ACTS 11:19-30

PSALM 33:1-8,18-22

1 JOHN 4:7-21

JOHN 15:9-17

Sermon – May 25, 2003

At the beginning of “The Acts of the Apostles”, the New Testament book which is the earliest comprehensive account of the earliest years of the Christian Church, there were 120 people on the entire planet who believed Jesus was the Savior, all of them were Palestinian Jews, and all of them could (and did) fit in one room.

By the end of “Acts”, the faith had won thousands of converts on three continents and was being preached boldly in the capital of the Roman Empire itself. Two hundred and fifty years later, Christianity had spiritually conquered the empire which had so often tried to exterminate it, and 100 years after that, Christianity had replaced the Roman Empire as the major cultural and social force in western civilization.

How on earth did this happen?

Jesus, after all, ascended into heaven at the very beginning of “Acts” and was no longer physically present on earth, leaving behind a little band of followers most of whom had made themselves conspicuously scarce when Jesus went through his darkest hours.

Their behavior started to change after Christ’s resurrection, as their shame and depression was washed away by a tidal wave of forgiveness and joy on Easter and the weeks that followed.

Still, however, Jesus’ followers could have become a nostalgia society after he ascended into heaven, just gathering week by week to break bread in remembrance of him and tell stories about “the good old days with Jesus”. The #1 reason that they didn’t was the coming of The Holy Spirit, “God at work in the world today” as the Catechism says, who came upon the disciples at Pentecost and transformed them from passive to active, from backward-looking to forward-looking, from inward-looking to outward-looking, from fearful to fearless, from an exclusive clique to a growing, inclusive community. With that change of orientation and the continued dynamic guidance and empowerment from the Holy Spirit, the Church could – and did – move mountains.

The Christian Church, individual parts of it and individual congregations have ever since been at risk to fall into a passive backward-looking, inward-looking, fearful, exclusive clique, which is the beginning of the end for a congregation or a church, but the Holy Spirit can always change those trends 180° - if the people involved want to be changed. In Acts, the Holy Spirit came before entropy could develop much momentum, a fact we celebrate each year on the Day of Pentecost (which this year falls on June 8).

So the first and biggest reason for the spectacular growth of the Christian faith in its first centuries is God the Holy Spirit. The second is that the earliest leaders – the original apostles – recognized the Spirit’s call to spread the faith far beyond those who could have met Jesus in his lifetime. And the third is the remarkable “second wave” of leaders the early Christian Church developed.

The first “star” from the “second wave” of leaders was a man who had never met Jesus during his lifetime nor had a dramatic auditory experience of the risen Christ as Paul later did. This leader’s real and powerful personal relationship with Christ was based entirely on faith (not eyewitness experience) – just like ours is, and he is therefore the New Testament superstar we can in many ways most easily relate to. He was indeed the first person to experience the blessing Jesus told the apostle Thomas about on the Sunday after Easter, when Jesus said, “You believe because you have seen me? Blessed are those who have not seen and yet believe.”

This “Superstar” was the first leader of “the Jesus-believers” not to be a Palestinian: he was from the island of Cyprus, in the Mediterranean Sea. He therefore set a precedent: anyone in whom the Church’s leaders discerned God’s call to leadership could become a leader in the Christian Church – they didn’t have to be related to or descended from the first leaders, or even from the same country. Within weeks of the first Pentecost, the church became international in its leadership. It seems obvious now; it wasn’t then.

This “Superstar” was, like the other apostles, a Jew who saw in Jesus the Messiah he had been hoping for. Unlike some “Superstars” this man, named Joseph, sought not to call attention to himself but to draw people to God and to bring out the best in others, like a good “coach”. And so it is that, while his given name was Joseph, he is best known to us by the nickname given to him by the original apostles, a nickname which means “Son of encouragement” and in the original language Barnabas.

We first hear about Barnabas in Acts 4:36, when he “sold a field which belonged to him and took the money and laid it at the apostles’ feet.” Never assume that a newcomer can’t be generous! Within less than five chapters in the Scripture Barnabas’ stature had risen so much that it was he who convinced the original disciples that Paul’s dramatic “conversion” from a persecutor of the church to an evangelist for the faith was real (Acts 9:27). For that act alone, Barnabas’ place in history would have been secure.

But let’s read on. The strong but self-effacing leader was chosen by the apostles to be, essentially, the first “missionary bishop” in history – the first leader of a major community of believers in Jesus outside of the Holy Land itself. As described in this morning’s first Scripture reading, Barnabas went to Antioch, then a major city in what is now the southern-most part of Turkey, right next to Syria. This was the first place believers in Jesus were called “Christians”. The foundation Barnabas laid was strong enough such that 300 years later, the church in Antioch was led by a “patriarch” (a church rank higher than that of archbishop), one of only five patriarchates in the world, along with Jerusalem itself, Alexandria in Egypt, Constantinople (modern Istanbul) – and Rome.

The church in Antioch was also the first multi-national, multi-cultural, multi-racial Christian Church – in leadership as well as membership. Acts 13:1 lists the leaders of that church as, in order, Barnabas (from Cyprus), “Simeon who is called Niger” (meaning he was a black man), “Lucius of Cyrene” (a part of Libya in North Africa) and Saul of Tarsus, soon to be know as Paul.

Barnabas was also notable in that not only did he convince the apostles that Paul was “for real”, he sent for him to be his assistant in Antioch. It takes a wise and

secure person to hire as an assistant a brilliant and eloquent man who figured soon to overshadow his boss, which Paul eventually did. Paul was certainly no Dan Quayle as a “number two man”! To Barnabas’ gift of spiritual discernment we can add his self-confidence in giving an ultimately bigger superstar his first job.

Barnabas then became the leader of the first international relief effort (again with Paul as his assistant) as described in Acts 11:30, and later the leader (again with Paul as sidekick) as the leader of the first major, international Christian missionary expedition (Acts 13:2 and following), including the first recorded missionary foray into entirely pagan territory. It is on this trip that Luke (the author of Acts) first refers to Barnabas and Paul as “apostles” (14:14) – and first refers to Paul first and Barnabas second in his account of the expedition.

Ultimately, Barnabas and Paul split up. Barnabas’ death is not recorded in the Bible, but a plausible church tradition states that he was martyred – killed for the faith – while preaching in his own homeland of Cyprus.

We have in the New Testament no definite words of Barnabas (speeches attributed to “Barnabas and Paul” were probably by Paul) not any miracles by him, nor do we have any genuine writings by him, yet he made a bigger impact on the early Christian Church than most of the original twelve apostles.

What we have is his example: Barnabas’ generosity, gift of spiritual discernment, courage, leadership abilities, willingness to be overshadowed so that God might be better served, desire to serve God in ways no one had ever done before in places he might never have been before with all kinds of different people.

How could he do this, the first non-eyewitness to Jesus to be an “impact player” in the emerging Christian community. Well, Luke says, “He was a good man, full of the Holy Spirit and of faith.”

Good, full of the Holy Spirit and of faith? We can be like that!

So let us go and be likewise.

(The Rev.) Francis A. Hubbard

St. Barnabas Episcopal Church