There is a word that appears three times in our story today.  It’s a good word. Twice, it’s translated as “encourage.”  “After the uproar had ceased, Paul sent for the disciples; and after encouraging them and saying farewell, he left for Macedonia.  When he had gone through those regions and had given the believers much encouragement, he came to Greece…” (1-2). Then at the end, the same word translated “comforted” - “Meanwhile they had taken the boy away alive, and were not a little comforted.”

Church family, I pray that we have been encouraged and comforted over these weeks we have been travelling with Paul.  Remember how we have been reminded of truths about God.  Prayer and praise are foundational in our walk with Christ.  God alone is worthy of our worship and trust and dependence.    God is with us.  “Do not be afraid, but speak and do not be silent, for I am with you…” spoke God to Paul in a vision in Corinth.  “Great is the Lord” in Ephesus.  Today we hear Paul say of young Eutychus - “Do not be alarmed, for his life is in him.”  “Who am I?” we ask.  “Where am I going?” we ask.  As individuals.  As churches.  Hear this truth this day, dearly beloved of God.  To follow Jesus is to have the Spirit of God who raised Jesus from the dead in us.  Christians have been gathering together on the first day of the week for thousands of years, and we’re not going to stop.  Do you know why we gather on the first day of the week?  It’s resurrection day.  New life day.  God is life, and God’s life is in us.

Life in Christ is not only for when we die, though it is for then too.  Life in Christ is for every day/hour/moment of our journey.

I wonder how you all feel about journeys, about trips.  There seems to be something about a journey that captures our imaginations, doesn’t there?  Some of the most famous, most compelling, most beloved stories are about journeys.  For readers since Luke’s day, there was the Odyssey – the story of the journey home of Odysseus.  The movie is coming out this month?    Will Odysseus make it back to Ithaca?  What will he find when he gets there after being away for 20 years?   (Other examples – Lord of the Rings, Watership Down, O Brother Where Art Thou)    

What is it about these stories that captures us so?  If you’re like me, you like a good road trip.  A full tank of gas and the open road in front of you (hopefully), maybe even driving into the unknown. For most (though not all) of us, our lives are pretty settled.  We don’t do a lot of travelling outside of vacations or for work.  Our lives are not ones of constant journey.  What is it about these travel stories?

Why does Luke spend so much time in what might by some be considered to be rather boring details about Paul’s travels?  Why are these details in our Holy Scriptures?  We heard last week that in Ephesus, Paul resolved in the Spirit to go through Macedonia and Achaia; from there to Jerusalem and then Rome.  Look at the detail that Luke goes into.  Paul goes through Macedonia and stays in Greece.  We’re even told how long he stays there – three months.  In order to avoid danger, Paul decides against sailing back to Syria and goes back through Macedonia.  We’re told who went along with Paul and where they were from.  Sopater, son of Pyrrus from Berea.  Aristarchus and Secundus from Thessalonica.  Gaius from Derbe and Timothy.  Tychicus and Trophimus from Asia.  “They went ahead and were waiting for us in Troas,” Luke writes, “We sailed from Philippi after the days of Unleavened Bread and in five days joined them in Troas, where we stayed for seven days.

Whether we are on the move physically or not, we’re all of us moving through time. In light of this, the Psalmist prays, “Teach us to count our days that we might have a wise heart.” How do we count our days well?  How do we measure our time on this earth?  Do the days of our lives really go like sands through the hourglass?  What will have made it all worthwhile?  To be able to say “I did it my way”?  If our days are filled with routine, is it simply “Same stuff different day?”

Or do we look at life with Christ as a journey?  A journey wherein each day is another step toward home.  Do we look at our lives and our life together as the trip together of a journeying/ pilgrim people who are headed not toward uncertainty but a destination that has been promised to us by a God who keeps promises?  This is the great truth of which we are reminded as Luke tells of Paul’s travels.  It’s a truth that we’ve heard before, of course.  The journey of the people of Israel going through the wilderness.   A pilgrim people travelling along together toward a land of promise.  The writer to the Hebrews writes of where Jesus’ followers are going – “But you have come to Mount Zion and to the city of the living God, the heavenly Jerusalem, and to innumerable angels in festal gathering, and to the assembly of the firstborn who are enrolled in heaven, and to God the judge of all, and to the spirits of the righteous made perfect, and to Jesus, the mediator of a new covenant…” (Heb 12:22-24a)

We’re talking about a high-level view of our journey as followers of Christ.  Christ goes along with us and in us through the presence and power of the Holy Spirit.  This is our big story.  Luke reminds us that we zoom in too. We go along together.  Paul went with Sopater and Pyrrhus and Aristarchus and Secundus and Gaius and Timothy and Tychichus and Trophimus.  What did they do?  They encourage the believers, and you can be sure they encouraged one another.  I’m sure Paul looked back on his life and images of Priscilla and Aquila and Barnabas and Silas and Lydia and Timothy and…. came up on the screen of his memory.  We’re pilgrim people, but we’re not solitary pilgrims, and we’re not called to be so.  No one in this story of the church said anything like “I’m quite ok following Jesus on my own” or “My faith is a private matter” or “My faith is between God and me” because we have been called to do this Christian life together. 

