Sermons

Dead - Tired

Judy E. Pidcock                               Third Presbyterian Church  July 18, 2004                                  Ecclesiastes 1:1-10

This morning’s scripture lesson is buried deep within the book of Acts, and that’s too bad because I think it is one of the funnier, more revealing stories of the Bible. One that speaks to us about the church and being tired and generally feeling out-of-sync with the rest of the world around us. The story is funny because it tells us what we’ve all known: that preaching is a sure-fire cure for insomnia. A modern version runs like this. During a church service one Sunday morning, the preacher stopped suddenly in the middle of his lengthy sermon. He looked over his glasses and glared at the woman in the front of the sanctuary. “Madam,” he boomed. “Would you kindly wake up your husband? His snoring is disturbing my sermon.” To this the woman replied, “Wake him up yourself. You put him to sleep.”

Paul is Preacher of the Year in the first century. His credentials are impeccable – just the appropriate delicate blend of academics and personal experience. His rhetoric is unmatched. His reputation precedes him through the vast expanses of the ancient world. If we read the beginning of this twentieth chapter from Acts, we learn that in the last year alone Paul has traveled to Macedonia, Greece, Asia and Ephesus. And with our story this morning he has traveled recently from Ephesus to Troas. Paul’s arrival in Troas stirs up great excitement, and the crowds gather to hear him preach. And preach he does. Sunday afternoon. Sunday evening. Sunday night. The shadows lengthen even as Paul lengthens his sermon. The lamps are lit and still Paul talks on. Until about midnight when Eutychus – our brave young hero – nods off on the windowsill. The room is hot and crowded. With no one beside him to pinch him awake, he cannot fight off sleep any longer. Eutychus finally gives in and falls out – out of the window and out of sight to the street three stories below. He is either bored to death or dead tired. Either way, he is dead.

I’ve heard sermons like that. I’ve preached sermons like that. “All things are full of weariness;” writes Ecclesiastes. “a person cannot utter it; the eye is not satisfied with seeing, nor the ear filled with hearing. What has been is what will be … there is nothing new under the sun. Is there anything of which it is said, ‘See, this is new?’”

What happens when the gospel does not move us? What happens when we hear God’s Word as mere words and nothing more? What happens when the New Testament, the new witness, becomes the same old story? Like Eutychus, we are tired. Tired of work, tired of school, tired of our civic groups, tired of church, maybe even tired of each other. For many, it’s the season to be tired. We’ve finished a busy year and our internal clocks tell us to take a break. To turn back the pace a notch.

But there are other times when all of life is flat, regardless of sermon or calendar, and we go through the motions wondering silently “is this all there is?” Like Eutychus, we might have a long-anticipated event before us or a calendar too full to imagine, but still – we shall not be moved. Because we have moved beyond the bounds of novelty or enthusiasm. And we are on the verge of nodding off – out of weariness or boredom or both.

Golfers will love Walker Percy’s novel The Second coming, where revelations about self and life and future occur on the fairway. Percy’s main character, Will Barrett, “had everything. Friends. Family. Social position. Great wealth. Everything in life – except a reason to live it.” One afternoon he stands alone in a pine glade looking idly for a ball he sliced out of bounds. “Once he was in the pine forest the air changed,” writes Percy. “Silence pressed in like soft hands clapped over his ears. Today for some reason he remembered everything. Everything he saw became a sign of something else. This fence was a sign of another fence he had climbed through. The hawk was a sign of another hawk and of a time when he believed there were fabulous birds. Even the wheeling blackbirds signified not themselves but a certain mocking sameness. They flew up, flustered and wheeling and blown about by the same fitful wind just as they had thirty, forty years ago. There is no mystery. The only mystery is that nothing changes. Nothing really happens. Marriages, births, deaths, terrible wars had occurred but had changed nothing. …Suddenly it crossed his mind that nothing else had ever happened to him. Nothing would ever surprise him again.”

Will Barrett is Eutychus in another time and place. We have the sense that few things would have surprised Eutychus that hot night in Troas so long ago. Neither the company of the crowd nor the bright lights nor the world-famous speaker could move him to attention. Either asleep in the pew or sleep-walking through our lives, there are times when we would like to shake this unbearable flatness – not despair – but flatness. And we are unable to do it. Many of us have times like this. Eutychus is a hero from Acts because he is Everyman. He is the John Doe of Troas. Neither the greatest member of the group, nor the weakest member of the group. He’s one of us. A faithful earnest person trying to do the very best he can with the spot he is in. He raises again the question of Ecclesiastes: Is there anything NEW under the sun? Tired of responsibilities, distanced from God, weary of work, Eutychus is overcome by sleep. Falling out of the window seems to be the only way out of his this malaise.

