When the Road is Hard

Acts 15:36-41

November 7, 2021 • Mount Pleasant UMC

So I was thinking about nicknames this week—and why I headed down this particular rabbit trail will become evident shortly. I realized that the word “nickname” actually makes no sense. That sent me back in history to learn that the word originally was “eke-name.” “Eke” meant “other” or “also,” so originally it meant “also-name.” Somehow along the way, “eke” turned to “nick.” So there you go: your history lesson for the day. Just a little peek into the things I think about, because that got to me thinking about how we end up with the “also-names” that we have. Early in my life, I had trouble pronouncing the soft “g” or “j” sound, so I substituted the “n” sound in those cases. My Uncle Gene was, for a time, “Uncle Nene” and our neighbor Jennie became “Nennie.” Eventually, Uncle Gene got his name back but Nennie was Nennie until she died, even to my kids. At one church, I had two men who both went by the name “Bud.” It was embarrassing when I went to visit one of them in the hospital and realized I didn’t know his real name (so they wouldn’t tell me where he was). But it is true that nicknames tell you something, either about the person named or the person doing the naming.

So we first met this man named Joseph back in Acts 4, just before the Ananias and Sapphira incident Pastor Rick preached on a couple of weeks ago. Joseph was a Levite, which was the Israelite tribe of priests and temple staff (Larkin, Acts [IVPNTC], pg. 84). He is from Cyprus, an island in the Mediterranean Sea which had a large Jewish population in the first century, but at some point, he has relocated to Jerusalem and has come to faith in Jesus. And it’s his example Ananias and Sapphira were trying to copy; he sold a field and gave all the money to the church (4:36-37). There’s something else we learn about Joseph: he has a nickname. Most people call him Barnabas, which means “Son of Encouragement” (4:36).

Why he was given that name is even more evident the next time we encounter him in Acts. You might remember a guy named Saul, who was persecuting and killing Christians around Jerusalem until Jesus knocked him to the ground and Saul became a believer. The only problem was people thought it was a trap. When he eventually gets back to Jerusalem with his newfound faith, people are afraid of him. They don’t believe him. It’d be like if the leader of ISIS suddenly came to faith in Jesus. No one believed it—except for Barnabas. Luke tells it this way: “But Barnabas took [Saul] and brought him to the apostles. He told them how Saul on his journey had seen the Lord and that the Lord had spoken to him, and how in Damascus he had preached fearlessly in the name of Jesus” (9:27). Barnabas spoke up for Saul, who is most often known by his Greek name Paul, and because of that, Paul was welcomed into the church.

Sometime after that, persecution ramps up again and the church is scattered. (It took persecution to get the church out of their comfortable place in Jerusalem—let that sink in for a moment.) And when the disciples heard that the Gospel was being preached in a place called Antioch, Barnabas was sent to investigate. When Barnabas saw that the needs in Antioch were more than he could handle alone, Barnabas went again looking for Paul and brought him to Antioch to help teach the new believers there (Acts 11:19-26). It is in Antioch, by the way, where the believers were first called “Christians,” or “little Christs.” I kind of wonder if maybe Paul or Barnabas came up with that name. Anyway, when the church at Antioch was ready to send out missionaries from their church into the world, who do you think they chose? Acts 13 says, “While they were worshiping the Lord and fasting, the Holy Spirit said, ‘Set apart for me Barnabas and Saul for the work to which I have called them’” (13:2). And they took with them a young man, a cousin of Barnabas, named John Mark (cf. Colossians 4:10; Acts 12:25; Wright, Acts for Everyone: Part Two, pg. 54). Unfortunately, early on in their travels, in a place called Pamphylia, John Mark left the group and went home (13:13). Luke mentions that almost as a side note, but it is a set-up for the passage we read today from Acts 15.

It’s “some time later,” according to Luke (15:36), so we don’t really know exactly how much time has passed, but enough that Paul is feeling more confident in his leadership since he is the one who suggests they do a “reunion tour” of sorts. He wants to go back and check on the churches they started in their earlier journey (15:36). And so Barnabas says, “Great, let’s get the whole band back together. I’ll go tell John Mark to start packing.” To which Paul says, “Uh, wait a minute. Not so fast. I don’t want to take John Mark with us. I mean, he left us high and dry back in Pamphylia. Why would we take him with us again?” Luke says, “They had such a sharp disagreement that they parted company” (15:39). “Sharp disagreement” is an understatement. The word there is a medical word, which isn’t all that surprising since Luke was a doctor. It’s a word that, in medical settings, means a “convulsion.” The condition involves “severely heightened emotions, red and distorted faces” and when it describes a disagreement, it includes “loud voices, [and] things said that were better left unsaid” (Wright 53). What’s happening here is not agreeing to disagree. This is a “I don’t want anything to do with you” disagreement. If Paul and Barnabas were having this argument today, Paul would probably unfriend Barnabas and delete all his pictures. They go different directions. Barnabas does take John Mark and Paul takes Silas, and in the book of Acts, that’s the last we hear of Barnabas. It seems to be a sad end to a promising friendship.

