2008 27 April Acts 15.22-29, 30-41.
HG notes:
Welcome
1) What’s the best news you’ve ever had by letter?
2) How has your week been? (you can go through a whole evening talking deep spiritual stuff and not know that they’ve been sacked / promoted etc which makes the prayers at the end not as profound as they could be)
3)
Worship: Psalm 47 (the set Psalm for Ascension day). Why not get a rota going of different people each week bringing in One piece of Christian music they like as this week’s worship that way it doesn’t all fall on one person.
Word:
1) Read Acts 15.22-41
2) Can anyone remember anything James said?
3) Why is it not enough to make the right decision?
4) Why are Judas and Silas good choices?
5) What is so good about this letter and how it is phrased?
6) Vs28a sums up a complex process of discerning the will of God. What were the ingredients for that?
7) What do we learn from this sharp disagreement?
8) What should they have done?
Works:
Who is your Barnabas? Who can you be a Barnabas to?
What disputes do you know of that need your prayer?
Today we get to look at How to carefully rebuild a relationship and we get an interesting example in how to disagree.
The Complaint has been that there is this runaway renegade church doing whatever it likes.
They probably weren’t robing, they may even have used guitars and power point projection and they might not have sat in pews – it’s all shocking stuff. And they were allowing people to become Christians without first becoming Jews. They were welcoming Pagans into the Church without first requiring them to get Circumcised and to obey the Law of Moses.
It’s an issue that in the short term won’t go away; we continue to read about these niggles in later letters.
And even today we still see it between fellow Christians who may distrust the other because of their style of worship or because of the way in which they live out their Christian life: they have pierced ears and go to the cinema on Sunday. It’s shocking stuff.
Now the Church makes its decision. St James gives this marvellous speech.
Now obviously I’ve been hugely flattered by those of you who pointed out the parallels’ between St James the brother of Jesus, often called James the Just, and myself – James the Rector.
However, James the Just was accused of not keeping the Law of Moses and was stoned to death in 62AD. (see Josephus). So thank you for that parallel!
James the Just is obviously wise enough to realise that it isn’t good enough simply to make the right decision, you still need some good PR.
If you were to shake someone angrily shouting at them that they had just won the Lottery, it might take time for them to thank you!
So James writes this letter. It’s short and clear and to the point. But he also sends two people with authority to speak about what’s happened.
We’ve all sent emails that we later regretted – either because they were taken in the wrong tone or because they said the wrong thing.
-I can’t see the mood that you are in so I don’t know how to phrase it just right and You can’t see the expression on my face, so you’re not quite sure how to take what you’ve just read and it can all go horribly wrong.
Something that’s this big deserves both a letter with James’s signature on it and 2 trusted men with authority to speak on this matter. It seems that PR has always mattered.
It is important that this other church hears not merely the useful information that their Chaps don’t have to get circumcised but also that they are loved by the Jerusalem church and that there is no tension between them.
Now if you willingly misread the letter that James sent then it could read as if we should start doing this and that if we want to be part of God’s church. Stay away from certain types of food and from sexual immorality.
But the message of the Church is the same – we belong to God because of He invites us to be part of His family. He gives us a new start, the forgiveness of our sins Not because we’ve done anything, not because we have kept His laws, but because God is good and gracious. And he achieves the justice of all this through all that Jesus has done for us in His life, in His death and resurrection.
For the most part many of you will struggle to find a strangled animal that has been offered to an Idol and is still dripping with blood, back then it was something more easily available. Nonetheless the principle holds that this is about keeping the bridge open between others in the Church. St James says if you do these things you will …
and he doesn’t say Be Saved, be healed, have answered prayers and lots of blessings, You will do well. This is about keeping strong and healthy links with the rest of the Church.
And so it needs 2 good people to go to this Church in the north and to encourage them and bless them.
No sooner are they blessed that Paul and Barnabas fall out.
It’s a great idea – lets go back and bless the people we met last time.
I’ve been wanting to gather up everyone who’s done an Alpha in my time, perhaps before, and invite them to a meal and encourage them. Someone suggested to me a reunion of all the Old Pathfinders for a special dinner – a great idea – to go back and find people who at the time made some sort of response to the Gospel – lets encourage them. I’m not at all sure when I can get round to doing either of those things!
So no sooner are they blessed that Paul and Barnabas fall out. This isn’t unusual. You sort out a really big problem and then your team falls apart with some internal division. We work hard to build the Conker Room and then, well it hasn’t happened to us, Thank God, but it so easily can.
