On March 25, 1942 iconic musician Aretha Franklin was born in this home in Memphis, TN. Franklin went on to become the first female artist to be inducted into the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame. In 2008 she won her 18th Grammy Award, making her one of the most honored artists in Grammy history. She passed away earlier this year.
The Franklin house is located near the south Memphis neighborhood called Soulsville, a once prominent, working-class African-American neighborhood where numerous legendary soul music artists lived and worked from the 1930s to the 1960s.
Soulsville is now home to some of the most impoverished zip codes in the U.S. In 2012 the city deemed the 1,100 foot Franklin home a nuisance. It was slated for demolition in 2016 because of disrepair.
It’s a sad reminder of what happens when a home isn’t given the nurture and care needed. When it comes to a structure like a house, you can’t just construct it and then leave it. Without ongoing attention, without constant effort applied to its upkeep, the house will fall apart.
The writer of Ecclesiastes reminds us of this truth when he writes this: “Through sloth the roof sinks in, and through indolence the house leaks.” (Eccl. 10:18 ESV) There’s a word, the writer notes, for that tendency we humans have for not providing a structure like a home to ongoing upkeep and care it requires. That word is sloth. Sloth isn’t merely laziness. Sloth is anything that keeps us from attending to the nurture and care of something that requires constant upkeep, like a home.
Or a relationship, like the one we have with God. Paul writes, “Do not be slothful in zeal, be fervent in spirit, serve the Lord.” (Rom. 12:11 ESV). There’s a word, Paul notes, for that tendency we humans have for not providing our relationship with God the ongoing care and upkeep it requires. That word is sloth. It’s not merely laziness. It’s anything that keeps us from attending to the nurture and care of that relationship with God, and everything that flows from that relationship.
Sloth is what we’re exploring this morning in our series on the seven deadly sins.
Upkeep
The two texts I mentioned in the video package are helpful in terms of understanding sloth. The writer of Ecclesiastes (Eccl. 10:18) uses sloth to refer to behaviors we take or don’t take in relationship to something like a house. A house requires ongoing attention. You can’t just build a house, move in, and then just forget about it for the next few years or decades. If you do that, the house will fall apart. A house requires ongoing care, nurture, and upkeep. Failure to provide this is to be a sloth.
Paul (Rom. 12:11) uses sloth to refer to behaviors we take or don’t take in regards to something like a relationship–in this case our relationship with God. You can’t just get baptized, formally initiate a relationship with God, and then just forget about it for the next few years or decades. If you do that the relationship is going to suffer. Something like a relationship requires ongoing care. Failure to provide this is to be a sloth.
Gary Thomas writes about this when he makes this statement:[1]
“Some of us live with the mistaken impression that our faith needs only to be planted, not tended.”
I’m not a gardener, and you may not be either. But the image is easy to understand. It’s one thing to plant a garden. That’s the exciting thing. It’s a lot of work. But you can get it all done in one big effort. You can start it and finish it in a limited amount of time.
When it comes to faith, to spirituality, there’s something similar. You can make a statement of faith. You can be baptized. And that can happen in a day. It may have taken years to work up to it. But it can happen in a few moments. And you’re done. Faith is planted.
Sadly, that’s where a lot of people stop. We become sloths.
We’re like a gardener who plants but doesn’t tend. What happens to a garden that is planted but isn’t tended? Weeds infest. Pests invade. Too little or too much water. Too little or too much sunlight. The flowers or fruits or vegetables may not grow at all. And if they do grow, they don’t reach their potential. A garden has to be planted. But it also has to be tended.
The same is true with faith. But so many of us become sloths when it comes to our faith. We fail to engage in the activity that is going to tend our faith. Either we just get lazy. Or, more likely, we get busy doing other things that seem more important. We get busy with life. And we don’t tend our faith. We are sloths when it comes to the garden of our faith. We plant it. But we don’t tend it. That failure makes us sloths.