There is more to the story, but before we get to that, I want to pause a moment and consider what made Barnabas so unique and valuable in the life of the early church. Even though he only shows up a few times in the story, I think he’s there because Luke knows how desperately we all need a Barnabas. So what was it about Barnabas that makes him so important? First of all, Barnabas seems to have given his all to the faith. He was a sold-out Christian, and we see that by his willingness to go wherever and do whatever he was asked to do for the sake of spreading the faith. When he sees the work of God in Antioch, the text says he was overjoyed and “encouraged them to remain true to the Lord with all their hearts” (11:23; Kalas, The Story Continues, pg. 87). He had faith that God was going to use Saul, that someone who had once persecuted the church could be used for good. He took a risk of faith by bringing Saul to the church leaders and helped him find his way in the faith. We each need a Barnabas, someone who is more mature in the faith, perhaps a few years or more “down the road” from us, who can help us grow and mature as believers.

When I moved into the dorm at Ball State, I was neighbors with a young man named Todd, and when Todd found out I was a Christian, he began to take me under his wing. It wasn’t anything formal or organized, but Todd began to invite me to things like InterVarsity Christian Fellowship gatherings and Bible studies, to get me connected with other believers on campus. He took me to church and we shared meals in the dining hall. But more than those things, I remember the walks we would take across campus to just talk about faith and life. He graduated before me and sort of disappeared from my life, kind of like Barnabas does in the book of Acts, but his presence left an indelible imprint on my life. Barnabases are people of great faith.

They are also humble people. Barnabas doesn’t do a lot to draw attention to himself. We have no indication that he made a big deal about his financial donation, or that he asked for a plaque to be put on whatever they bought with it. The fact that he just disappears when he leaves for Cyprus with John Mark tells us that what he did was never for show or for attention. Even bringing Saul into leadership in the church was an act of humility. When they begin to travel, they are listed as “Barnabas and Paul,” but before too long, it’s “Paul and Barnabas” because Paul has taken the lead. As Ellsworth Kalas puts it, it’s as if “Barnabas invited Saul to join his firm and shortly thereafter Saul became the managing partner and president.” But we have no indication that Barnabas is upset by that or jealous of Paul; he’s simply happy to be a part of whatever God is doing (Kalas 90). Humility has, after all, “the ability to recognize and rejoice in the quality of others” (Kalas 88). Barnabases are humble.

And, third, we know Barnabas was an encourager. He encouraged and trusted Paul when the disciples might just as easily have turned him away. And here, in our passage for this morning, he encouraged John Mark. The truth is, both Paul and Barnabas are right in this episode. They’re just coming at the situation from different vantage points. Paul remembers the John Mark who gave up, who turned back, who couldn’t face whatever obstacles were ahead of them, and he knows the mission can’t endure if that happens again. Barnabas saw a young man who was away from home for perhaps the first time, who was in Gentile territory and who had grown up being told to stay away from Gentiles. Barnabas saw a man who reacted, yes, out of fear, but not unreasonably. Paul saw a boy who needed to grow up; Barnabas saw a young man he intended to help grow up (cf. Kalas 91-92; Wright 53-54). And so they split, and God used them both. What might have been one mission becomes two. Barnabas and John Mark go to the home area of Barnabas, while Paul and Silas move into more Gentile territory. God was even able to use a broken relationship to further his kingdom (cf. Larkin 231). “God can take the greatest human folly and sin and bring great good from it” (Wright 55). In fact, only God can do that.