It seems bizarre that these 2 great friends should fall out in such a big and divisive way. The scholarly books that I read about this event say appallingly patronising things like – well think about the outcome – in the end the Church sent out 4 missionaries instead of 2 so actually this argument was a good thing. It shows that a lot of Christian writers need to get out more & spend more time with other people.
This is a really sad moment, when Saint Paul makes a mistake, a big one. Paul is still working out his salvation, he is still growing up as a Christian, he is massively more task orientated than people orientated. He himself was given a second chance but he doesn’t want to give Mark a second chance.
On the one hand it’s a bit of a disappointment to find that this great founder of the Christian church can make a wrong decision, on the other hand I find it really encouraging! Even Paul can make mistakes.
St Luke doesn’t cover it up. I would. If I was taking minutes of this meeting I would simply report that after much deliberation the church sent out 4 missionaries. There’s no need to advertise the embarrassment of a Church fall out after such great news from Jerusalem. St Luke should have hushed it up!
Maybe Luke does a little bit of airbrushing because there is no hint of who is to blame. But personally, I blame Paul.
I am only here today because someone like Barnabas believed in me. I’m only here because loads of people have encouraged me, all the way with only the occasional kick up the backside to get me moving. We need people like Barnabas to believe in us and to give us 2nd chances and to encourage us and bring the best out of us.
John Mark cannot be quite the coward that is implied here. He is prepared to go with Paul a second time and he knows that wherever Paul goes there’s trouble and people get hurt. But Mark still says Count me in, I’ll go!
The year is about AD50, 51 something like that. We believe that Barnabas was martyred in Cyprus in AD61 and this reading today is the last reference to Barnabas. We never know if he and Paul ever met up and made up again. This is a sad moment as these two great men of God part their ways.
We do know that St Paul will change his views about John Mark. “Mark is helpful to me in my ministry” he writes (2 Tim 4.11, Col 4.10, Phm). And he asks for Mark to come and join him in Rome.
I want to praise Barnabas for sticking to his guns here. If you are a people-person it can be too easy to be bowled over by the strong task-focussed types and to give in. But Barnabas digs in and supports Mark.
But even still, notice the absence of words like Prayer and The Holy Spirit. We don’t read of Paul saying ‘Look, let’s just pray about this’.
Previously we have read how the Holy Spirit set aside Barnabas and Paul for the first missionary journey and now as they get ready for the 2nd, where’s all the prayer? (Ac13.2)
Previously we heard how St James the Just said “It seemed good to the Holy Spirit and to us”. But now where’s the prayer?
When you have a disagreement, a little bit of prayer goes along way.
I don’t mean the sort of prayer that says aloud ‘O Lord open the eyes of Barnabas to see the stupidity of his ways to see the stubbornness of his heart’
But rather the kind of prayer that comes quietly before the Lord where you say to God – Look you know how I am feeling about all of this, and maybe I feel this way because of me and my fears and insecurities and maybe I feel this way because we’re about to make a bad decision. So please Jesus help me to hear myself on this issue, and help me to hear you.
In Tacoma, the Church there has an interesting approach to prayer for something like this. The prayer involves a good deal of just being quiet and listening to your own thoughts and perhaps even to God’s. It involves writing down various words and pictures that spring to mind.
It involves rebuking the Devil and his schemes - and it seems to me that that is what is needed most here – after such good news to have these two fall out over such a relatively trivial issue – this looks to me like the Devil trying to get in between people and break things up.
And then there is this soul searching to see what is getting in the way of hearing God more clearly on this subject and praying through any issues that arise from that.
It would have been great to see the outcome of another mission with these two heavyweights Paul and Barnabas, but it didn’t work out like that. And it would have been great if Mark had written a diary of what happened with him and Barnabas in Cyprus. But we don’t have that.
We learn from James the Just that
it isn’t enough to make the right decision,
you then need to make sure it is heard in the right way. James used a mix of authority and the personal touch. A good bit of delegating.
We learn from Barnabas and Paul that
it is very easy for the Devil to ride in on the back of some good news and make a mess of what comes next.
We learn the importance of prayer and of listening to God, even with good friends.
We learn that even saints can make mistakes and
God can still call you saints and work with you and through you.
And We learn from John Mark the importance of having someone who will believe in you, train you, give you a 2nd chance and encourage you every step of the way. Amen.
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