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Barnabas speaks
One of a series of August sermons on Bible characters, given by Brian Moreby, Vera Parker and David Parsons. This one was preached by David.
Imagine the scene. It is the last day of the visit. In a comfortable house in the remote town of Derbe the Greek host and his Jewish wife Eunice, with their young teenage son Timothy, have finished their evening meal and are chatting over a leisurely cup of wine. An older woman, Lois, sits quietly listening. One of the visitors, Paul, has already retired to bed ready for an early start in the morning. He has been recovering from a very nasty incident and is still frail. The host turns to Barnabas, the tall visitor.
"You have told us a great deal about Jesus, and we now believe. But you haven't told us anything about yourself. Before you leave us, tell us about yourself. We have the whole evening ahead of us." So Barnabas begins:
It didn't come as altogether a surprise when Saul and I were picked out to be sent off on this mission. I think both of us had been feeling for some time that our work in Antioch was almost done. You can stay too long in a place, I've found. If you do that, people come to rely on you too much, and they don't let their own spiritual gifts get an airing. When I first went to Antioch, when the church leaders sent me to see that everything was going all right, I was very impressed with what was going on, men and women believing in Jesus Christ everywhere I looked. They needed a lot of guidance in those early days, of course - bags of enthusiasm, not much experience among them. Well, that's why I trotted off to find Saul, up in his home town of Tarsus. I knew he was a forceful personality, wouldn't stand any nonsense; and he was absolutely steeped in the Scriptures, and on fire for Jesus.
To be honest, there was another reason, too. I felt he was a kind of protégé of mine. After his wonderful meeting with the risen Lord, he eventually came to Jerusalem, and tried to join us believers. They wouldn't think of letting him in. You see, they'd known him all too well in the old days, when he persecuted us. They couldn't trust him. But I thought he should be given a chance. I made friends with him, and I was convinced he was genuinely changed. So I took him by the hand and introduced him to our leaders. He spent a fortnight, chiefly with Peter. They were such different characters, but they must have learned a lot from each other. Saul would have found out many stories about Jesus from Peter, and Peter must have been given fresh ways of understanding what Jesus' death meant, by Saul.
But, dear old Saul, he couldn't help talking about Jesus in public. More enthusiasm than tact. And he stirred up trouble. His old friends couldn't stomach him, now that he'd changed sides, as it were, and followed Jesus instead of persecuting him. The leaders sent him packing, for his own safety and theirs, back home to Tarsus. He took up his tent-making again there; that's what he was doing when I found him, sitting cross-legged in the front of his shop, sewing. Well, that was no occupation for a brilliant mind, no job for a firebrand burning to speak for Jesus. That's the other reason I went and fetched Saul to Antioch - for his own sake, to give him scope for using his gifts.
It worked well. I think we made a good team, Saul and I. He's the uncompromising one; I'm - well, they nickname me Barnabas, the Encourager. The Church needed us both. But the time came, as I said, when we both felt they could get on very well without us. And the Holy Spirit made it clear to us all that Saul and I should be sent off to preach elsewhere.
I took the lead, of course. I'd been a believer for longer than Saul, and people expected me to be a leader because I'm fairly tall, and Saul is quite small. In fact, people had a rather rude nickname for him - they called him the Little Chap - Paul. That's what Paul means. He didn't mind. Indeed, I think he prefers to be called Paul now. Perhaps Saul reminds him too much of his past life, and his anti-Jesus campaign. Anyhow, I said we should go across to Cyprus, my home, and take John Mark with us. Well. the world was open in front of us, and we could go anywhere. We had to start somewhere, and it seemed best to begin on familiar territory. We sailed across to the east coast, and made our way right across the island till we reached Paphos. We must have made some sort of impression on people, because the governor, Sergius Paulus, heard about us and sent for us. Saul - Paul - took the lead when there was speaking to be done. And when there was opposition, you could see Paul bracing himself to enjoy the confrontation. Like with that poisonous little magician Elymas, who tried to stop Sergius Pauls hearing the good news of Jesus. Paul dealt with him, with relish!
We were beginning to come to grips with the mixed up society that the Roman Empire is. It's a mixture of races - Africans, Arabs, Jews, Italians, Greeks everywhere, of course. I wonder if there will ever be a society as mixed as ours. And people were rather mixed up in their beliefs and their outlook on life. The Africans have their own gods, the Arabs have another religion, the Turks have a secret mystery religion that you have to be initiated into, the Italians have their traditional gods and spirits, the Celts have local and tribal gods, and the Greeks have yet another set of gods and goddesses. Many people are happy to pick and mix, and they see nothing wrong in saying "Well, your god Toutatis seems very much like our god Mars, so we'll treat them as if they were the same god." Those two are very different, if you look into them closely, but it suits people to mix them up. It suits the authorities to treat all religions as if they can work together and mix up happily. It seems to me a daft way of going on. I wonder if there will ever again be a society where people are so mixed up about what they believe, and where the government encourages a milk-and-water muddle of religion, but is very suspicious of any religion that claims to be the true one.
Paul and I know where we stand. It's Jesus for us, no one else will do. We won't force the message down anyone's throat, of course, but we do believe that everyone should have the chance to hear - everyone, Jew, Greek, Roman, African, Arab, you name it.
So, when we'd reached the westerns end of Cyprus, the obvious next move was to sail the short distance north, to the mainland, to your region of Turkey. Perga was the sea port we landed at. It was unknown territory from now on, for both of us. For all three of us, I should say. John Mark couldn't face it. He'd been all right so long as he knew I was familiar with the places we went, but going into the unknown wasn't for him. He packed up and went home to Mum. I was sad, but I couldn't blame him. He's only young. Paul wasn't so forgiving. I hope this matter never comes between us in the future.
