Acts 20:7-12; May 17, 2026; Seventh Sunday of Easter
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Yes, today I thought I’d abandon the lectionary for the story you just heard. Hopefully it brought you some levity in these heavy days (though maybe that says something more about my particular brand of humor, I don’t know…). But prayerfully it also presented us with a teachable moment. After all, it’s chalk-full of irony and wisdom, packed into just six short verses!
Let’s recap: a man dozes off to sleep and falls out of a window, because Paul’s sermon is too darn long.
Sound familiar?
Well, it shouldn’t!
Because lucky for you all, I keep my sermons 8-12 minutes in length… though, I must say, that hasn’t always prevented some of you from closing your eyes too. No names mentioned.
And, don’t give me that “oh, I was just resting my eyelids” bit. I heard enough of that when I was younger when my parents would insist on “watching” Murphy Brown with their eyes shut tight.
But yes, luckily for you all, comparatively, I am relatively short… unlike, say, Paul who apparently went UNTIL MIDNIGHT before picking up again UNTIL DAWN!
Can you imagine? That’s not a sermon. That’s a filibuster. And this young boy Eutychus just wasn’t up for it. And really, who could be either?
I think there’s a message in here for us leaders and preacher-types, even if Luke didn’t intend it. For we too need to keep alert, to be self-aware and self-reflective, so to not punish the flock into boredom and apathy for our own appeasement; so that folks don’t fall out of a window as we are speaking, or daydream about jumping from one as we keep going.
But I digress, let’s get back to the story:
Luke records that the young man went by the name “Eutychus” which ironically translates to…get this: “lucky.” Yes, lucky! Oh, he was lucky all right! For he not only was forced to sit through the world’s longest sermon, but he also enjoyed a three-story drop to his death because of it.
A true Tower of Terror, if you will.
Moreover, this boy was so fortunate that when Paul goes down to bend over his body, Paul responds almost nonchalantly that even though Eutychus appears dead there is life in him yet. But that’s all he says before immediately going back upstairs to preach again UNTIL DAWN!
Sheesh!
It is written that meanwhile, as Paul keeps talking, folks on the outside help mop up the mess, getting the boy get off the ground, leading him away, which left them feeling: “not a little comforted.”
“Not a little comforted…” talk about the understatement of history! I mean, wouldn’t you all be not a little comforted if, like, Dave Alexander fell out of the window and I just said: eh, on with the sermon?
Okay, bad example…but you get the point! 😊
Now, to be fair, this particular story is notorious for translational discrepancies. Some translations render “not a little comforted” as “greatly relieved.” Some match the Greek exactly and say, “they were not to a moderate degree comforted,” meaning they were more than just minimally comforted. Moreover, the NET captures Paul not just “bending” over the body, but actually “throwing himself down” on Eutychus, holding him in his arms, saying “don’t be distressed” as opposed to “don’t be alarmed.” Which, I think, is a more pastoral rendering and characterization of Paul.
Sometimes my friends, it’s the translation, as much our own bias, that shapes our reading of scripture. Be alert to that and maybe read several. Or better yet, read the Greek. Knowing that sometimes even the Greek disagrees with the Greek, from manuscript to manuscript. Ah, but I digress, again….
But that’s it. The story ends at the same point no matter your translation. Paul boards a ship, and that’s the last we ever hear of Eutychus, the young man whose autopsy read “death by tedium, or apathy.”
Now of course, all jokes aside, he was rather lucky, for in the end he experienced first-hand what it meant to return from death to life. For he fell three floors down, from a room filled with lamps into the dark of midnight, only to return to breath, at dawn, into a more glorious light.
My friends, it doesn’t take a seminary scholar to see the symmetry here with Jesus, our Savior, demonstrating that God not only resuscitates the Son of Man on Easter, but also the children of misfortune anywhere — destining each of us to one day be woken up, even if we’ve slept-walked our lives unto our own demise.
But amidst that gospel message, this incredibly good news, Luke still gives us a word of caution and it’s simple:
Keep awake! Stay alert! Before it’s too late.
You know, I told the Bible Study this on Wednesday, but believe it or not, I was once a self-declared accounting major. Can you believe it? I had no idea what I wanted to be in life, so I figured I’d might as well try to be like my dad and study tax-law.
Sheesh!
So, one day, during this misguided adventure, I was in one of those 101 business lectures. And as I tend to do now, I tilted my chair backwards to stretch my legs out even farther. Thinking, I might as well be physically comfortable if I’m also going to be mentally anguished, you know?
Well, I must have dozed off to sleep because the next thing I know, I’m plummeting downwards, backwards, to the ground!
But worst of all, as I fell, my feet kicked upwards and slammed the under part of the table, sending both my papers and my neighbor’s pens flying into the air, causing such a ruckus that it interrupted the professor from whatever it was he was saying.
Well, it was then and there, my friends, that I can report that whilst on the floor I too was resuscitated. For I saw the light and knew first-hand that accounting would never be for me.
But look at me now! Somewhere perhaps I was always destined to be.
For maybe, like Eutychus, I too needed to fall asleep and plummet into darkness, to become alert to the light and a brighter path ahead.
For like he who was Saul had to be blinded to become Paul, maybe I also needed to be startled to finally figure things out.
And just maybe we all need that sometimes… to be startled. To be shocked. To fall flat on our face, or our back, in order to stand up. To stand taller. To see better and clearer.
Perhaps then everything going on right now in our world was and is necessary, as horrible as that sounds. For the betterment of our future.
For maybe we needed to be asleep at the wheel, as so many were, and perhaps still are, and experience this fall from grace together; in order to not make the same mistakes again in the next cycle, this fall, and whatever comes after.
And maybe, just maybe, we too will be lucky and back away from this ledge.
That is, if a majority of us wake up before the ship boards, before we’re left with an even worse mess that’s near-impossible to mop up.
Amen.