Now, I mentioned that this is the last time Barnabas shows up in the book of Acts, but he does show up in three of Paul’s letters, as does John Mark. In fact, near the end of Paul’s life, when he’s writing to Timothy, he says he is alone except for Luke. Listen to this instruction he gives to Timothy: “Get Mark and bring him with you, because he is helpful to me in my ministry” (2 Timothy 4:11). Paul has come to understand the value Barnabas once saw in John Mark. In fact, I don’t think it’s too much to say, as Ellsworth Kalas does, that you could call Barnabas, “The Man Who Saved the New Testament.” What would the New Testament be without Paul’s letters—letters which might never have been written if Barnabas had not given Paul a chance? And John Mark—well, we know him better as Mark, the author of the Gospel of Mark. That Gospel, most scholars believe, is largely the remembrances of Peter—Simon Peter, first among the apostles—so at some point, probably either Barnabas or Paul introduced John Mark to Peter, they became close, and Mark wrote down Peter’s account of the life of Jesus. In fact, there is ample evidence that Mark was the first of the Gospels written, and both Matthew and Luke modeled their Gospels on his. So what might have come of the story of Jesus had Barnabas not encouraged and helped his young cousin John Mark? Thankfully, we will never know. But there is so much Gospel hope and kingdom work that happened because Barnabas took the time to encourage and stand with Paul and John Mark.

I know you’d never guess it, but I wasn’t always excited about being up in front of people. I grew up in a small town and had a small circle of friends, but wasn’t what you would call “outgoing.” To this day, I don’t know what possessed Mr. Eiler, an English teacher at our high school, to invite me to participate on the speech team. For some reason, he saw something in me he thought would be an asset to the team, and to this day I can’t tell you why I said yes. But I did, thinking I could do one of the “safe” events in which you memorize a speech and give the same one at every tournament. No, Mr. Eiler said, he wanted me to do extemporaneous speaking—“Extemp” for short. That was the event where you are given a topic, a current event question, and you have thirty minutes to prepare a 5-7 minute speech to answer the question. Not my first choice, but for four years in high school and another four in college I did it. Mr. Eiler also suggested I try what they called “Impromptu.” In that event, you are given a topic and have thirty seconds to come up with a speech on said topic. Mr. Eiler was an early Barnabas to me, because for some reason he believed I could do these things that I could not see myself doing. He’s a large part of why I am in this pulpit this morning because it’s not something I would have ever developed on my own.

There have been many Barnabases over the years, but the one who has most often tasked with being my encourager is Cathy, my beautiful wife. I sometimes say I married a counselor because I’m no good at counseling, but it’s probably more the truth that I needed counseling myself! She is always the first and most emphatic voice in times of discouragement. She is my Barnabas for life—full of faith, humble and encouraging. Who is your Barnabas? Who keeps you going when the road is hard? Who helps you see things in yourself that you would not see on your own? Certainly give thanks to God for them and if they are still with us, drop them a note—a real, honest-to-goodness note, don’t cheap out with an email—and let them know how much they have encouraged you, how they have helped make you who you are. Let them know about Barnabas and how you have needed them in those times when the road is hard. I can assure you—your simple act of affirmation, of encouragement, will go a long way and make a definite difference in their lives and for the sake of the kingdom of God.

And, just as proof that God can use anyone in this role, I have to tell you about my most recent encourager. We all know the pandemic has been hard on everyone and our world has been under great stress for nearly two years now. I don’t know anyone who hasn’t been somehow touched by COVID, whether you’ve had it personally, or know someone who has had it, or worse yet knew someone who died from it. At the same time COVID came to our house, we learned that our beloved dog whom we had had for over twelve years had congestive heart failure. So the next three months was really hard around the Ticen home, as we watched Hershey slowly deteriorate and struggle and eventually die. I’ve always had a dog, but I was really kind of done at that point. I didn’t want to go through that again. However, I was overruled, and before too long, we welcomed a baby cocker spaniel into our home. I have to tell you, he has lived up to the name we gave him—Barnabas. He is our encourager, and he is my buddy. I told Cathy the other day I didn’t want another dog back then but I can’t imagine life without him right now. God can and will use anyone and anything to bring encouragement into our lives—even a cocker spaniel named after the son of encouragement in the book of Acts.

The same Paul who was welcomed and encouraged by Barnabas would later write letters meant to encourage believers all over Asia, and in one of those, the letter we call 1 Thessalonians, he is describing the day when Jesus returns. It’s just vague enough to be frustrating, but Paul’s main point is not to tell us when and where. He aims to tell us who. Jesus will return, he will take us home, “and so we will be with the Lord forever.” But it’s the next verse that gets me every time: “Therefore encourage one another with these words” (1 Thessalonians 4:17-18). Encourage one another that one day we will be with the Lord. One day we will gather around his heavenly table and feast with him forever. Until that day, Jesus gave us a reminder, a foretaste of eternity, a practice we call communion. The bread and the cup are meant to remind us of his sacrifice, but they are also meant to point us forward to the day when we are with the Lord forever. “Therefore, encourage one another with these words.” And encourage one another with these symbols. The bread, the cup—they are a Barnabas to us, an encouragement to the soul. So in that spirit, let’s come to the Lord’s table and find what we need for the days when the road is hard.