Early Christians described sloth as anything that kept a person from his religious duties.[2]That could be inactivity, lounging around, doing nothing. But it could also be busy work, or getting involved in other activities that kept you from your religious work. A slothful person could be very busy or not busy at all. The key was that he or she was not engaged in the work that truly mattered. He was using inactivity or activity in some other arena to distract him from the work that really mattered. Sloth is absence of activity or the abundance of activity that keeps us from the activity that matters the most. It’s our tendency to plant and not tend. It’s our tendency to not do the work of keeping up something like a house or a relationship.
Paul’s Upkeep
This is what Paul writs of when he writes these words:
12 Therefore, my beloved, as you have always obeyed, so now, not only as in my presence but much more in my absence, work out your own salvation with fear and trembling, 13 for it is God who works in you, both to will and to work for his good pleasure. (Phil. 2:12-13 ESV)
This has nothing to do with legalism. Paul is not urging us to work on our salvation; to add to our salvation; to work in a way that earns our salvation. Paul is urging us here to work out our salvation. To work out all the implications and applications of the salvation that’s been given freely to us in Jesus Christ. Paul is urging us to stop being sloths when it comes to our faith. There’s work to do. A relationship with God cannot simply be planted. It has to be tended. Even then, Paul writes, it’s ultimately God who is providing the energy and the power for all that work.
Paul models this later in Philippians:
8 Indeed, I count everything as loss because of the surpassing worth of knowing Christ Jesus my Lord. For his sake I have suffered the loss of all things and count them as rubbish, in order that I may gain Christ 9 and be found in him, not having a righteousness of my own that comes from the law, but that which comes through faith in Christ, the righteousness from God that depends on faith— 10 that I may know him and the power of his resurrection, and may share his sufferings, becoming like him in his death, 11 that by any means possible I may attain the resurrection from the dead. 12 Not that I have already obtained this or am already perfect, but I press on to make it my own, because Christ Jesus has made me his own. 13 Brothers, I do not consider that I have made it my own. But one thing I do: forgetting what lies behind and straining forward to what lies ahead, 14 I press on toward the goal for the prize of the upward call of God in Christ Jesus. (Phil. 3:8-14 ESV)
Paul wants to know Jesus. He wants to become perfect. But he realizes he’s not there yet. He hasn’t yet obtained that goal. So, what does he do? He presses on. He strains forward towards it. Paul is writing about hard work. Paul refuses to be a sloth when it comes to achieving the kind of relationship with Jesus he longs for. He realizes that it takes work. So, he’s not going to fall into the temptation of doing nothing, or doing everything but this. No, he’s going to dedicate himself to the work required to have a genuine and fulfilling relationship with Jesus.
Parenting
This morning we acknowledge the truth of all of this in one particular area of our life with God: parenting. We’re blessing Highland’s newest arrivals. Wouldn’t it be nice if if children could be planted and not tended? Wouldn’t it be nice if we could just gather today and celebrate the arrival of these babies and the work it took to get them to this point today was all the work it was going to take? But that’s just not the case is it? Children have to be planted and tended if we are going to do it God’s way. There’s a lot of effort involved in raising children isn’t there, if we are going to do it God’s way?
I remember the day I grabbed my father’s bb gun. It was the only gun we had in our home. My dad was not a hunter. But he kept a bb gun in the closet in his study. It was strictly off limits. We were not to touch it–ever. But one summer day, while he was at work and my mom was thirty miles away at the nearest grocery store picking up two week’s worth of groceries, I could not get one thought out of my mind: “Grab Dad’s bb gun and shoot out the Wagner’s living room window.” I can’t explain to you where that thought came from. Who can explain why kids do much of what they do. But, that’s what was going through my mind that day. And try as I might, I could not get that thought out of my mind. So, I walked to my dad’s closet in his study. I opened the sliding closet door. I carefully grabbed the bb gun. And I escorted it to the front of the house. I pumped it several times. I lifted it to my shoulder. And in the sight, I placed the living room window of the Wagners.
