Episode Transcript
[00:00:02] Speaker A: Let us pray.
Dear Heavenly Father, we lift ourselves up to you.
You are the only one who can help us in these times.
Our world is falling apart. We have such a great message about Jesus and his love. Give us the strength and the purpose to proclaim your glory in this terribly dark, hurting, bleeding and suffering world. Open our ears as we hear about the earliest disciples who were trying to find out how to follow you and what it meant to be truly a Christian. In Jesus name we pray. Amen.
The text today is in Acts 11, 1930.
Now, those who were scattered because of the persecution that took place over Stephen traveled as far as Phoenicia, Cyprus and Antioch. And they spoke the word to no one except Jews. But among them were some men of Cyprus and Cyrene who, on coming to Antioch, spoke to the Greeks, also proclaiming the Lord Jesus.
The hand of the Lord was with them, and a great number of Greeks became believers and turned to the Lord. News of this came to the ears of the Church in Jerusalem, and they sent Barnabas to Antioch. When he came and saw the grace of God, he rejoiced and he exhorted them all to remain faithful to the Lord with steadfast devotion. For he was a good man, full of the Holy Spirit and of faith. And a great many people were brought to the Lord. Then Barnabas went to Tarsus to look for Saul, and when he found him, he brought him to Antioch. So it was that for an entire year they met with the church and taught a great many people. And it was in Antioch that the disciples were first called Christians. At that time, prophets came down from Jerusalem to Antioch. One of them, named Agabus, stood up and predicted by the Spirit that there would be a severe famine over all the world. And this took place during the reign of Claudius. The disciples determined that according to their ability, each would send relief to the brothers and sisters living in Judea. So this they did, sending it to the elders by Barnabas and Saul. This is the word of the Lord. Thanks be to God.
[00:02:41] Speaker B: Well, it's good to be with all of you again this morning. I want us to think this morning about people that we all have in our lives. I'm going to call them backstory people. They may not take up too much time or space in our life stories, but they were with us in crucial moments when our lives were changing, even though at the moment, we didn't even know that.
In 1973, Bruce Armstrong, Fuller Alum. Now, my neighbor worships here at Knox. Bruce is sitting right there.
Took me into the Dean's office at Fuller Seminary and introduced me to Glenn Barker, who at that time was the Dean of the School of Theology. Glenn checked his schedule, noticed that he had a two hour open block, and he said, come on, I'll take you to lunch. We walked up to the corner of Oakland and Walnut, sat down in Lucky Boy, and the conversation began. Glenn asked me about my background, my interests, my goals for studying theology.
Then he introduced me to the educational philosophy at Fuller. I remember Glenn saying, fuller is a place where you're going to encounter professors who are passionate about their fields of expertise. They're going to make the best case for how they understand the Bible and how they communicate Christian truth and how they function as ministry leaders.
But more than any of that, they will guide you into how to think theologically, not just what to think.
That conversation hooked me right after Suzette and I got married. I started at Fuller in the fall of 1974. Three years later, enrolled in the Ph.D. program in biblical studies and finished in 1981.
One conversation determined the trajectory of the next seven years of my life.
And those years opened up ministry opportunities through Fuller to work with parachurch organizations like Young Life and InterVarsity Christian Fellowship to provide theological education for their staff.
The people I met during those years eventually guided me to Whitworth University, where I spent 27 years of my life until we retired and moved here to Pasadena in 2021.
One day, one conversation, one restaurant. Who knew it would be Lucky Boy?
One man, Glenn Barker. I call him Backstory Glenn. I want to think with you today about someone who we've been introduced to in our reading this morning. His name is Barnabas, and he plays a backstory role in life of the Apostle Paul.
And as we will see, without Barnabas, perhaps there is no Apostle Paul, no Gospel ministry to the Gentiles, no transformation of Roman culture by the early Christian church.
The plot line in this passage raises the central issue that the entire book of Acts focuses upon. The question can be asked in a variety of ways.
How far is the reach of Jesus saving good news?
Who is included in the community of Jesus followers?
Did Jesus come just for the Jewish people? Or are non Jewish people called Gentiles? Are they included in God's grace?
How expansive is the inviting grace of God in Jesus?
This issue of exclusion versus inclusion has pressed upon the church in every place, in every generation, right up to the present moment. And we face those same issues in our country today.
The Pharisee named Saul knew the correct theological answer to all those Questions that I just mentioned.
Prior to his encounter with the risen Jesus in Acts 9, Saul was sure that God was committed to one people and one people only. The Jews, one gender and one gender only men, one class, those who prospered.
This was a first century health, wealth and prosperity gospel exclusively for Jewish men.
As a Pharisee, Saul would have prayed this prayer.
I thank you God, that I'm not a gentile, that I'm not a woman, that I'm not a slave.
Do you hear the echoes of theological nationalism, theological misogyny, theological classism in that prayer?
But then everything changes as Saul travels to Damascus to capture people belonging to the way, the first Christians that we heard in the text, that is those who were followers of Jesus.
That encounter is the beginning of Saul's conversion, or better yet, Saul's first conversion because there are going to be several more to come.
