Holy Humor
May 1, 2022
William G. Carter
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.
If we are going to endure another Holy Humor Sunday, sooner or later, we have to talk about the sermon. There aren’t a lot of jokes about sermons being too short, but there are quite a few about sermons that go on too long.
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.
If we are going to endure another Holy Humor Sunday, sooner or later, we have to talk about the sermon. There aren’t a lot of jokes about sermons being too short, but there are quite a few about sermons that go on too long.
Like the young girl sitting next to her grandmother. The preacher is up there, waxing on, giving his eighty-five-point sermon. She sat quietly for a while, but then she said, “Grandma, if we give him the money now, will he let us go?”
Or the pastor, well known for his exhaustive sermons, noticed a man in the back got up and left in the middle of that week’s message. And then the man returned just before the final hymn. At the back door after the service, the preacher said, “Joe, where did you go?” Joe said, “I went to get a haircut.”
“Now, Joe,” said the preacher, “why didn’t you do that before the worship service.” Joe said, “I didn’t need one then.”
And then, there’s the church where two guys sit in the back – I’ll call them Don and John. They had a guest minister who was long winded. He was eloquent, but the sermon was long. Really long. About an hour and a half later, Don turned to John and said, “That was really a fine sermon, don’t you think?” John said, “It certainly was, although it was very long. It’s a good thing we have these pew cushions. But even then, I thought my backside was going to sleep.” And Don said, “I know, I heard it snore three times.”
So today, we have this story from the book of Acts. The apostle Paul is the preacher, and he’s been talking for a while. And talking and talking. The hour was late, they had to light the lamps, and Paul kept going. Over there by the window, a teenager was sitting by an open window. As Paul droned on, the kid’s eyelids began to bounce. His head began to nod. He took an enormous yawn, which had contagious effects in the rest of the room, but the apostle Paul didn’t take a hint. He kept talking.
Suddenly, the teenager gave in, nodded off – and fell out of the third story window. There was a collective gasp. It was enough for Paul to stop and take a breath. Where did he go? Is he all right? Some rushed downstairs. Others leaned out the window to look. Down on the ground, he wasn’t moving.
As someone once quipped, “This is the first recorded incident in the history of the Christian Church in which a young person is literally bored to death by preaching.”[1] For that reason alone, it was a favorite of the church youth group where I spent a lot of time as a teenager. It was right up there with that other story, the one that Wayne read, about the prophet who cursed out some kids for making fun of his bald head.
There’s a lot of weird stuff in the Bible. That’s what makes it so interesting. Today’s text is the kind of bizarre story that led me, years later, to ask the Jehovah’s Witness missionary to explain to me. “Tell me,” I said, my tongue firmly in cheek, “why is this story in the Bible?” Why, indeed?
These days, I can think of several answers. For one thing, this is told in the Book of Acts, the Acts of the Apostles, and that’s a frontier book. The Gospel moved out beyond the walls of Jerusalem, off the security of a well-known map. And things happen on the frontier that don’t happen back home. The book of Acts is full of these accounts of fortune-telling slaves, wild visions in the sky, book burnings, weird magicians, and poisonous snakes. You name it. The coherence of the Gospel Word meets the contingencies of one new situation after another.
Here, Paul is on the go. A few months back, he escaped a riot in the city of Ephesus, where he had infuriated the artisans who made their money selling souvenirs around the Temple of Diana, one of the Seven Wonders of the Ancient World. He went up to Macedonia, went down to Greece for a few months, was thinking about going to Syria – until he discovered his enemies had a plot against him. So here he is in Troas, northwestern Turkey for us, up around the city of Troy. And in every place he went, he had stories to tell. No wonder he talked so long! If you chart out his journey in the six verses before our text, he’s going all over the Aegean Sea.
But why is this story in the Bible? Quite possibly because, it’s not merely a preaching story – it’s an Easter story! A resurrection story! The young boy falls out the third story window, is “taken up as dead.” What does Paul do? He goes down the stairs, takes the lad into his arms, and then announces, “There is life in him. Don’t be afraid.”
For as the Gospel began to spread beyond Jerusalem, the city of Jesus’ death and resurrection, the church leaders begin to do what Jesus had done. They preach the Good News, and they heal. There is congruence between Jesus the Lord and the people who call him Lord. They continue his mission. Here in Troas, here is another tale of the Word of God advancing, creating miracles. Like raising that young man from where he fell. His name is Eutychus, translated from Greek, which means “lucky.”
