The Dangers of a Long Sermon

Acts 20:7-12

November 6, 2005

Today as we continue our series “Ordinary People with Extraordinary Experiences” we meet another very ordinary person with an usual name “You T Kus” who falls victim to, of all things, a long winded sermon. So today we’re going to look at the dangers of long sermons or how one ordinary person survived a long sermon by having one of those extraordinary experiences. It could happen to you..

We read in Acts 20:7 “On the first day of the week we came together to break bread. That’s what we’re doing today. When the Bible uses the term “break bread” it refers to what we call communion, when we remember the sacrifice of Jesus’ body for our sins.

Paul spoke to the people and, because he intended to leave the next day, kept on talking until midnight.” They were on a mission trip making disciples. Paul had a lot to teach them in a short amount of time. We read in verse 8 “There were many lamps in the upstairs room where we were meeting.” “Seated in a window was a young man named Eutychus, who was sinking into a deep sleep as Paul talked on and on.” Lamps take oxygen. It was warm, it was late, it was the perfect condition for sleeping. A “deep sleep” isn’t just dozing off taking a cat nap. No, Eutycus is way beyond dozing off. Dozing off was something he probably did ten minutes earlier. Now he was gone.

From where I stand each Sunday I can watch when you start to doze off on me. For six years I sat on the bench where Scott now sits in Plano, Texas for two services every Sunday. Poor Scott, I know what he’s going through. From that seat I started to see a doze pattern in my congregation. I learned where people would typically doze in a sermon. I ranked the top three sermon doze points.

Doze point #1 was any unplanned pauses. An unplanned pause is where the speaker loses his place in his notes. Two seconds is the maximum unplanned pause allowed in American churches or our minds will wander.

Doze point #2 was any reference to history. “In 1861 the Presbyterian church split over the issue of slavery. At General Assembly that year…” At that point they were gone.

Doze point #3 was any reference to theology or biblical background. “The sin nature of man leads to total depravity which can only be overcome by the sacrificial death of Jesus Christ.” Powerful stuff even told in a powerful way but we don’t connect. We’ve heard it too many times.

That’s why we have to pad all the seats in the sanctuary in case someone falls over during one of my sermons. I keep a careful eye out for who’s starting to go. But dozing happens in the most surprising and embarrassing places. Like the guy who fell asleep during a job interview. Last week I rented the new Batman Begins movie which I had been so looking forward to seeing. I put the DVD in the player, turned the lights out, sat on my sofa and started to enjoy probably the best Batman film ever. I say probably because at some point I fell asleep and when I woke up the bad guys had already lost. I couldn’t help it. Neither could Andy Salla, a twenty year old member I had in Texas who pulled an all night work shift on a Saturday night back in 01 and was killed in a head on collision when he fell asleep at the wheel.

We read in the second half of verse 9 “When he was sound asleep, he fell to the ground from the third story and was picked up dead.” The writer of Acts was a doctor named Luke, one of the original disciples of Jesus. When he wrote that Eutychus was dead I think that literally meant he was dead. What happens next is mind boggling.

We read in verse 10 “Paul went down, threw himself on the young man and put his arms around him. “Don’t be alarmed,” he said. “He’s alive!” Then he went upstairs again and broke bread and ate. After talking until daylight, he left. The people took the young man home alive and were greatly comforted.”

Up until this point Eutychus was an ordinary guy having an ordinary experience. By faith he went to learn more about God from Paul and his team when he could have gone home and gone to bed which is what I would have probably done. I don’t like to stay up past 10:00 even on New Year’s Eve. But Eutychus was hungry to learn more about God and it’s only when he tried to fill that hunger that he had an extraordinary experience of a resurrection.

Think about it, a doctor declared our ordinary person dead and yet he got taken home alive. Think about the story he would tell for the rest of his life about how he had fallen three stories out a window, tasted death and was resurrected because of the grace of God who gave him a second chance in Jesus Christ. That’s an extraordinary experience. See what can happen when you sit through a long sermon?

But it’s not about enduring long sermons. It’s not about staying awake in church. God took care of Eutychus. It’s about God’s great love for us demonstrated by his sacrifice of his only son. When you smell that love in such a place like what you thought would be a God forsaken waiting room of a cancer treatment center you want more of Christ. When you taste that love of Christ while sitting beside a dying person you want more. When everyone’s gone, it’s all quiet and you can’t stop crying because your grief is so great but you sense that Jesus is there in the room with you, you want more. What Eutychus tasted made him want more, that’s why he stayed to hear Paul. It was kind of like on Thursday when I went over to the Family Center across the street to have a peanut butter sandwich lunch with my wife and walked into a building filled with the smell of good soup cooking and chili for the Fall Festival Rummage Sale. I knew what I wanted and it wasn’t peanut butter.

I told you what I found the top three doze points of a Texas sermon to be. In my six year observation of sermons guess where I found people the most alert. It is not where you would think it would be. It was in the invitation to the Lord’s Table, communion. Communion Sundays were always the best attended Sundays. When we went to communion every Sunday at our 8:30 more contemporary service attendance grew from being half the size of the later traditional service to equal or larger than the traditional service.

There’s something about this experience that our souls long for. The power of God’s Holy Spirit is here when we acknowledge that Jesus Christ, God’s Son died on the cross for all of our sins. It doesn’t matter who you are, whether you’re ordinary or extraordinary, it doesn’t matter where you’ve come from, whether you’re Presbyterian or Catholic or nothing, it doesn’t matter whether you’ve been a big sinner or a little one, if you have acknowledged your sin against God, accepted Jesus’ forgiveness of your sins and have been willing to follow him in baptism you are invited to this table of our Lord. If you would like prayer today I will be available to pray with you following this service here in the front of the sanctuary.