So let us take a few moments to think about the people who encourage us along our way.  Think of the people who have encouraged and loved and helped form you in the faith.  Parents.  Husbands and wives.  Sisters and brothers.  Sunday School teachers.  Pastors.  Those who quietly went about their work for God seeking no accolades, seeking nothing for themselves.  People who have gone on before us and who are waiting for us.  People who are in some ways still with us as we carry their words, their deeds. Dorothy from Oruro who showed us what is was like to bridge cultures.  Who showed us what it is like to commit to gathering.  People who are removed from us geographically.  The Longs from Malaysia by way of England who reminded us of the importance of getting together in smaller numbers through the week and breaking bread together and looking at the Word together and praying together in our homes.

These aren’t just words on a page, and they’re not just boring details.  They’re the stories of our lives together as we journey with God. 

So we can all go home.  Great!  Not yet though.  You may be saying that’s great, what a great image to reflect our walk with God, and it’s great to do that together and to know by faith that we are travelling toward the beautiful city of God.

But the journey is hard. “Life is difficult” is how a book called The Road Less Travelled begins.  No kidding.  Often we don’t know what’s ahead on the journey.  We may find ourselves saying, “I didn’t think things would go this way.”  We’ll know pain and sorrow and fear and doubt.   I was talking about Psalm 90 earlier.  Teach us how to count our days.  Before that the Psalmist sings “The days of our life are seventy years, or perhaps eighty, if we are strong; even then their span is only toil and trouble; they are soon gone, and we fly away.”  If you’ve been around for any significant length of time you say along with me “How well I know that.”

What to do, what to do…

The same thing that followers of Christ have been doing for over 2,000 years now.  Look to our story:  “On the first day of the week (what would become known as the Lord’s Day, the day of resurrection, the day of life) when we met to break bread.”  We’re talking about Paul and his companions.  “Companion” comes from two Latin words.  They mean “together” and “bread.”  Bread together.  We gather together once a week.  They broke bread.  We break bread once a month, and we get together once every week.  We neglect gathering together to our detriment.  I’m not speaking of people who are physically unable to get out.  We neglect gathering together to our detriment.  It’s not good for us.  When you go away on vacation, look for a place where Christians gather on a Sunday and go to that place.  “Let us consider how to provoke one another to love and good deeds, not neglecting to meet together, as is the habit of some, but encouraging one another, and all the more as you see the Day approaching.” (Heb 10:24-25)

Let us do that.

Life is difficult, and we need to get together regularly and meaningfully to be reminded of the great truths of our faith and to sing them together and hear them read and be comforted and encouraged.  Unless we don’t.  If we don’t, we may feel a little too comfortable in the world, or a little too invested in our own power and our own strength, and if that’s the case, I pray that God would change our hearts.

Fellowship is foundational to this whole Kingdom enterprise. Jim Wallis put it like this:

“The greatest need of our time is for koinonia, the call simply to be the church, to love one another, and to offer our lives for the sake of the world.  The creation of living, breathing, loving communities of faith at the local church level is the foundation of all the other answers.  The community of faith incarnates a whole new order, offers a visible and concrete alternative, and issues a basic challenge to the world as it is.  The church must be called to be the church, to rebuild the kind of community that gives substance to the claims of faith.”

1. Sustenance.  How is this call to be sustained through all the demands placed on us, all the messages that surround us, and all that makes life difficult?  Worship.  Worship at which we gather around the table. This doesn’t happen anywhere else.  Worship at which we gather to hear the Word.  That doesn’t happen anywhere else.  Worship at which we pray and sing.  You don’t get that anywhere else.  Aren’t you happy to be here?

Paul is the guest preacher.  As some preachers do, he goes on at some length.  They’re meeting in an upper room.  There’s a young man there named Eutychus.  “Lucky” in Greek.  Sitting at the edge of the group in a window.  He falls asleep and falls out.  Now some will say Luke is presenting this humourously and some might accuse me of being overly serious, but consider the situation here.  He was picked up dead.  Someone has died in the middle of church.  This is terrible!  I remember the day our dear sister Jennie Buchanan took a turn at the back of the church during a service.  Everything stopped.  Doctor Brenda went back to help her.  She was ok that day, but she wouldn’t be with us much longer.  She’s one of the ones who’ve gone on before who we still carry with us.

What does Paul do?  He affirms what we do in the face of death.  He puts his arms around the young man.  What do we do at someone’s deathbed?  We put our arms around them.  We take their hand.  What do we do when people are grieving?  We put our arms around them.  We take their hand.  It’s what Elijah and Elisha did when a widow’s son died.  It’s a prophetic act that says, “This is not the end.  This is not it.”  It’s what Jesus did when he came to the house of Jairus.  “She’s not dead,” Jesus said.  They laughed at him.  Then they weren’t laughing.

This is Paul’s act.  This is Paul’s message.  This is the message for us today.  “Do not be alarmed.”  Don’t we need to hear that? “Do not let your hearts be troubled,” is how someone else put it.  When you follow Christ, nothing is ever the end.  His life is in him.  Take heart.  Take comfort.  In Jesus is life.  Jesus’ life is in us.

That is it.  Paul goes back upstairs, breaks bread, and eats.  He keeps talking too because – sermon!  Encouragement!  Comfort!     Word and table.  Sustenance for the journey.  They go together like two things that go together very well.  The boy is taken away alive and, in classic Luke understatement, we are told they go away not a little comforted.

May we go away today being not a little comforted.  In Christ we have life.  Thanks be to God for his indescribable gift!   Amen