August 22, 2021: Asleep at the Sill
Asleep at the Sill
Acts 20:7-12
Rev. Rhonda Blevins
August 22, 2021
On the first day of the week, when we met to break bread, Paul was holding a discussion with them; since he intended to leave the next day, he continued speaking until midnight. There were many lamps in the room upstairs where we were meeting. A young man named Eutychus, who was sitting in the window, began to sink off into a deep sleep while Paul talked still longer. Overcome by sleep, he fell to the ground three floors below and was picked up dead. But Paul went down, and bending over him took him in his arms, and said, “Do not be alarmed, for his life is in him.” Then Paul went upstairs, and after he had broken bread and eaten, he continued to converse with them until dawn; then he left. Meanwhile they had taken the boy away alive and were not a little comforted.
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Wilbur and his wife, Leah, attended church every Sunday morning. It was a small church in a rural community. Wilbur was a farmer, a hardworking man who had a whole round of chores to do every Sunday before church. Wilbur had the habit that whenever he came into church and sat in the pew, he would fall asleep. Some of the members of the church started taking bets to see how long it would take, once the sermon began, for Wilbur to fall asleep.
Wilbur's wife was embarrassed by his behavior, especially when he began to snore. She tried everything to keep her sleepy spouse awake. She complained to him that she was getting calluses on her elbow from poking him in the ribs in a futile attempt to keep him alert.
One day, while shopping in the grocery store, Leah saw a small bottle of Limburger cheese. Leah bought it and dropped it in her purse. The next Sunday morning, the preacher had just started the sermon when Wilbur began to nod. The preacher was only one point in to a three-point sermon, when Wilbur began to snore. Quietly, Leah opened her purse, took out the bottle of Limburger cheese and held it under Wilbur’s nose.
It worked. Wilbur sat up straight and, in a voice that could be heard all over the church, said, “Leah, will you please keep your feet on your side of the bed!”[1]
Sometimes, it’s just hard to stay awake during church. Just ask Wilbur! Or ask Eutychus, the young man we read about from the book of Acts.
Eutychus, like Wilbur, had a hard time staying awake in church. His story is set in the city of Troas, synonymous with the “Troy” of Homer’s The Iliad. The city was situated on the coast of the Aegean Sea, and it was one of Paul’s stops on his third missionary journey.
Most scholars believe that Eutychus was probably what we call now a “teenager.” And he was probably a slave. Many individuals in the Christian community in Troas were slaves, and Eutychus was a common slave name, which is ironic, given that “Eutychus” means “lucky” or “fortunate one.” The reason, scholars suspect, that the church in Troy was meeting on the Lord’s Day at night, is that most of the parishioners would have been working that day. Sunday was no day off for slaves in the Roman Empire. So Eutychus, the young slave, had likely performed some grueling labor upwards of 16 hours before coming to church that Sunday.
Sunday “go to meeting” was a little (OK, a lot) different in those days than it is for us today. Mostly gathering in house churches, a central feature of their coming together was the “love feast,” which was a full meal that included the breaking of bread that we now call the Lord’s Supper or Holy Communion or the Eucharist. It is possible that this was the only decent meal that the slaves in the Christian community would get all week.
So think about young Eutychus. Teenage boy. Slave. Exhausted after 16 hours of hard labor. His belly full from the only good meal he’s had all week. And now this traveling preacher named Paul is preaching. And this is no RevBlev 15-minute special. Paul preaches, and he preaches, and he preaches. And he’s gone on so long that it’s getting to be around midnight. Eutychus, is perched on the windowsill, fumes from the many oil lamps wafting past him seeking escape. And Paul drones on. And Eutychus finds himself asleep at the sill.
Have any of you ever fallen asleep in church? C’mon. Tell the truth.
There’s a story about a man who always fell asleep in church, and who could blame him? The preacher at that church was known for being especially long-winded. The pastor got so agitated about it that he gave one of the board members a stick with the instructions to tap the sleepy parishioner over the head when he fell asleep. So the man dozed off, and the board member tapped him on the head to wake him up. But a few minutes later, the man started dozing again, so the board member hit him again, this time a little harder, waking him up again, but only temporarily. When he fell asleep the third time, the board member hit him so hard that he knocked him out of the pew onto the floor! Rather than responding in anger, the sleepy man blurted out, “Hit me again; I can still hear him preaching![2]
If you’re like that guy or like young Eutychus, and just can’t keep your eyes open during worship, you’re in good company.
Sometimes our spirit is willing, but the flesh is weak.
In 2017 Pope Francis admitted that he occasionally falls asleep while praying. The Pope suggested that falling asleep while praying actually pleases God—that as Christians, we are called to feel like children lying in our Father’s arms.[3]
I love this grace-filled approach. I think sometimes we are prone to believing that God is so demanding—that there’s no room for error—that our very humanity and the foibles that go with it prevent us from God’s grace and acceptance.
That couldn’t be further from the truth.
Back to young Eutychus, falling asleep during Paul’s sermon. I mean, it’s been a long day. In fact, it’s been a long week, a long year, a long . . . life as a slave. His is a hard-scrabble life with little rest and littler reward. And after his 16-hour day—and 16 years of 16-hour days—the young lad is simply exhausted. But he shows up for church anyway.
Doesn’t that count for something?
As I was reading several of the commentaries this week in preparation for the message, it seemed that every writer I was reading wanted to cast blame in this story. “Paul was in the wrong for preaching so long.” “Eutychus wasn’t faithful because he fell asleep during the sermon.” But I wondered, why do we assume someone is in the wrong in this story? Couldn’t both men be in the right? Paul for faithfully preaching the Gospel? Eutychus for showing up to hear the Gospel being preached? Must we cast aspersions at young Eutychus for . . . being human?
Why are we so hard on ourselves and others?
Well, the poor kid, Eutychus, nodded off so hard, that he fell off of his perch in the windowsill, plummeting three stories to his apparent death. Paul ran down the stairs, grabbed up the young man in his arms, bringing him back to life. If Paul’s place in Christian history wasn’t established by then, it would be after that.
Eutychus, by his mistake, played a small but important role in the unfolding story of the Christian church. That’s grace!
God honors not just our perfection, but our efforts as well. Not just our outcomes but our motives. Our mistakes, our foibles, our humanness serve as vehicles . . . conduits . . . of God’s grace bestowed on us. If we were perfect, grace would have no power. Precisely because we’re not perfect, God can work through us to bring healing to a broken world.
What if Eutychus had will powered himself to stay awake through Paul’s marathon sermon? He would have missed the opportunity of being raised to life. He would have missed a miracle.
So my friends, let’s get in the habit of extending ourselves some grace. Let’s stop being so hard on ourselves and treat ourselves with a measure of gentleness. Let’s stop beating ourselves up for our imperfections, whether real or imagined. If more of us could do that, then more of us would be able to extend a little more grace to others. If more of us could do that, what a wonderful world it would be!
[1] By William Webber, http://jokes.edigg.com/Farmer/Sleeping_Through_The_Sermon.shtml