one’s day; a refusal to take up the burden of self-criticism; a falling into the ‘the way things are’ unthinkingly.”
The essayist, Dorothy Sayers, hold nothing back when she names sloth.
She writes: “It is the sin the believes in nothing, cares for nothing, seeks to know nothing, interfere with nothing, enjoys nothing, loves nothing, hates nothing, finds purpose in nothing, lives for nothing, and remains alive only because there is nothing it would die for.”
Moral philosopher, Hannah Arendt doesn’t use the world “sloth” in the quote I’m about to read—but I think you will make the connection: She claims that the moral conditions that resulted in all that we name as “The Holocaust.” It wasn’t that there was an unprecedented level of moral depravity within Germany…but instead it was the result of “something ordinary, mundane, even banal: moral indifference. It occurred in the every day world of countless people who did not care or who did not care to know what was being done to the Jews.”
Christian theologians have associated the vice of sloth with a range of phenomena, including melancholic sadness, spiritual indifference or sorrow, laziness or hyperactivity, and moral apathy.
At this point, you are probably thinking, I think I prefer to hang out with the uncomplicated sloth!
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But, stay with me.
I propose that we are living in a time when the drift of cultural life is towards a kind of sloth.
This past week I came across a article in the Washington Post on the decline of speech. That literally, we are actually speaking fewer words every year. Which sounds odd since we are living in a time when we are living in a time of unprecedented communication.
We are increasingly actually speaking fewer words to each other with each passing year. Between 2005 and 2019 that amounted to a 28% drop in actual, face to face or voice to voice, verbal communication.
Because of our technological devices, we can conduct more and more of daily life without opening our mouths. Speech is becoming increasingly optional.
Apparently, the act of speech, of actually talking with one another, takes a lot more effort than we realize.
Producing even an ordinary sentence requires the brain to retrieve words, organize them, coordinate muscles, interpret another person’s response and formulate what comes next — all in a fraction of a second.
A live conversation places particular demands on working memory and attention. You have to keep track of what another person has said, decide how to respond and listen as you formulate what comes next.
Texting and email relieve some of that pressure. A message can be considered, revised and re-revised before it is sent; the conversation itself remains on the screen, eliminating much of the need to remember what came before.
In-person or voice interactions are MUCH more demanding. Without realizing it, we are drifting towards a less demanding, frictionless, efficient way of life. In general, we have adapted to the decline or conversation and it doesn’t feel like a loss…we get more done, more efficiently, in less time with more people.
However, I think this decline of speech is worth pondering as a case in point about the way of life we are becoming conditioned to. A way of life that demands less if us and yet pre-occupies more of us.
As technological devices inundate and shape our way of taking up the world, we need to step back and wonder, why is it that, like no generation before us, one of the things we have to work constantly guard against is becoming too sedentary.
You know what they say: SITTING is the new smoking.
Perhaps we are more prone to sloth than we want to acknowledge.
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I chose the two readings this morning because they speak to the two sides of the coin of how the Christian life is an antidote to sloth.
One side is what we might call the devotional faith.
The other side is what we might call the faithful devotion.
And together, they provide the antidote to sloth.
First, devotional faith.
In our reading from Philippians, the Apostle Paul speaks of his deep, personal sense that, as he puts it, “Christ has laid hold” of him…his sense that he has been claimed by Christ.
And this deeply personal encounter is what motivates him to press on to know more: “forgetting what lies behind” and to strain forward to what lies ahead…there is more to be known, understood, to be attained.
He feels himself being tugged upward and onward.” I cannot think of a better description of a non-slothful life: straining forward to what lies ahead, pressing on toward the goal…being tugged upward and onward by the call of God in Christ Jesus.
It is that deeply, devotional, responsive way of being in the world, of understanding and living ones life. Nothing sedentary here.
It’s not hard to hear in his words a resilient HOPE…a radical openness and receptivity to all that is yet to be.
That’s what I call the devotional side of the Christian life.
But there is another side of the coin of the Christian life.
I call it the faithful devotion.
And that brings me to our reading from James.
Faithful devotion is how that devotion becomes expressed and faithful in our doing. Our actual, active way of being in the world—loving our neighbor, caring for the one who is in need.
“But be doers of the word and not merely hearers who deceive themselves. For if any are hearers of the word and not doers, they are like those who look at themselves in a mirror; for they look at themselves and, on going away, immediately forget what they were like.”
Maintaining the essential link between “devotional faith” and “faithful devotion” requires vigilance. We are a forgetful people prone to sloth. Knowing the right thing to do and not doing it is the essence of sloth…and that, the writer of James says, is a sin.
What good is it, my brothers and sisters, if someone claims to have faith but does not have works? Surely that faith cannot save, can it? … So faith by itself, if it has no works, is dead.
I talked earlier in the service today about Wendell Berry who died this week. He was anything but a slothful person.
In interviews and conversations he was often asked, “What gives you hope?”
At least in one interview I read, this is how he responded:
People have asked me about hope so much that I have quit speaking directly to that issue. I want to talk instead about doing the right thing. The right way, for instance, to treat a neighbor. We have had instructions on this for thousands of years. We know how to take care of a neighbor. We have the parable of the Good Samaritan.
Devotional Faith and Faithful Devotion.
Together they chart a way of life that is an antidote sloth.
So turn off your cell phones…curtail your scrolling…spend more time in real conversation, reading, writing…tending a garden…living more responsively to the world and the needs immediate to your life.
Practice conversation, cultivate and irreverence towards the common sense of these days, resist the drift to hyper-efficiency, hyper activity, and a frictionless life.
Make more space to listen for the call of God upon your life…the call that has the power to tug you upward and onward…and outward. Amen.