The Three-Toed Sloth

 Ephesians 2:8-10

For by grace you have been saved through faith; and that not of yourselves, it is the gift of God; not as a result of works, that no one should boast.  For we are His workmanship, created in Christ Jesus for good works, which God prepared beforehand, that we should walk in them.

The Fourth Wednesday of Lent                                 3/11/2026

The Three-Toed Sloth

My Brothers and Sisters in Christ;

In South America there is a very large mammal that is called a "sloth".  There are various kinds of sloths–there are very large ones and there are some-what smaller, ones, very shaggy ones, and some that are not quite as shaggy–lots of kinds of sloths, and I know very little about any of them.  But when I was in grade school I heard about one that really caught my fancy.  It was called the three-toed sloth.  I don't know why it caught my fancy, but it did.  I read about it.  It was a great big animal, it was kind of slow-moving, and nothing seemed to rile it.  It had no natural predators and no animal seemed to shake it up a whole lot.  And it occurred to me that would be a very good image for our cardinal sin tonight – the sin of "sloth".  

And so I'm going to have you imagine tonight that our sin tonight is the animal – the three-toed sloth.  Let us imagine tonight that we are standing here in our zoo looking at the this three-toed sloth in its cage.  We are going to examine this strange and yet somehow very familiar beast.  I'm going to ask you to imagine one more thing tonight.  Imagine that the three-toed sloth is like the fabled werewolf in this, that when the three-toed sloth bites you, you become a sloth.  That way as we meditate tonight on this cardinal sin we can ask ourselves, "Have I been bitten?"  "Am I a sloth?"

Now the power of the animal, the three-toed sloth, lies in the claws of the beast.  Everything it does and all the damage it can inflict, does with those three toes from which it gets its name.  And the claws on the end.  The three-toed sloth eats with those claws, it rips things apart with those claws, tree trunks and big things – I mean it's a powerful beast.  It walks on those three toes.  It climbs trees with them.  And I'm sure you have seen pictures of them, or at least cartoons of the sloths, hanging upside down from those three toes.

Well, our cardinal sin of sloth walks on three toes as well.  The first toe of our sloth is despair.  By now I'm sure you are getting pretty familiar with that one.  It shows up in a lot of our cardinal sins, "despair."  The sloth feels impotent.  It feels powerless to the effect of things that go on in its life.  Rather than seeing that  powerless, that feeling of dejection, impotence, as a challenge to get out there and do something about it, the sloth feels defeated by it.

Now you look around you today, you will see marks of that three-toed sloth all over the place.  People today feel powerless.  They feel powerless in the face of government.  They feel powerless in the face of big corporations.  They feel powerless in the face of rising gas prices.  They feel powerless in the face of crime.

Powerlessness faces everybody today.  And people despair before it.  You would think when they saw all of these things happening, people would say, "Well, I guess I've just better get up and do something about that!"  But no!  What do people do today?  They hide!  People hide from life.  They hide from voting.  They hide from standing up and making their voice heard.  They throw their hands up in the air and say, "Oh!  What's the use.  I can't do anything anyhow."  They hide!

The three-toed sloth's common reaction whenever it's threatened is to just stop all movement in the threatening area and hope the world goes away.  That's the first toe.  That despair leads to the second toe of our sloth.

The second toe of our three-toed sloth in our imaginary zoo tonight is "desire-lessness."  That's not to say that the sloth does not have any desires.  The sloth may well have normal desires – may want to be happy, may want to be comfortable.  They want to be rich and famous.  But the despair leads the sloth into the desire-lessness in that the sloth is not willing to pursue those things.  Is not willing to pay the price of trying to become rich or comfortable, or happy.  You see the sloth is hiding from life.  The sloth is hiding from any kind of commitment.  Nothing rattles the sloth.  Life can deal him what it may, there is nothing that will stir the sloth into action.  The sloth simply refuses to be moved.  In this the sloth seems to be very tolerant.

In fact one Christian writer, a woman named Dorothy Sayers, writing about sloth, says "In the world it's called ‘tolerance', in hell it's called ‘despair'.  It's the sin that believes in nothing, cares for nothing, seeks to know nothing, interferes with nothing, enjoys nothing, lives for nothing, but remains alive because there is nothing for which it will die."

Sometimes a sloth can be identified by what he says, such once-popular phrases as, "Hang loose" or "laid back" or "heavy, man".  Those are the signs of sloth.  Now those happen to be phrases that were popular among the younger half of humanity which makes it seem like sloth is peculiar to the youth.  But it is not!  "I couldn't care less," or "What's that to me?", or everybody's favorite, "Live and let live."  Those are the verbal footprints of the sloth in the older generation.  They all indicate apathy, a desire-less-ness, an unwillingness to stand or become personally involved in anything, to become committed to a cause.  In pathology sloth means a morbid inertia, that is a death-like stillness.  It means the same thing spiritually.

This spiritual immobility is the third toe of our imaginary sloth.  That is where the sloth is most damaging.  Sloth is the hatred of all things spiritual which require any effort.  Oh, sloth loves the good, sloth loves the sweet spiritual experiences.  What the sloth can't stand is the day-to-day grind in between.  What the sloth can't stand is the work needed to acquire anything spiritual, be that knowledge or experience – only that comes to it freely, what happens to move across it, will the sloth accept.  And you will see plenty of proof of it today in what we call "the Neo-Evangelical Movement" – what might be called the "new Protestantism".

