The gospel is anti-grind

 

Mark 6: 30-34, 53-56
New Ark United Church of Christ, Newark, DE
July 21, 2024

Photo of an art installation of a Conscious Conversations card: "Maybe there's nothing wrong with you.  Maybe it's just really difficult to exist in a system that was not designed to support a spirit like yours."

I don’t know if you’ve noticed but in the past few years I’ve been talking a lot about rest and how important it is as a spiritual practice, especially since a certain person got elected and then living through a global pandemic. In which the recovery from that virus ironically requires us to rest. Not just rest but do as much nothing as we can. And then there’s how the pandemic has changed just about every aspect of our lives, from how we work to how we worship, how it has influenced social practices and major decisions, and burdened our healthcare system. The world *gestures broadly* is a lot right now, our own lives are a lot, and good rest can be hard to come by sometimes. We also equate the ability to rest, to be at leisure, with privilege.



Then there’s what we tell ourselves about who we are in relationship to not only the rest we need but also the work we do and how productive we are. From a young age we were taught that hard work and moral goodness go hand in hand. We guilt and shame ourselves and others if we are not busy enough, useful, doing something to contribute or to improve ourselves. In his book Sabbath, Wayne Muller writes, “Our culture invariably supposes that action and accomplishment are better than rest, that doing something—anything—is better than doing nothing. Because of our desire to succeed, to meet these ever-growing expectations, we do not rest. Because we do not rest, we lose our way. …And for want of rest, our lives are in danger.”



Younger generations are finding it even harder than just the one generation before them to make their way in this world. From my own offspring I learned about “grind culture”, about nonstop work, side hustles, and always being productive just to make ends barely meet or chasing after more. The promise of college, career, work hard, and make a home for yourself is becoming more hollow in a world that charges too much for education and doesn’t pay enough for people to live, let alone rest. The last few years, when I have written notes to our college students as part of a care package before exams, I have stopped writing things like “study hard” or “you got this” or “you’re almost at the finish line”. Instead, I have encouraged them to get enough sleep, spend time having fun with friends, get out in nature, remember who they are, beloved and worthy no matter what.



And so, this year, the book that I chose as a graduation gift for our high school, college, and graduate students is Laziness Does Not Exist by social psychologist and professor Dr. Devon Price. Not only our young adults but many of us have countless days where we are feeling exhausted, overwhelmed, and down on ourselves for not accomplishing “enough”. Price says that this is a result of an ingrained belief system that dates back to the beginning of this nation, what he calls the “Laziness Lie”. The Laziness Lie has three basic assumptions:



1. Your worth is established by your productivity.

2. You cannot trust your own feelings and limits.

3. There is always more you could be doing.



I believe this is one of the major reasons why we could not vanquish this virus, why we could not shut down the world for two weeks, make sure everyone had what they needed until it was safe for everyone. I think it’s also why we still struggle with masking, like trying to get people to wear a bike helmet. As though taking care of our safety, our health, our well-being gets in the way of our productivity and our ability. Did I mention that the Laziness Lie is also ableist?



I want our younger generations to know that even though the world may try to exploit their labor and base their worth on it, their church and the faith tradition they were raised in is dead set against it. That they have value and worth not because of what they contribute or not, what they produce or not, but because of who they are: beloved.



The disciples have just graduated. They’ve returned from their travels—stories of preaching and healing but road-weary—still grieving the loss of their friend John the Baptist, so busy that they can’t even take time to eat. Jesus invites them to a deserted place, taking a boat to get there, so that they can rest away from the crowds, as he often would do. Even though he is no wealthy landowner, Jesus gives his disciples the same rest he takes for himself. But the crowds recognize them and follow them to their destination, waiting for Jesus before he arrives. Like a senior pastor who won’t take a day off, Jesus goes to the crowd and teaches them many things, wearing his heart on his sleeve because he just can’t help himself.



In between this episode and the next is the feeding of the five thousand, in which Jesus says to his disciples, “You give them something to eat.” The hunger for food is great but that story is for another day. This day the people need healing and they can’t wait for months to get an appointment. They need compassion and empathy now, but that can be hard to come by when the doctor has been working over a hundred hours a week and is underpaid to work such hours.



Most of us are living in our lizard brains because of this Laziness Lie.

The Laziness Lie tells us we must earn our rest or we don’t deserve it.

The Laziness Lie is connected to diet and exercise culture—we must earn our calorie intake. It’s one reason why we have a whole beauty and grooming industry, because God forbid we “let ourselves go”.

The Laziness Lie is racist and classist—welfare queens and the minimum wage servant class, not to mention what we call urban blight and fixing it with gentrification rather than solving root problems.

The Laziness Lie contributes to what I call “the suffering Olympics”, in which our pain competes with the pain of others.

The Laziness Lie hurts addicts, the unhoused and homeless, and those who suffer from depression and anxiety.

The Laziness Lie lets us off the hook from helping others who got that way because, well, they’re lazy, right? When we lack compassion for others, it makes it easier for us to not slow down and take it easy. Empire needs the Laziness Lie so we forget what we’re worth, what we all are worth.

The Laziness Lie fuels our need for speed, everything operating at an ever-quicker pace, all in the name of productivity.



Ultimately, the Laziness Lie is about the quest for more, that enough is never enough, that we must always be acquiring more to ensure our survival. Slavery, oppression, colonization, land grabs and wars—all have their roots in the Laziness Lie. I’m all for exploration but that doesn’t mean we then take what isn’t ours. Imagine what would the world look like if we had all just stayed home, because we had enough and we shared what we have with our neighbors and we welcomed those with hardships.



The Laziness Lie comes from bad theology that says deep down humanity is lazy and worthless, and it is only through hard work and struggle that we can be redeemed. *cough* Calvin *cough*. “God helps those who help themselves” is not in the Bible, nor is it good news. Neither is “God only gives us what we can handle”. God is not a task master nor does God require our suffering for our redemption. Faith without works is dead, but not so we become self-righteous and think we and everyone else has to earn their way to salvation and wholeness.



If we’re feeling lazy, perhaps it’s because our bodies and our spirits require not only rest, but also need us to disengage from grinding them until we’re exhausted or sick or worse. What we call wasting time is a basic human need that helps us stay human: time to daydream, to play, to do nothing. One of my favorite scenes from “Winnie the Pooh” is when Christopher Robin says that his favorite thing to do is nothing and then explains it to Pooh Bear. “It’s when grown-ups ask, ‘What are you going to do?’ and you say, ‘Oh nothing’ and then you go ahead and do it.” Pooh Bear replies, “Oh yes, doing nothing often leads to the very best something.”



The good news is that when we view our lives as worthy and valuable, no matter what we do or don’t do, we liberate not only ourselves but everyone around us. It changes how we do mission, how we address problems, and where we look for the roots of those problems. We no longer need the Laziness Lie to prop us up or to judge ourselves or anyone else, because now we know the truth. We are beloved of God. Unconditional. Unmerited. Unlimited. And we can live that way. May it be so. Amen.

Benediction 

The love of a righteous God
Is not something to be bought or earned;
It is a gift to be received.
You are called by name by the God of your creation
To embrace that for which you were created:
God’s goodness and justice
God’s saving grace
Life abundant
As kindred ones of one another
liberating others as we go