Now Barnabas is a risk taper, okay, risk taker. And when it comes to living out the inclusive grace of Jesus, Barnabas is all in.
And this commitment requires Barnabas to take big risks. Risks not once, but twice in this extended story.
After the encounter with Jesus on the Damascus road in Acts chapter nine, Saul wants to come back to Jerusalem and wants to meet with the disciples, the eyewitnesses of Jesus earthly ministry.
Acts 9, chapter 26 describes that when Saul had come to Jerusalem, he attempted to join the disciples and they were all afraid of him for they did not believe that he was a disciple.
Well of course they were afraid.
Saul was an accomplice to Stephen's murder in Acts chapter 8. Of course they doubted his credibility. They probably thought that Saul was a double agent posing as a follower of Jesus so he could get information about the inner circle of this fledgling Jesus movement in order to identify, arrest and execute the ringleaders of what he thought was this grotesque heresy.
This new convert later in the story named Paul needs an advocate to arrange a meeting with the apostles.
And Barnabas risks his own reputation and his credibility with the church in Jerusalem by advocating for Paul.
At the meeting, Barnabas tells the story of Saul's miraculous Damascus Road encounter when he saw the risen Jesus. Barnabas credibility convinces the apostles to accept Saul into the fellowship of Jesus followers.
Barnabas name means son of encouragement.
Encouragement. The act of giving someone else support, confidence and hope.
The act of giving someone else support, confidence and hope. The act of advocating for someone else.
Two chapters later we pick up the story in our reading Today, Acts chapter 11.
Something unexpected is going on in Antioch as Gentiles and not just Jewish people are becoming followers of Jesus as a result of the persecution launched by Saul. The vast majority of Christian community in Jerusalem fled the city in order to escape the persecution and the suffering.
We know who these people are because they are listed for us in the story of Pentecost found in Acts chapter 2. 17 different ethnic groups are mentioned in the Pentecost story, and some from each group became followers of Jesus.
Many of these people fled to Antioch, where the church was becoming a vibrant, rich, multicultural community of believers who spoke a variety of different languages, practiced a wide variety of customs, religious regarding food and dress and culture.
Some of these followers of Jesus, not bound by Jewish cultural restrictions, were sharing the good news of Jesus there in Antioch.
Verses 20 and 21 of our reading proclaiming the Lord Jesus. The hand of the Lord was with them, and a great number believed and turned to the Lord.
Word got back to Jerusalem, and the apostles dispatched Barnabas to travel up to Antioch and check out what is going on there.
What kind of community is being created by God's spirit here in Antioch once again? And now we continue to see why he's called backstory Barnabas pops up in the story.
Luke tells us that when Barnabas saw God's grace in Antioch.
Isn't that an interesting phrase?
Saw God's grace?
What do you think Barnabas saw?
What did he experience there?
What grace impacted his life?
So that he goes once again and gets Saul and brings him to Antioch.
Saul needs more than acceptance from the powerful Jerusalem apostles.
His conversion came on the Damascus road where he met Jesus.
But Saul also needs transformation.
Giving up this rigid theological system with its sharp lines of division, that's not an easy task, and it doesn't happen overnight.
And so Barnabas introduces Saul to this whole new world, multilinguistic, multicultural, gender inclusive world. This is the Jesus community.
These are the first people in all the Roman Empire to be called the Little Christ Christians.
Sometimes we need advocates to help us find our way when we have no clue what to do.
Every year at our opening weekend at Whitworth University, we will welcome students and their families. And one of these weekends, a mother came and found my wife, Suzette, before the parents departed and said, my daughter needs a lot of help and you're the one to give it to her.
Okay, what do you want me to do? Well, she introduced herself and told the story that she and her husband had lived their entire lives on the Mercy ship, traveling around the world to do surgery on people and bring them to help. Their two children were born on that ship. And the oldest of the two, Karis, was just starting at Whitworth University.
And Karis mom said my daughter has never lived on land her entire life.
She has no idea how to navigate on land.
So you have to show her how to get to the grocery store.
You have to take her to the bank and set up a bank account for her. You need to show her how she functions on land because this is a world that is absolutely foreign to her. She has no idea how to function.
I never thought about a person not growing up on land in my entire life. And my wife Suzette became a great, great friend to Karis during those years.
Experts in cross cultural learning point out that the most important trait of navigating a new culture is this humbling ambition.
We don't know what we don't know.
We don't know what we don't know.
Motivated by his conviction that ethnicity and gender and class should not separate people from each other, Barnabas is a bridge builder in connecting people to one another.
So Barnabas seeks out Saul and brings him to Antioch. Now, Saul may have had a spectacular conversion on the Damascus road, but there is much more that Paul needs to experience.
In order to be purged of all that theological and cultural bias that's built up in his life. He needs to be immersed in a multi ethnic Christian community made up of women and men from all around the empire.
Barnabas is going to be that bridge of creating relationships.
And what Saul is going to discover is that all the sociological, theological, political, theological barriers that we create against each other, those don't matter in the fellowship of the Christians at Antioch.
