Taking Good Risks
AM Psalm 15, 67 • Ecclus. 31:3-11 • Acts 4:32-37
PM Psalm 19, 146 • Job 29:1-16 • Acts 9:26-31
To honor St. Barnabas of Cyprus on his feast day, our readings for today include two of the many Biblical passages where he appears. In St. Luke's Acts of the Apostles, chapter 4, with impulsive generosity he sells his property, gives it to the fledgling Christian church in Jerusalem, and becomes a landless man, free to follow the Lord wherever He leads.
In Acts 9, Saul, having been stricken down on his way to Damascus and baptized with the name Paul, returns from Damascus a more enthusiastic preacher of Christianity than he had been a persecutor and wants to meet all of Christ's disciples in Jerusalem. They don't want to meet him. They are terrified of meeting him, but Barnabas sees that Paul is worth the risk. “He took him and brought him to the apostles,” writes Luke, “and declared to them how on the road he had seen the Lord, who had spoken to him and how he had preached boldly at Damascus in the name of Jesus.”
The other passages from Acts show Barnabas traveling all over the Mediterranean, risking his life to preach the gospel and win converts, but let's look at something less dramatic. In Acts 12 young John Mark, who is probably the Mark who wrote the earliest of the gospels, has traveled with Paul and Barnabas but grown weary of missionarying and gone back home to Jerusalem. Later, when Paul decides he and Barnabas should travel back to the cities where they have founded churches among the gentiles, Mark feels the call again, and, Luke reports in Acts 15, “Barnabas determined to take John called Mark with them. But Paul thought it best not to take him, because he had withdrawn from them in Pamphylia and not gone with them to the work. And there arose such sharp contention between them that they separated from each other and Barnabas took Mark and sailed to Cyprus.”
We admire Barnabas because it was brave of him, for the sake of a vulnerable young man, to risk the wrath of the combative, always-certain Paul. It was also considerate to recognize that Mark would probably never feel the joy of itinerant preaching, as he and Paul did, so Barnabas brought him to his own country of Cyprus where he could make Mark feel at home. After that trip, I like to imagine Barnabas bringing Mark back to Jerusalem and recommending him to Peter as a writer, not as a missionary; for Peter, the scholars tell us, was the principal source of Mark's gospel, and Peter knew what it was like to fail in his service to the Lord.
Lord Jesus, teach us to take risks, not for ourselves, but for God and for other people, following the example of your follower, St. Barnabas. And thank you for teachers like Barnabas, Peter, and you, who show patience with us when we fail.
Written by John DuVal
John loves reading and writing Morning Reflections, but he put off writing this one till shamefully late thanks to his and Kay's first contact with their children, Kathleen and Niell, since December, 2019. Thanks be to God for their visit!