So why is this story funny? It may be one way of saying “don’t take yourself too seriously for this too shall pass.” Or it may be a caution to avoid window-seats and long-winded preachers. But I believe it’s telling us in a subtle way that God through the Church works to create life and life abundant. Just when events seem out of control – when Eutychus is stretched out dead down below and the crowd is hysterical three floors up – Paul the preacher becomes Paul the physician. He rushes down, embraces Eutychus and raises him to life. But – as one commentator put it – “why let a little thing like death stop a good preacher?” Paul, faithful to the Word and faithful to his ego, resumes his preaching until dawn, stopping only to break bread with the Church. Eutychus is later taken home. Never to be heard from again in the New Testament, and yet never to be silenced about his resurrection. Overcome by sleep, Eutychus is now overcome by life. Everything is new under the sun. Everything is different.

“Unique things happen when believers are gathered that do not happen anywhere else.” For Eutychus, all phases of life are embraced by the Church. The Church surrounds and accepts him when he is spiritually dull, and life feels flat. When God is most distant from him, still he finds a welcome place among patient believers. It is the community of faith that offers life and sustains life when he is overcome by sleep. In contrast to the drama and fanfare of Pentecost, this, too, is the Pentecost church. Not only pushing out in mission, but also caring for its own, mindful that a weak community of faith makes a weak witness to the faith. Like the people of Troas, you and I must always be bringing the news from far off into this place and this people. “Pay attention!” lies somewhere in the story of Eutychus. “Pay attention for there are sisters and brothers in your midst who need you attention and your care. And like Eutychus, there are those who will not ask for it.”

“We must never tire of remembering who we are and what our purpose is,” writes Burton Cooper. “We are a living body of caring, issuing from and expressing Christ’s continuing, redemptive power. As such, we are the answer to those questions of suffering that rise out of our lives and onto our lips. But we are a living answer, not a dogmatic answer.”

“The claim of the Christian faith is that in a particular place, in the life of a community of sisters and brothers in Christ, there is a way – a way of listening, a way of seeing, a way of acting – which can counter the power of suffering in all our lives, and set us on our feet again. This is not a claim of exclusivity. It is a claim of universality, or better still, it is an invitation to universality: all are invited to participate here in God’s healing powers.”

What happens when the gospel fails to move us? When the Word of God becomes mere words? When language loses its impact, the creative activity of God persuades, restores, and nourishes. We know the weakness of words and the power of touch in the presence of grief. We have felt the calm of a silent sunset. We have been moved deeply by art or music, when talking fails. Actions, after all, speak louder than words. God interrupts the unbearable stupor with a graceful act. A holy reminder that all is not as it appears, and what is seen is not what necessarily will be.

“Do not be alarmed” is Paul’s consolation to the trembling crowd when Eutychus falls to his death. “Do not be alarmed for his life is in him.” Paul is not surprised. Paul presumes that God will act. We hear no reprimand for our tiredness. No battle cry for spiritual vigor or rebuke for poor attendance. This has been no fall from grace. Instead there are words of comfort and broken break – by the church and to the church. A ministry of word shared and action proclaimed. Paul calls us to a ministry of encouragement. This is the Church: a reviving spirit in the rhythm of our lives.

Eutychus is a saint of sorts. He is someone who points us toward God and moves us one step closer to God. But Eutychus is a believable saint, something of a kindred spirit. Until his fateful nap, he is a regular guy – part of the crowd and hanging around at the edge. He never speaks. He does not call attention to himself. He disappears. Yet through him we see the large and startling reversals of God at work. Death overwhelms life as tiredness consumes him. Life overwhelms death as the Church surrounds him. The God who acts overwhelms Paul with resurrection power.

Christ’s call to us is to be the Church that overwhelms the world, offering up a new understanding of life together. So care for one another. Embrace the broken and sustain the weary in your midst. Visit the lonely. Welcome the stranger. And widen – always widen – the circle of God’s abounding grace. For it is true: “What has been will be, for there is nothing new under the sun.” God’s love is the same: yesterday, today and forevermore. Amen.