of Being Alive

• Next Saturday is the Afternoon Midwinter Tea at 2pm (it is FULL)
• Today is the collection day for Souper Bowl Sunday–please have your nonperishable items (soups!) at the Church by 10am please. 
• Ash Wednesday is this week and Lent begins…keep your eyes peeled for events and offerings. 

Poor Eutychus. He goes down in history as the first person to fall asleep in church. He didn’t even just quietly fall asleep so nobody noticed or jerk awake quietly enough that people could pretend they didn’t notice.  He falls asleep and falls out the window from three floors up!

This is his claim to fame in the Bible.  The first person to fall asleep in the pew.  Maybe this is to make us feel better when we fall asleep at inopportune times, because it’s hard to top this one.  

There’s something uncomfortably familiar about the Eutychus story.  We’ve all had “our claim to fame” linked to something we’d really rather not be remembered for.  The thing that is kind of funny, but also not funny at all.  The think that’s kind of embarrassing, or very embarrassing.  The reputation and “thing” that we can’t shake. It follows us, in good and not-so-good humor…forever. 

Exhaustion. Exhaustion is very human.  Eutychus probably had a long day before and a long day ahead.  He wants to be there, but he’s tired.  He’s exhausted.  It’s midnight.  We’ve all also been in situations where we’re so tired and we’re trying so hard to stay awake.  Sometimes because we have to be and sometimes because we want to be.  

When I was in college, I worked the night shift for a while.  At the end of the shift, I’d drink as much coffee as I could for the long drive home.  It was usually long after midnight, on this horrible long winding road with no lights and terrible curves. 

I’d be so tired! I’m sure you have your own similar stories and tactics for staying awake. 

It’d be 20 degrees out and I’d open the windows to try to keep myself away. I’d be freezing and tired. I’d turn the music up really loud.  I’d sing really loud. I know how close I’ve come to falling asleep at the wheel on those drives. 

I think of these drives when I think of Eutychus.  In some translations, he moves to the window for air.  I imagine him first tapping his feet to try to stay awake.  Then he begins pacing, gets restless.  He moves to the window to breathe in the fresh, cold, night air.  I imagine him resting his eyes “just for a moment”.  

Just for a moment.

Oh, what can happen in just a moment.  

Eutychus falls out the window.  Three floors.  My “just a moment” could have been a car crash.  Perhaps you’re thinking of your own “just a moment”, your own gasp “awake” before “falling”.  Sometimes, it seems a miracle that we’ve survived our lives so far.  

Perhaps this story is a reminder of the preciousness of every moment, that at any moment everything can change.  Often, it doesn’t.  We are jerked “awake” just before “falling”.  We are guarded and held.  Perhaps part of our work is to have faith that there will be more moments of being “caught” than moments of being let down.

At the same time it’s also a very funny story—Luke has a sense of humor and sometimes we need a bit of laughter to lighten the heaviness of the stories and the teachings.  There’s a reason there is “comic relief”—sometimes it’s too much and laughter is like the “rest” note in music…a pause and a softening.   

The story is funny because everything turns out OK. Paul goes down, pick Eutychus up, heals him, heads back upstairs, and keep sermonizing until dawn.  This poor guy falls out the window, almost dies, and Paul keeps going!!  If you’re familiar with Lyle Lovett’s Church song…you might be thinking of the parallels here–a modern take on a familiar story. 

It’s quite funny also, because we can easily see ourselves in they story.  No matter how hard we try to stay awake, we’re human, sometimes we fall asleep.  Who doesn’t have a story of trying to stay awake and they just can’t, even for something they are really and truly interested in hearing?  Who hasn’t tried to stay respectful when we’re bored or uncomfortable?  

We all have these stories of what’s really not funny at the time; sometimes, we even know it’ll be funny…much later, but not yet.  The moments and things that could have been really bad, or are kind of bad, but it comes (or will come) out all right. There’s a sense of relief and a sense of humor at what happened and what didn’t happen and might have.  

How many of us have had our own “near misses” with death?  I once stopped at a green light as the words poured into my head: green mean stop, green means stop, green means stop.  I stopped.  As soon as I stopped, I thought I was losing my mind, because as we know: red means stop, not green.  I put my foot on the gas just as another car ran the red light from the other direction.  

What are your “near miss” moments?  What are the moments when it feels like something bigger is at work in your life?  

Maybe these are Eutychus moments.  It’s not the falling asleep, it’s not the falling out the window. It’s the grace that picks him up off the ground and gives him life renewed.  It’s the grace that picks us up off the ground and give us life renewed.  

And how renewed is that life that’s had a brush with death and escaped?  Sometimes, this renewed life terrifies us and we cast aside grace for blame and rage and fear.  We look for someone to atone, someone else who’s at fault (the bad) instead of looking for the “helpers” (the good).  Maybe we’re afraid of being “good enough” to be guarded by something bigger than ourselves.  

What happens if instead of looking for the problems in the wild ride of life, we embrace sudden Aliveness?  Instead of looking for something or someone to blame for what might have happened, we open to the moment of being “caught up” and held?   What if we gave thanks for the mishaps that didn’t happen?

The “miracle I’m still alive” moment that could change everything.  Maybe, that’s the point?  Maybe this story is the ordinary Aliveness of life that comes into sharp focus when we fall from the window (metaphorically or not) and come out unharmed.  

Sure, we can feel sorry for Eutychus for being remembered as the first person to fall asleep and fall out of the “pew”.  We can feel sorry for ourselves and others. We can laugh at Eutychus for falling asleep and out the window.  We can laugh at each other.  We can be scornful of ourselves and our ungraceful moments in life.  

 But notice what else is at the crux of this story?  

Eutychus is…Alive.  Eutychus had his brush with death and is alive to live life to its fullest.  He’s escaped death by (literally) the grace of God through Paul’s hands.  

We can laugh.  We can scorn.  We can judge.  We can cast blame.  We can look for the “bad” in the stories of life.  Or we might embrace with Joy the wholeness of the human experience.  The struggles, the challenges, the blessed “near misses”, the embarrassments, the mistakes, the laughable moments…the miracles.  The grace that picks us up off the ground and gives us life renewed.