First Tuesday after Pentecost
Lectionary Texts:
Genesis 1:9-13
Isaiah 6:1-8
Have any of you ever been guilty of the sin of Eutychianism?
What is eutychianism? You might ask. It's a word I made up. It means, "Falling asleep during the sermon." The source of my neologism is the story in Acts 20:7-12. Please read it now (It's okay to laugh).
This is certainly one of the stranger miracles of the Bible. As a preacher, my tendency is to blame this situation on poor Euthychus, a teenager who needs his sleep but should be respectful enough to keep awake and listen to Paul's sermon. As laypeople, you probably blame Paul for preaching too long--past midnight and "Paul talked still longer." While I think that euthychianism is a sin, I don't think it's a capital crime. I'm glad that Eutychus, despite his three story fall was revived/raised from death.
Nowadays with every church being air-conditioned, the windows are closed, so no one now can be sitting in the window and fall out. Nonetheless, I think it my pastoral duty to admonish you not to fall into the sin of Euthycus, lest you need reviving (physically, not spiritually) and neither a doctor nor Paul is there.
On a more serious note, this oddly humorous passage does tell us something about early church worship practice. The Christians meet for worship on the first day of the week, i.e. Sunday, in contrast to the Jews who worship on Sabbath (Friday sunset to Saturday sunset). Christians celebrate Sunday, the day of the resurrection of Jesus, rather than the Sabbath. It won't be until the fifth century that some Christians begin to conflate the two.
"Breaking bread" is a common early Christian phrase for what we call communion. 1 Corinthians 11 makes clear that for the earliest Christians communion had more bread and more wine and was more like a meal than what we have today. The early Christian worship book, Didache (ca. 80 A.D.), shows that first century Christians celebrated communion/the eucharist every Sunday.
Notice too that the order to worship is already established. The sermon comes before communion. In this instance the late evening worship probably had more to do with Paul's heavy travel schedule than anything else.
God of the miracle, God of the meal,
We give you thanks for the Holy Sacrament. In our time of pandemic we have missed it. The online communion just doesn't feel quite the same. Return us to church on the first day of every week. Return us to the full celebration of your Holy Communion. In the name of him who gave his body and blood for us. Amen.
Faithfully,
Christian
P.S. If any of you are guilty of euthychianism and would like to confess your sin online, please confess in the comments section of this blog. I will grant you online absolution and tell you to "go and sin no more."
1 comment:
My mother always said that she was happy when people fell asleep during the sermon because it was probably the only real rest they got all week!
I doubt your readers have heard the story of the time when I was substitute teaching at a very urban high school and a student jumped out a fourth floor window. Fortunately, there was a roof jutting out from the floor below so he just took a stroll on the de facto roof deck and walked back in the window, but it does make for a nice story. The next day of subbing was more exciting. Does the Bible have a good story for an 8th grader exposing himself to a group of girls in school?
I have found that in these days of bad preaching, I have been guilty of not falling asleep during the sermon, but of making my grocery list.
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