But there’s something about this story which is - - ok, I’ll say it - - there’s something disturbing here. Sure, all’s well that ends well. We have our happy ending. Lucky Eutychus is breathing again. He will be all right. We want that to be the conclusion. Yet we must ask. Or at least, I have to ask: why is the apostle Paul so clueless?
Didn’t he see the kid was nodding off? Didn’t he notice the drooping eyelids, the head bobs? Hear the snore? Did he keep blasting through the boredom – not just in Eutychus, but others around him? Was he that insensitive? Inquiring minds want to know.
I recall the Youth Ministry Workshop, where a couple of heavily bearded Jesus Freaks led us in song as they strummed their guitars. Here’s the number one lesson that they wanted to teach us: when it comes to talking about Jesus, it is a sin to bore a kid. There are many ways to teach the Gospel. It’s not just blah-blah-blah from the preacher up front. You can have a conversation. You can join together in an activity. You can wrap the lesson in a good deed for the benefit of others.
In fact, if you find yourself going on too long, maybe you need to stop. Pause. Catch your breath. So, if you would, let me invite you to stand and stretch for fifteen seconds. Come on, get up on your feet, if you’re able. Take a deep breath. Stretch. Bend a little bit. Wiggle your toes. OK, everybody still with me? Have a seat.
But I don’t think we’ve answered the question: why is this Eutychus story in the Bible? Because I think there’s one more answer. Like I said, Paul’s on the move. There’s a lot of content he wants to tell these people before he leaves in the morning. Who is Jesus? What did he do? How do we know he’s alive? How do the scriptures help us understand him? How does he call on us to follow him? What does that mean in a world like this?
You can’t get all that material in a single eighteen-minute sermon. So Paul’s been talking all day. He’s been talking all night. Eutychus nods off, falls off, Paul raises him – and then what does he do? They break bread (that is, they ate a meal and had communion). And then Paul keeps talking until dawn.
Of course, the church folks had hustled Eutychus out the door, fed him some chicken soup, and let him rest from his bruises. Paul kept preaching – all day, all evening, all through the night – because he wanted them to know all about Jesus.
Reminds me of the time I had a cup of lemonade with Tony Campolo, the famous Baptist preacher of my generation. Couldn’t get a word in edgewise, and frankly, I didn’t want to. He could have kept talking all night, and I would have let him – because he knows Jesus, and he wanted me to know Jesus, and he wants everybody to know Jesus – because the news, the Good News, is just that good.
Now, I let you off easy most weeks. My sermons average 2100 words. That’s four single-spaced pages at 14-point font, typically about 18 minutes. And I do that, because of the preaching instruction that I received from my father, who said, “The mind can only absorb what the seat can endure.”
Yet, like Paul, I have to agree there’s a lot to say. The Gospel has substance and significance. We are talking about the formation of Christian souls. That takes time, a lot of time. And nobody can grow in faith by rolling through the drive-through for an order of Sermon McNuggets. We need to have something to chew, something worthy of the God who raised Jesus – and Lucky Eutychus – back from the dead.
Meanwhile, I’ve just tallied it up and I’m close to nineteen hundred words. Add a little stretch time, and I should wrap this up – until I see you again next week. I think I will conclude with a poem, a poem that I found on the internet. It has been composed by that great internet poet Anonymous, and it goes like this:
These days, I can think of several answers. For one thing, this is told in the Book of Acts, the Acts of the Apostles, and that’s a frontier book. The Gospel moved out beyond the walls of Jerusalem, off the security of a well-known map. And things happen on the frontier that don’t happen back home. The book of Acts is full of these accounts of fortune-telling slaves, wild visions in the sky, book burnings, weird magicians, and poisonous snakes. You name it. The coherence of the Gospel Word meets the contingencies of one new situation after another.
Here, Paul is on the go. A few months back, he escaped a riot in the city of Ephesus, where he had infuriated the artisans who made their money selling souvenirs around the Temple of Diana, one of the Seven Wonders of the Ancient World. He went up to Macedonia, went down to Greece for a few months, was thinking about going to Syria – until he discovered his enemies had a plot against him. So here he is in Troas, northwestern Turkey for us, up around the city of Troy. And in every place he went, he had stories to tell. No wonder he talked so long! If you chart out his journey in the six verses before our text, he’s going all over the Aegean Sea.
But why is this story in the Bible? Quite possibly because, it’s not merely a preaching story – it’s an Easter story! A resurrection story! The young boy falls out the third story window, is “taken up as dead.” What does Paul do? He goes down the stairs, takes the lad into his arms, and then announces, “There is life in him. Don’t be afraid.”
