Escorted
Based on Acts 9:36-41, Revelation 7:9-17, John 10:22-28, Psalm 23
Have you ever considered that one of your primary duties as a member of the Church of Jesus Christ is as an escort? An escort is a person or people who accompany another to provide guidance and assistance and/or to provide protection or supervision. Has a pastor ever stood before you and told you that the way that we grow as disciples of Jesus is by escorting and being escorted? I mean, we talk endlessly about walking alongside each other through all of life’s joys and challenges, but do we think of ourselves as escorts or as people needing to be escorted? Have you ever considered yourselves guides, protectors, advisors and those who provide assistance to one another? In reality, escorting and being escorted in Christian community is how we learn to follow Jesus – let me unpack that a bit.
It all starts when we first enter a faith community. We may be given a “shepherd” or connected with a mentor – someone who has been around a while and can show us the ropes. From the moment of our baptism, we are escorted by the Holy Spirit every moment of our lives. This spiritual power of the Holy Spirit which we call prevenient grace, is what makes us long for God in the first place, and that longing continues until we find a church community to call home. Once we settle into our church, we see people escorting one another as together they lead, volunteer, study, worship, gather in groups for missional activities and develop deeper bonds of friendship and love.
This is what our scripture readings this Sunday in Eastertide remind us – we become escorts for others as we are escorted by the love of Jesus and the Holy Spirit. Peter is traveling around and is near Joppa when a disciple named Tabitha died. The local disciples sent for him, and he went up to the room where she was laid to pray for her. Filled with the Holy Spirit, he told Tabitha to “get up” and she awoke. Peter escorted her back downstairs into her life of doing good and helping the poor.
John’s Revelation continues with his witness of innumerable people worshiping God before the throne. These are the faithful who died for their convictions in the ‘great tribulation” and who have been escorted to the throne room to serve God night and day. John is told that they will be forever protected by God, and they will be refreshed by springs of living water and will never again shed a tear.
Jesus speaks to non-believers as he strolls the Temple courts. He tells them that he is a shepherd of many sheep – and that he escorts the sheep throughout their lives. In this we hear echoes of Psalm 23 where David compared God to a shepherd who escorts us to safe havens and cares for our every need. Because Jesus is our shepherd, when we hear his voice, we can follow his lead to green pastures and to still waters so that our souls might be restored; and we will dwell with God now and forever.
The continuing message of Eastertide is that Jesus is alive and well and at work escorting us. He did not cease to exist when he ascended into heaven to sit at the right hand of the Father. In fact, he continues to escort his followers across millennia through the presence and power of the Holy Spirit – he continues to escort us even when we don’t realize it or blatantly choose to ignore that truth. We are escorted through the darkness and light of our lives and when we realize this blessing, then we seek to escort others in the same way. Many find the grace of being escorted through life by a loving companion is a truth so compelling that they have to pass it on to others.
Spiritual writer Susan Andrews helps us understand this stating, “…we cannot run away from God. God is our home, and like the early ark of the Israelites, God travels with us wherever we go. The apostle Paul reminds us that ‘nothing can separate us from the love of God in Christ Jesus our Lord . . . neither death nor life, nor angels, nor rulers, nor things present, nor things to come, nor powers, nor height, nor depth, nor anything else in all creation.’
This [The Fourth] Sunday in Easter offers us several images of God as home. God is both shepherd and host, pasture and valley, mansion and fortress, still water and open gate. Whatever the circumstances of our lives, God is with us - in peace, in war, in hope, in fear, in life, in death, in joy, in suffering. When we are at home with God, even the most difficult days are infused with abundant life…In life and in death, we belong to God. In life and in death, we are at home in God. But the reverse is also true. God needs and wants to be at home in us. God needs and wants to abide in us…Hope is the home within us, the home where God lives, the home where God abides.
Rest, restoration and security are the promises of scripture. And they are promised even and especially in the midst of enmity and danger and death. But such blessed assurance comes with a price. We come to trust a dependable God only when we embrace a dependable discipline. In Acts we learn that the Pentecost church grew through devotion and discipline. Day by day the new converts spent time together in the temple. Day by day they broke bread at home and ate with glad and generous hearts. Day by day they praised God, sold their possessions and distributed the proceeds according to need. And day by day, God added to their number, and added abundantly to their already abundant life. Like any home, God needs care and attention and honor. But once we have restored and been restored at home, we can then go forth to give care and attention and honor to the world. In the spiritual world, none of us is ever homeless. Each day we wake up as residents in the homeland of God….”
We are never without a spiritual home, and we are always accompanied, protected, guided – always divinely escorted. The best escorts are the ones who know intimately where they are going and can lead us safely to our destinations. This is what we have in our Good Shepherd, Jesus, when we follow his voice. We have a guide and protector who knows the darknesses that we face. This is why we love to recite the 23rd Psalm so much – why it brings us so much comfort in our times of trial and loss. Because it reminds us that we have someone looking out for our well-being so that we lack nothing.
In fact, Jesus puts it quite plainly in the 10th Chapter of the Gospel according to John. Not only does he let the non-believers know that they are not part of the flock that God has assigned to him, but that Jesus will protect his flock from all who try to lead them astray. Jesus tells the Jews in the Temple courtyard that, “…My sheep listen to my voice; I know them, and they follow me. I give them eternal life, and they shall never perish; no one will snatch them out of my hand….” God did not just give us a Good Shepherd to lead us beside the still waters and to make us lie down in verdant pastures. God gave us One who protects us from all who would “snatch” us away.
What great good news that is! It is news that deserves to be spread. Through God’s grace we come to trust in God’s presence and power in our lives, because we have received God’s powerful love. God has escorted us and helped us overcome. That truth compels us to escort others – those who don’t realize that they too have a powerful escort who is ready and willing to lead them to places of abundance, safety, peace, comfort and love.
Today I hope that you can hear the good news that the Lord God Almighty is our shepherd, and that we are escorted by God throughout our lives. We are given this divine escort because God knows we need one. God knows how quickly and easily we can be led astray. God knows we need a voice that speaks both truth and life, we need a strong protector to keep us safe from all of the voices of the world that seek to mislead us and snatch us away, we need a guide who knows the way to the place where our souls can be restored. Once we realize that we are forever escorted, then we must find ways to lovingly escort others. Let us continue to escort one another on our way. Amen!