What being a “busybody” and idleness have in common

Image: Someone claiming to know what Jesus says only the Father knows. 2011 Berkeley, CA

 

Proper 28 (33), Year C
16 November 2025

Isaiah 65:17-25
Isaiah 12
2 Thessalonians 3:6-13
Luke 21:5-19

 

There’s an interesting verse in our second reading, you probably noticed it. Paul wrote, when we were with you, we gave you this command: anyone unwilling to work should not eat. (v.10) This could easily find its way into an election platform and who knows, perhaps it lurked in the background of Bill Clinton’s “Work for Welfare” bill. But Paul is not talking about welfare or social programs. Paul is talking about the life of the Church.

It is highly likely that the Christians in Thessaloniki believed in Christ’s immanent return. And if Jesus was to return tomorrow, then what’s the point of having a church council meeting today, or of cleaning the gutters, or of caring for the poor? Jesus’s return seemed to question the normal life of the community, and no longer doing what would benefit the community and its purpose, these folk undermined the community because they ceased in the works of love: the care for one another, the care for the sick and poor, the preparing of common meals, and the pursuing of reconciliation.

I am reminded of a youth group our daughter went to with a friend at a very large church. When she returned she told us that they had learned that we need not worry about the climate crisis because Jesus is coming back anyway. Of course, such advice applies not only to the climate crisis but can apply generally to being my brother’s and my sister’s keeper.

Now, though Paul says that anyone unwilling to work should not eat, Paul does not exactly say that these people are lazy. In the next verse he writes, (…) we hear that some of you are living irresponsibly, mere busybodies, not doing any work. (v.11)
If they were lazy, they would not be busybodies. Because busybodies do all kinds of things, just not what is required. We can be busybodies when we procrastinate. I can find all kinds of things to do before I tackle the plumbing job in the house that needs to be done. I can do all kinds of things before I choose to make amends with my brother. You can be an upstanding citizen and yet not do the things that are required. That, I believe, is what Paul is talking about. What idleness and being a busybody have in common is a lack of focus.

Last Sunday was the anniversary of what in English we call Kristallnacht. The 9^th of November 1938 was the beginning of organized pogroms against Jews in Nazi-Germany. The Nazis called it Kristallnacht because of the breaking of the windows of Jewish owned shops and synagogues, but there was nothing pretty about it. Synagogues and business were burned to the ground, while police and fire departments were instructed not to intervene, Jewish citizens were beaten and about 30000 arrested while somewhere between 1000 to 2000 Jewish citizens were murdered. I grew up commemorating this day.
On Monday I spoke to the seniors’ group at Beth Tikvah Synagogue about how, as one born in Germany, I have always known this history to be my history.
My parents were children, in May of 1945, 13 and 14 years old respectively. My grandparents, I speculate – for this was not a family conversation I remember – kept their heads down. I know that they were not enthusiastic Nazis. I also know that they were not resisting. They were bystanders.

Perhaps you have heard this word by the Lutheran Pastor Martin Niemöller:
“First they came for the socialists, and I did not speak out – because I was not a socialist.
Then they came for the trade unionists, and I did not speak out – because I was not a trade unionist.
Then they came for the Jews, and I did not speak out – because I was not a Jew.
Then they came for me – and there was no one left to speak for me.”

Before the Nazis took power Niemöller had anti-semitic convictions and was actively involved in opposing democratic forces in the Weimar Republic. When in 1933 and 1934 he realized that the Nazis were taking over the church, he had a change of heart. He was arrested in 1937 and spent eight years imprisoned, much of it at the Dachau concentration camp. So his words are biographical. He did not recognize the danger until they came for him. Or in other words, he was a busybody until they came for him. He did not understand the things that mattered, like my grandparents and many others.

In my lunch conversation at Beth Tikvah I said to one of my neighbours that I hoped that church and synagogue could raise and form people that would be witnesses to the God who called us and I that prayed that I and my children would know when to obey God even at risk to our own lives or to our detriment.

The Christian life is about living with God every minute of my life. We don’t live with God only on Sundays during worship but 24 hours a day. That does not mean that we can’t pursue mundane tasks which need to be done. In the 17^th century Brother Lawrence practiced the presence of God while doing dishes in the monastery kitchen. In fact, doing something with our hands often helps us focus our mind. And yet the life with God is not only life that really is life (1 Tim 6:19), but because it is that, it is also demanding. And so, we who love God, also try to avoid God, because we try to avoid the demands of love. And the time in which we live has created many diversions that make such avoidance possible. A young female participant in an online class I recently took told of how at the end of the day she would spend hours scrolling her Instagram feed. Realizing that for her this was an entirely aimless activity she deleted her account.