For as the Gospel began to spread beyond Jerusalem, the city of Jesus’ death and resurrection, the church leaders begin to do what Jesus had done. They preach the Good News, and they heal. There is congruence between Jesus the Lord and the people who call him Lord. They continue his mission. Here in Troas, here is another tale of the Word of God advancing, creating miracles. Like raising that young man from where he fell. His name is Eutychus, translated from Greek, which means “lucky.”
But there’s something about this story which is - - ok, I’ll say it - - there’s something disturbing here. Sure, all’s well that ends well. We have our happy ending. Lucky Eutychus is breathing again. He will be all right. We want that to be the conclusion. Yet we must ask. Or at least, I have to ask: why is the apostle Paul so clueless?
Didn’t he see the kid was nodding off? Didn’t he notice the drooping eyelids, the head bobs? Hear the snore? Did he keep blasting through the boredom – not just in Eutychus, but others around him? Was he that insensitive? Inquiring minds want to know.
I recall the Youth Ministry Workshop, where a couple of heavily bearded Jesus Freaks led us in song as they strummed their guitars. Here’s the number one lesson that they wanted to teach us: when it comes to talking about Jesus, it is a sin to bore a kid. There are many ways to teach the Gospel. It’s not just blah-blah-blah from the preacher up front. You can have a conversation. You can join together in an activity. You can wrap the lesson in a good deed for the benefit of others.
In fact, if you find yourself going on too long, maybe you need to stop. Pause. Catch your breath. So, if you would, let me invite you to stand and stretch for fifteen seconds. Come on, get up on your feet, if you’re able. Take a deep breath. Stretch. Bend a little bit. Wiggle your toes. OK, everybody still with me? Have a seat.
But I don’t think we’ve answered the question: why is this Eutychus story in the Bible? Because I think there’s one more answer. Like I said, Paul’s on the move. There’s a lot of content he wants to tell these people before he leaves in the morning. Who is Jesus? What did he do? How do we know he’s alive? How do the scriptures help us understand him? How does he call on us to follow him? What does that mean in a world like this?
You can’t get all that material in a single eighteen-minute sermon. So Paul’s been talking all day. He’s been talking all night. Eutychus nods off, falls off, Paul raises him – and then what does he do? They break bread (that is, they ate a meal and had communion). And then Paul keeps talking until dawn.
Of course, the church folks had hustled Eutychus out the door, fed him some chicken soup, and let him rest from his bruises. Paul kept preaching – all day, all evening, all through the night – because he wanted them to know all about Jesus.
Reminds me of the time I had a cup of lemonade with Tony Campolo, the famous Baptist preacher of my generation. Couldn’t get a word in edgewise, and frankly, I didn’t want to. He could have kept talking all night, and I would have let him – because he knows Jesus, and he wanted me to know Jesus, and he wants everybody to know Jesus – because the news, the Good News, is just that good.
Now, I let you off easy most weeks. My sermons average 2100 words. That’s four single-spaced pages at 14-point font, typically about 18 minutes. And I do that, because of the preaching instruction that I received from my father, who said, “The mind can only absorb what the seat can endure.”
Yet, like Paul, I have to agree there’s a lot to say. The Gospel has substance and significance. We are talking about the formation of Christian souls. That takes time, a lot of time. And nobody can grow in faith by rolling through the drive-through for an order of Sermon McNuggets. We need to have something to chew, something worthy of the God who raised Jesus – and Lucky Eutychus – back from the dead.
Meanwhile, I’ve just tallied it up and I’m close to nineteen hundred words. Add a little stretch time, and I should wrap this up – until I see you again next week. I think I will conclude with a poem, a poem that I found on the internet. It has been composed by that great internet poet Anonymous, and it goes like this:
Poor, sleepy Eutychus,
A-sittin' without a-squirmin'.
Perching on a window ledge
To hear an endless sermon.
St. Paul keeps on a-preachin'
To our hero snoozin' hard;
Then Euty leans into the air
And crashes in the yard.
But Paul is an apostle,
Quite unlike other men;
Down he runs to Eutychus
And gives him life again.
So if you're gonna sleep in church,
Don't from a window fall;
Cause the one up front a-preachin'
Sure ain't no apostle Paul.
Have a wonderful day, filled with joy and laughter!
Quite unlike other men;
Down he runs to Eutychus
And gives him life again.
So if you're gonna sleep in church,
Don't from a window fall;
Cause the one up front a-preachin'
Sure ain't no apostle Paul.
Have a wonderful day, filled with joy and laughter!
(c) William G. Carter. All rights reserved.
[1]Anna Carter Florence, “A Prodigal Preaching Story: Paul, Eutychus,
and Bored-to-Death Youth.” Theology Today 64.2 (2007): 233-243.
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