Well, if John Mark had stuck with us as far as another Antioch that we found, he might have found his fears were justified. Things started well there. We went to the synagogue and told the Jews there about Jesus. Once again, Paul did most of the speaking; I'm quite happy to let him take the lead in that. He's better at it than I am. People believed. They were very happy. But as a result, news spread through the town, and nearly the whole population turned out next Sabbath to hear the news. Lots of non-Jews, people of all different religions as I've been describing, believed in Jesus. But this is where we found a big snag. As long as we were talking to Jews, they were purring with happiness. Once we preached to others, Gentiles, the Jews got very jealous, hostile in fact. In Antioch they stirred up the authorities against us, and we were bundled out of town.
Paul was doing a lot of hard thinking, as we travelled. Every time he had a discussion with someone of a different religion, he thought out new ways of explaining the message of Jesus, so that they would understand. We always began with the congregation at the Jewish synagogue, and that was easy, because we are Jews, Jesus was a Jew, the message makes immediate sense in the Jewish context. But in conversation with others, we need to keep re-thinking the way to deliver the message. Not change the essentials, just the packaging. It's so easy to get lazy, and trot out a familiar formula, and blame the Greek or the Arab for not receiving the message. I hope one day Paul will write down his rethinking of the good news. But I hope that if he does, people won't get stuck with those words and use them as another formula, unthinkingly. They'll need to think out the essentials and put them into words for their own time and society, just as Paul is doing for our time.
So where did we go next, after the other Antioch? Oh yes, Iconium. What a muddle there! Some Jews believed, and some Gentiles. But the Jews who didn't believe tried to turn the bulk of the town against us. Things happened that young John Mark wouldn't have liked one little bit! We stuck it out, and we went on speaking out. In Jesus' name we were able to work some miracles of healing, and that helped. But in the end we were staying the evening with some believers when a chap came in with the news he'd picked up in town: we were going to be stoned to death the next day. We didn't wait to check on the details. By morning we were gone.
And so we came to Lystra, just down the road from here. What happened to us there was an illustration of what I've been trying to tell you, about the mixed-up society we are living in. People there have their own language - it's probably the same as the locals speak here - though of course nearly all of them understood Greek, so we could make ourselves understood. It's a bit disconcerting, though, when you say something to a crowd in the market place, the agora or forum, and there's a jabbering among the crowd that you don't understand. We assumed the people who knew Greek were translating for their neighbours who didn't.
It was Paul speaking at the time - well, it was usually Paul. I suppose I tend to stand there looking tall and imposing - I can't help it, it's the way I grew! - while little Paul goes at it 19 to the dozen. And a lame man was rivetted by what Paul was saying. Couldn't keep his eyes off him. Paul noticed him, and he thought there was more there than interest. There was faith, too. He broke off what he was saying, and shouted out to the man: "Stand up." And the man jumped up and started walking around. And Paul went on with his sermon. The crowd was really excited by now, and one or two ran off - to tell their families, perhaps, we thought. But now comes a big disturbance. Animals, big lumbering bulls, arriving decked with ribbons and flowers at the city gates. Now, we knew enough about Greek and Roman religion to know that animals are only decorated with ribbons when they are going to be sacrificed. We thought it was an unfortunate counter-attraction that might lure some of our listeners away to the ceremony. But then a priest asked us, in good Greek, if we would be so gracious as to accept these animals; he was going to sacrifice them - to us!
Apparently, so he explained, we had made such an impression with the words and the healing, that they thought we were gods, part of their religion! Paul was Hermes, the messenger god - did I mention that he did most of the talking? I may have! And I, tall and imposing, yes, yes, was Zeus, King of the gods. What a misunderstanding! Even Paul, with his careful rethinking of the good news, couldn't get the message over clearly every time. We'd been talking about Jesus, and they had been concentrating on us, seeing us through the eyes of their own religion. It's a tricky business, this reaching out to people of mixed-up faiths, and, if I'm honest, mixed-up minds.
We went into emergency procedure. How do you let people know you're devastated? You take a bit of your robe, and rip it. That's what we did. Never mind the mending that would have to be done afterwards. This was a crisis. And we got off the cart we'd been using as a platform, brought ourselves down to crowd level, and ran around, showing everyone that we were just human beings. We shouted out things like: "Give up this foolishness!" And "Turn to the living God who made everything!" This wasn't the time for subtle arguments. We just hammered home the basics, that there's one true God, and he made everything, and he's good and loving. There are times when you have to tell people just that.
Well, they got the message that we weren't gods. They got it all too thoroughly. It only took a party of Jewish leaders from the last two towns, who happened to turn up just as that moment, to turn the crowds completely against us. It was poor old Paul who took the brunt of their fury. They chucked stones at him until they thought he was dead. Then they dragged him out through the town gates, where a short time before they were going to sacrifice bulls to us. I got all the friends I could and we made a circle round the body. Once the angry crowd had gone, Paul got up. Battered and bruised, but still able to walk. It's useful to have been at a stoning, like Stephen's. You can learn what a man looks like when he's being killed - and you can act the same way, and hope you fool your enemies into stopping before you are really dead. And so we came to you, and you remember how Paul looked when you kindly took us in - black and blue all over.
Well, bringing the news of Jesus to people in a mixed-up society needs thought, and imagination, and it can lead to misunderstanding, and even serious physical danger. But Paul and I will go back to Lystra tomorrow, because the work must be done. It's the Lord's work. I'm glad Mark wasn't with us in Lystra. Not his scene. But I'm sure he will find a way of helping to spread the good news. He might even write a book.
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Thursday 20th of November 2008