Every day that "the Neo-Evangelical Movement" grows by hundreds, and maybe thousands of people who have joined it, deliriously happy over their being "born again."  But look, look for the signs of that new life.  Look for the signs that those people are newly created in Christ to live the good works that God had intended for them.  Look in our society for that.   The signs of the presence of Christ in our society are shrinking day by day, not growing, and in the "the Neo-Evangelical Movement", and in any church.  And now days when anybody does enter on that straight and narrow way they do it with a sense of repugnance and reluctance.  That's sloth!  It gives an appearance of laziness to some people sometimes.  But it is something far more lethal.  It is a state of directionless which is thoroughly self-centered.  There is no plan.  There is no agenda.  There is no cohesive meaning or purpose in life, for the sloth, only the ego.

Once people were known by what they had accomplished, or what they were striving for.  Today people want to be identified by what they happen to be thinking at that moment, or their geographic location, simply for the fact that they exist, as though everyone else did not in some weird way.

Sloth is a form of self-idolatry.  To stay with our image of the sloth in the zoo you might call this self-worship one of the parents of the sloth.  And if we do then the other parent of the sloth is despair in the mercy of God.  The sloth does not trust God.  The sloth does not believe that God's promises are true.  He doesn't believe that God loves him, that God is going to guide him and bless him day by day.  The sloth doesn't trust in any benevolent guiding force here in this life or for the next life.  No, the motto of the sloth is, "Look out for yourself, if you don't, who else will?"  For the sloth, Number One comes first – and last.  Purpose, direction, causes – these are the things that lead away from self.  The sloth is into self-actualization.  Or in the words of the sloth, "I got to be me."  That's the sloth.  "You are you," the sloth says, "And I'm me.  And if somewhere in that lovely path of life we happen to meet, fine!  And if we don't happen to meet, that's fine too."

Henry Fairley, in his book, "The Seven Deadly Sins Today," writing about sloth says that, "the slothful person has made a religion of himself.  And that of all our sins, we Americans have made sloths most nearly into a religion."  Minding your own business, not getting upset, that's what counts.

Sloth helped crucify Christ!  Think about this!  One week before His crucifixion, Christ rode into Jerusalem on Palm Sunday, amidst thousands of people cheering Him wildly, calling out praises to Him as God, as Savior, as "King of Israel," throwing their clothes down in the dirt for the donkey he was riding to walk on.  And now a week later the crowd is calling for His death.  You can't mark a change like that up to the crowd being fickle.  No, you mark it up to the sloth.  The people who had been lining up the road and singing praises a week earlier, were now at home.  They just didn't want to get involved.  Justice wasn't reason enough.  And that Man what they had just recently sung praises of and waved palm branches before, He was secondary.  Oh no!  Take care of No. 1 first!

Even the disciples, that night, denied their Lord rather than take a stand.  That night it was more important to save their own skins.  And because of a city full of people, and yes, even the Roman Governor, felt powerless and defeated – because they put self-interest and inactivity first rather than protecting the innocent – rather than standing up for the one that was King, because they had been bitten by the three-toed sloth, our Lord was crucified on that day.  But in that crucifixion comes the power now to put the sloth to death.

And this may be familiar too!  The first step, as always, is to repent.   Turn away from that sin – that is what repent means.   It means to change your mind from rebelliousness against God to sorrow over sin.  And then it means that you listen to the Gospel.  Nowhere is the Gospel more clearly stated than in our Scripture passage tonight which tells us "You are saved by grace".  You are saved by the free gift of God, a salvation totally unearned.  Because of God's gift you have the blessings of the forgiveness of your sins.  Because God wants to give it to you, you have life everlasting.  Because of what Christ has done, God is pouring these blessings out, just giving them away.   God is looking with favor on all those who trust Him, He is looking upon them with the same love and the same sense of favoritism with which He looks upon His only-begotten Son.  

Now far from earning any of this, our text carefully points out that it is not on the basis of what we have done, not on the basis of works, but that God is simply giving it to those who believe, because of Christ.  Think about that!  Your salvation and everything in this life has been taken care of now, because of Jesus Christ.  Almost two thousand years ago everything you could possibly do for yourself was already done.  Oh, and this Gospel is deadly to a sloth.  

Instead of directionless and purposeless, we are now God's creation and He has created us for a purpose.  We are now God's workmanship, the text says.  We are now newly created in Jesus Christ, and that for the purpose that we might do those good works that God has prepared in advance for us to do.  Most of you probably recognize that we are talking about Ephesians 2:8-10.  In our new creation we find our direction.  There we find our purpose, and purpose and direction are deadly to a sloth who must always focus in on himself.  And when we stand before God in this world, reborn in Christ, we have that purpose and that direction.  

Our purpose is to go out and live the life, to do the works that God prepared before He ever called us into Christ, works which God prepared for us to do, to walk in the path which He set for us.  That's purpose!  And what are the works that God set out for us?  

Works like faith in His promises, instead of despair in the mercy of God; works like witnessing to our Lord in His marvelous grace instead of worrying about self-actualization and singing "I've Got to be Me."  

Works like holy living with joy instead of approaching the straight and narrow with a sense of dread and despair.  Here you find purpose and direction enough to kill any three-toed sloth.

And direction?  The direction we are on is toward Heaven!  The direction of the three-toed sloth is Hell.  Opposite directions!  And as I said, "purpose and direction kills the sloth."  So our cure is God-given purpose and divine direction in faith and in the Gospel.

And that completes our examination of the three-toed sloth.  He's deadly!  And he is not just limited to imaginary cages in imaginary zoos.  You can find his footprints all over.  Have you been bitten by one?  If so the cure is in our text this evening, "For by grace you have been saved through faith.  And that not of yourself is the gift of God, not as a result of works that one should boast.  For we are His workmanship created in Christ Jesus for good works which God prepared beforehand that we should walk in them."

Beware of the three-toed sloth, for Christ's sake.

In the name of the Father, and of the Son, and of the Holy Ghost.

(Let the people say "Amen".)