“The One Who Fell Asleep in Church” Acts 20:9-12
This is one of our first images of a Christian worship service. Paul was at the end of his third missionary journey, and had arrived in Asia minor, waiting seven days to meet with the church. They finally got together on the first day of the week—which was called in biblical times, “The Lord’s Day.” This was the day given to the Lord, and it recognized that Jesus had risen from the dead on the first day of the week. It should be noted that for the Jews, the new day began not at midnight, but when the sun went down. So this was a Saturday night service that went on from sun down until daylight. There was the breaking of bread, there was a sermon- not a twenty minute sermon, either; and there was discussion that kept on going.
One of the great things that has happened in the south in my lifetime is air conditioning. When I was a boy, no church had air conditioning. In the south, every church was terribly hot. High ceilings in churches were there not just for looks, but the high ceilings kept the churches cooler in the summer as heat rises. Most churches in the south had funeral fans in them- they have Bible verses on a stick. There still are a few churches that do not have air conditioning in them—mainly small, older churches. When a church is hot, many naturally fall asleep. This was the case in the story of the Bible. But now our churches are cooled!
David Letterman has a top ten list for almost everything. Here is a top five list for why people fall asleep in church:
5) Some people sleep because of medication. At least they make the effort to come to church.
4) Some sleep because of being bone-tired. I had a man who worked the midnight shift and absolutely insisted on coming to church afterwards. I really admired him, and overlooked when he fell asleep. According to the US Dept of Health and Human services, 60 million Americans suffer from insomnia each year.
3) There are others who fall asleep because they have a sickness- some people really cannot help falling asleep when they sit down for any length of time. We helped start a church in St. Louis when I was in seminary, and there was a wonderful man there- he came every Sunday, and every Sunday he fell asleep- sitting on the front row. It wasn’t too bad except when he snored! Then he would get the elbow in the rib cage from his wife. But he had a bad case of narcolepsy- where he would fall asleep when he sat down for any length of time. It got to be so bad that he had to quit driving, because he kept falling asleep at the wheel!
2) But there are some who stay up too late the night before. Maybe watching a game or a show, or trying to keep up with friends who do not care anything about going to church the next day. You really do have to plan on going to church, especially if you have children. It’s not just a matter of setting the alarm clock, it is a matter of intentionally resting so you can be alert to hear God speaking to you the next day. I really think part of the problem is we do not expect God to speak to our needs and our lives when we come to church. But if you ask those who come regularly, people will say they more than likely hear God speak to their hearts in church than anywhere else.
1) The major reason people sleep in church is they just are not interested. If you are not interested in something, it will bore you every time. Now some might say the preacher can put them to sleep. But if you are really interested, I contend anyone can get something from anybody. I used to not appreciate art at all. I would go to a museum and be bored out of my gored! There are still things that just don’t interest me that are very interesting to some- like shopping, or dirt bike riding, or ice hockey, or polo. To some people those things are super interesting. But the one thing about church is it has to do with our soul- and everyone has a soul. It has to do with the eternal God and our relationship with Him, and everyone of us needs to know the One who made us and redeems us. It has to do with where we will go after we die- and you know something? One day we will all die! Now that doesn’t mean that we should not care to make a church service as interesting as possible- within certain limits. Church Is not about being entertained. A lot of people do!
I did a google search and found a few people- mainly teenagers- about the age of Eutychus who fell asleep in church. Someone filmed them on their cell phone. The head would nod, and nod, and nod. Today it is dangerous to fall asleep in church—you might end up on UTube!
Eutychus got hot. Some say it was this upper room atmosphere, and he was up high where the heat rose. Some say Luke, the writer, mentions the oil lamps because they created the heat and took the oxygen that helped send Eutychus to sleep. Eutychus was sitting in a window. Windows in those days did not have screens (some had lattice), but they had shutters. In this case the shutters were open, Eutychus was sitting where he could get a bird’s eye-view. He got hot, and fell three stories out of the window.
One question is, “did he really die?” Maybe he just got the breath knocked out of him and became unconscious- like a football player knocked out on the field. We live in a day in which people do not want to believe miracles. We are hyper-skeptical. But Luke the physician said he fell down dead. Not “as if he were dead”, not “we supposed he was dead” but dead. When Paul came to him the Bible does not say, “His life is still in him.” He did say his life is in him. Luke later says that Eutychus was “brought alive” not brought “awake” nor “brought conscious” but brought alive. There is no doubt that the eyewitnesses there believed Eutychus was dead and that he came back to life. This gives us hope. The only instance of someone falling asleep and they died. But that is not the end of the story- he was brought back to life! There is grace there. The people were much relieved- not just that Eutychus was alive, but that God was merciful to those who tried to worship but fell asleep! The name Eutychus means “Lucky” and it was a common name for the working class in Asia Minor. Eutychus indeed was blessed by God, and we all benefit seeing God’s grace. For the early Christians the message was accompanied by power. The miracle of Eutychus made people awake to his message. Wouldn’t you be more alert if someone had been raised from the dead in your midst? People wanted to squeeze every last dime of the message out- so they stayed until they couldn’t stay any longer. In those early Roman days they had to go to work at dawn on Sundays. But in the end, the contrast is that the whole congregation valued the Word more than they valued rest or sleep. If we had to set our priorities about where going to worship to hear God’s Word is in our lives where would it be? For most of us, the Word of God is not the bread of life- it is perceived as icing on the cake. Some value hobbies more- I can’t go to church because of golf, or fishing. Some value sports more football games, baseball games, ice hockey games, or anything but church. I have heard people say, “I can’t go to church because it is my only day off.” In contrast is this congregation that worked all day- came to church, ate supper there, and had sermons and Bible study all night long—then they went off to work all the next day! We have become the church of the convenient, and our world has become the world of the convenient. We have air conditioning so we might be comfortable in church. We have large buildings, and padded pews. We have cars to get us to church- even in the rain (we don’t have to walk). We have more tools to entertain us, to make our life easier than any other generation before us, but we still have a hard time finding a way to fit God into our schedule. You see, it is not a matter of time, or convenience, it is a matter of the soul. Do you want God? Do you love God with all your heart, mind, soul, and strength? The greatest sin of the church today is apathy- not caring, or being asleep to God. The real concern of our day is not that people fall out of a window like Eutychus did- but that we fall out of fellowship or out of love with God altogether.
In Africa, there is a disease called “The sleeping sickness” (trypanosomiasis). It is when a parasite (tsese fly) has bitten someone and the parasite infects the person causing fever, and eventually it messes up the sleep cycle where the infected person sleeps in the day and stays awake at night. Many of us have been infected with a spiritual sleeping sickness. It shows in that we are bored with good and fascinated with evil. We will stay up late to do evil, but limit ourselves to a teeny tiny portion of our lives to do good. The good news is that it is possible to fall asleep to God, fall from a devastating height, and to be raised from the dead. In other words, it is possible to be bored with God, then have something in your life happen, and God can use that terrible fall—that terrible event—that tragedy- to wake you up to him. I think Paul may have been referring to this event when he wrote in Ephesians (5:14) “Awake O sleeper! Rise from the dead and let Christ shine on you.” I invite you to wake up to God.