Perhaps you have heard of the seven deadly sins or the seven deadly vices. They go back to John Cassian’s analysis of the life of the desert fathers and mothers of the fourth century. Originally they were eight: Gluttony, lust, avarice or greed, superbia or pride, despair or sadness, anger or wrath, vainglory, and acedia. The writer Kathleen Norris considers these desert mothers and fathers “the first psychologists.”¹ In the 6th century these eight deadly thoughts became the seven deadly sins. Vainglory and superbia were combined into pride. Envy is added to the list. And acedia is left off or morphed into sloth. Yet sloth and acedia are not the same. Acedia can lead to sloth as well as to being a busybody, for acedia is the sin that foregoes the demands of love. The people Paul addresses avoid the demands of love.

The theologian Reinhold Hütter describes acedia as “spiritual apathy.”² The Greek word acedia means ‘not caring’. Think of it as the sin of omission (“forgive us what we have left undone”). At its core, acedia is the forgoing of friendship with God and thus avoidance of the damands of love. Friendship with God directs our life. Avoidance of friendship with God makes us avoid what God loves. That can be sloth or it can be busyness. In the story of the Good Samaritan (Luke 10:29-37), the Priest and the Levite “passed by on the other side.” It is expression of not caring. They passed by because they avoided the demands of love.
To return to the people Paul is writing to: There is a certain irony in the fact that those looking for Jesus’s return have lost their focus on Jesus.

John Cassian, in his writing on the desert fathers and mothers, writes about acedia also as the desire to flee a place, “If only I could find a better abbott… if only I could find a better monastery…” If only I could find a better coach, a better teacher, a better set of circumstances.

This “if only” is an expression of self-pity. “If only” means that what I search is out of reach, even though what I truly seek is God and God is right here. And that is why among the symptoms of acedia are sadness and listlessness. “If only” suggests there is nothing to do, or nothing worth doing. This leads to boredom and boredom seeks diversion in order to avoid the root of our sadness, which is foregoing friendship with God and the avoidance of the demands of love.

Think of it another way: Our word diligence, which is what Paul demands of those he is writing to, comes from the Latin verb dilige, meaning to love. Those who are diligent therefore are people who love and who subject themselves to the demands of love.³
The paradox mentioned by Paul in our reading is reflected in the vice of acedia, namely that acedia can manifest itself in idleness as well as in busyness.
And correspondingly, love can lead to action as in the things we do for the community, for the church, for each other, what the Samaitan did for the beaten traveller. And love can also put us at the feet of Jesus. In fact, that is where our love takes its origin and our love begins. The demands of that love then direct our life in the way of God.

At the end of Luke 10 we find the story of Martha welcoming Jesus into her home. It’s the Mary and Martha story.
In a sermon about this story, Sam Wells writes, “There’s a lot of things about Mary we don’t know. We don’t know if she lived in Martha’s house. We don’t know if she’d been part of preparing the meal. We don’t know if Martha had any historic reason to be angry with [Mary]. (…) We only know one thing about her. She sat at Jesus’ feet and listened. That was all Jesus really wanted. Martha’s bluster, her busyness, her bravado was all a smokescreen, an anxious avoidance: deep down they were saying to Jesus, ‘Simply sitting at your feet and listening to you aren’t enough. There needs to be more than that.’ That’s what Martha really gets wrong. She thinks Jesus isn’t enough. Mary says nothing but her actions speak loud and clear. They say, ‘There’s only one thing. And that’s Jesus. And that’s more than enough.’

And Mary is exalted because she imitates the action of God. In Jesus God’s whole attention is focused on us. Jesus isn’t fretting and fussing about a thousand things. Jesus is God choosing to be wholly engaged with us. Martha says she’s serving Jesus, but her notion of service is entirely on her own terms: she’s not giving him what he wants. Mary’s service doesn’t look like much, but it’s a statement of faith. Martha offers food; Mary shares communion.”⁴

When Paul writes that those unwilling to work should not eat, he is diagnosing idleness and business as the symptoms of acedia, the vice that says that God is not enough. But there’s only one thing and it is enough, and it puts all else into focus.

Amen.⁵