All of a sudden, Mrs. Wagner appeared at the window. She was right there in my sight, as clear as day. She could see me aiming the bb gun at her living room window. It was as if God himself was trying to intervene, trying to get me to stop this crazy childhood action. And did I stop? Of course not. With the window and Mrs. Wagner in my sight, I pulled the trigger. The bb flew from the barrel and pinged off the living room window, leaving a tiny crack in the window. I stood there for a second, looking at Mrs. Wagner who had flinched when the bb hit her widow, just in front of her nose. She stood there looking at me. Then I fled into my house.
Those are the kinds of things parents have to deal with. All the time. It’s exhausting, isn’t it? And it never stops. From the time you bring them home to the time you drop them off to college, and even beyond, parenting is hard work.
And the temptation in parenting is that of being a sloth. To just quit. To stop doing the work that has to be done to raise these gifts of children God has given to us. Or, to get busy with other things and not with the work that has to be done to raise the blessings we call children.
I’d like to share some simple things that parents at Highland have done to fight that tendency. I asked several Highland parents to share some things they’ve done with regularity over the years that they felt made a difference with their kids. These are the kind of habits, the parenting actions which, if we keep them up year after year, and don’t give into sloth, can really impact children.
- (Highland mom) As I was listening to our recent speaker at Highland, Mark Gregston, he used a term that really caught my attention. It was “With-ness”. I feel that is something that [my husband] and I made a huge priority in our lives as we were raising our two sons… Whether it was t-ball, soccer, chorus,, football, guitar lessons, or a 1 time musical debut, it was SO important that we attend every single event. We wanted them to feel our support and encouragement; because what interested THEM was extremely important to both of us.
- (Highland dad) Earlier on, though both [our kids were] involved in gymnastics, but we’re all travel together, even though it’s [our daughter] that’s doing the meet. We’d drive six hours or so altogether, over one weekend, for one of the child to attend the competition…Family vacation – as far back as I could remember, it is always just that – a vacation that involved just the four of us; wherever we’d go…Other mundane stuffs – having regular dinner together, or as often as we possibly could; eat out once a week as the kids got older; family movie nights at home; we’d also go to see all the Marvel movies together…Even when [our son] got to his high-school senior year, where if he had to work on Friday night, and attend some function on Saturday night with friends, he’d know to reserve Sunday as – family night.
- (Highland mom) Every single day at least once I tell them I love them more than “the sun and the moon and the stars and that’s a lot” … Being honest about our story/my story no matter how exhausting has been hard but necessary in every season so they understand the hand of God in their lives…
- (Highland dad) 1. Eating together as a family. 2. Her mother sitting with her everyday to help her with homework. And making cookies or cider etc while she worked. 3. Her dad reading to her until sometime in grade school before bed. And she always wanted me to tell her stories of my crazy childhood. 4. Every year we try to go on a trip with Disaster relief team…5. Mission trips to El Salvador every summer.
- (Highland dad) every time my children had an event that a parent could be at, it was my goal and joy to try and attend that event, whether it was cheering, playing basketball, playing volleyball, playing soccer, playing softball, giving a speech, meeting a teacher, etc…
- (Highland mom)When it came to traveling, there was always something (and still is) in our house that needed fixing but we kept saying [our son] would remember time together more than a new dishwasher…Going to hospitals and taking stuffed bears to kids because he’d been the one in the hospital….We’ve moved from Bible stories to reading books like Love Does… Stories and prayers for years. One year we did a book (Shane Claiborne’s Book of Common Prayer for Radicals) and it has an evening blessing. So we started saying that after the prayer-“May the peace of the Lord Christ go with you, wherever he may send you, may he guide you through the wilderness, protect you through the storm. May He bring you home rejoicing a the wonders he has shown you, may he bring you home rejoicing once again into our doors.”
It’s my prayer that this week, this month, this year, and into the future, you’ll attend to the work that really matters. The work of parenting. The work of your walk with God. Don’t get distracted by other things. Don’t get fatigued. Keep it up.
[1]Sacred Pathways Updated and ExpandedGary Thomas, 231-233
[2]Rebecca DeYoung, Glittering Vices, 85.