His theology is now being verified in this new experience.
Why Barnabas brings Paul to Antioch is for encouragement. The encouragement of giving someone support.
Jim Wallace, the former director of the Sojourners community in Washington D.C. and now professor of Theology and Public Policy at Georgetown University, writes about three components of his book. His most recent book called the False White Gospel.
Wallace writes this first, proximity is what creates the concern, understanding, solidarity and even action to change.
But to have proximity with neighbors outside your normal path, you have to place yourself in other pathways.
These movements on all our parts will make all the difference.
To seek out other pathways is hard, but it is also an act of faith. Through Barnabas, Paul is placed in a pathway that leads to Antioch, where he gets up close and personal with people from all over the Roman Empire.
Secondly, Jim talks about the importance of vulnerability.
Exposure to people from different cultures produces vulnerability. As we learn how much we don't know Daily close contact with these Christians shows Paul their authenticity, their love for Jesus and their love for each other. Remember that phrase? Barnabas saw the grace of God, seeing that love is transforming the categories of division. We, the blessed versus they, the enemy fade away as insignificant in comparison with their communal desire to be faithful witnesses to Jesus.
Through Barnabas, Paul has to admit how much he does not know, as well as acknowledge how wrong he was in his previous theological judgments against Gentiles.
And finally, the third element of encouragement that Wallace talks about is humility.
In Antioch, every day, Paul will dine with people from all over the Roman Empire, eating whatever is served to him without concern for all those cultural restrictions he erroneously assumed made some people more pleasing to God than others.
I just want us to use our sanctified imaginations for a moment.
Imagine the First Church of Antioch is having its weekly potluck, and the food's there. And all these people are enjoying being together.
Rich fare, lots of conversations, children running around, just like we experience here when we gather for meals.
And in the back door comes Barnabas. Somebody goes, hey, Barnabas is back. He's been gone for a while.
Oh, look, he's got somebody with him.
And then somebody across the room recognizes Saul.
Imagine that moment when that person stands up and he says, I know who you are.
You're the one that made us run from Jerusalem.
You're the one that made us migrants.
You're the one that, because of you, we had to leave our grandparents behind because they couldn't travel from Jerusalem to Antioch. How many in this room had to run from the persecution that this man was causing in Jerusalem? And you can imagine hands going up all over the First Church of Antioch. Sunday night, potluck.
You feel that moment.
Proximity, vulnerability, humility.
Now imagine Paul for the next year sitting down at meals and people telling their stories of what that was like when because of his previous hatred, they had to run.
Reconciliation is not an easy task, folks.
Hard, courageous conversations need to take place.
And I believe that during that year, there were lots of very courageous conversations between members of the church at Antioch and Saul.
And during that year, as those conversations are going on, Saul is being changed.
What a transformation.
Before they leave, ultimately, in Acts chapter 13, to begin the Gentile ministry, one other thing happens.
Saul and Barnabas are set apart for ministry to the Roman Empire. And you know who laid their hands on Saul and Barnabas? We have the names of these people right there in Acts, chapter 13.
Two Africans, Simon of Niger and Lucius of Cyrene. The third guy is manaean who was a part of Herod's evil, wicked empire that caused so much havoc throughout the entire region.
Herod was a brutal dictator, but somehow Mana also came in touch with the love of Jesus. And now he's a part of the church at Antioch.
That's what the power of courageous reconciling conversations can do.
Paul and Barnabas are commissioned to go take this love of Jesus to the rest of the world through the hands of two African and a previous political enemy.
What a change.
Listen to what Paul describes in his own words about the transformation that took place. This is From Ephesians, chapter 2, verses 13 to 16.
Jesus is our peace in his flesh. He broke down the dividing wall of hostility between us.
Jesus reconciles both groups, Jews and Gentiles, to God in one body through the cross, thus putting to death the hostility through it, through Jesus. Paul says, no more hostility with each other.
That's the mark of Barnabas upon Saul.
Now some of you may follow John Pavlovitz. He's in Substack. Wonderful writer. He has a column that he writes every day called the Beautiful Mess. He's a pastor and a journalist. He's also completed a book entitled Worth Fighting Finding Faith and Conviction When Cruelty Is trending.
And this book really has challenged me to think, how can I live out a Barnabas life in the moment that we're in? This is what he writes.
This moment has to be a turning point, a fork in the road where we get to twist the plot into something redemptive by taking accountability and altering our course.
Such change is a holy endeavor to confront oneself and to choose the turbulence of renovation rather than the comfort of the way things are.
This is why now, in such a sacred time, an invitation is being brought to all of us to choose who we want to be and the legacy that we want to leave, knowing that the greatest sin would be to allow our past alliances to keep us from this present moment.
This moment of urgency transcends denomination, transcends political party, transcends religious worldview. It is about steadying the shifting bedrock of human decency, one that demands a courageous choice by people of faith, morality and conscience, even when it promises discomfort.
This is about the truth that can set us free.
End quote.
Maybe we walk in the footsteps of Barnabas, in our influence upon others for the sake of the good news of Jesus, love for all people.
Amen.
