TRINITY · 11 JUNE
Saint Barnabas the Apostle
Apostle · Son of Consolation · The Man Who Gave Paul His Chance · d. c. 61
Barnabas — BAR-nuh-bas · Cyprus — SY-prus · Antioch — AN-tee-ok · Levite — LEE-vite · Salamis — SAL-ah-mis
O Lord God Almighty, who didst endow thy servant Barnabas with singular gifts of the Holy Ghost; Leave us not, we beseech thee, destitute of thy manifold gifts, nor yet of grace to use them alway to thy honour and glory; through Jesus Christ our Lord.
His name means son of encouragement — or son of consolation, or son of exhortation; the Greek word carries all three meanings — and there is no figure in the New Testament whose life is a more perfect embodiment of his name. Barnabas (BAR-nuh-bas) was a Levite (LEE-vite) from Cyprus (SY-prus), whose Hebrew name was Joseph, who sold a field and laid the proceeds at the Apostles’ feet in the early days of the Jerusalem church. But his supreme gift to the Church was not money but generosity of spirit: when Saul of Tarsus arrived in Jerusalem after his conversion, claiming to be a disciple, the disciples were all afraid of him. But Barnabas took him and brought him to the Apostles and declared unto them how he had seen the Lord in the way, and that he had preached boldly at Damascus. Without that act of trust, Paul might never have been received into the apostolic community. The history of the Church would have been different. Barnabas opened the door.
He was sent from Jerusalem to Antioch (AN-tee-ok) when the church there — the first community to include significant numbers of Gentile Christians, the community where disciples were first called Christians — needed oversight and encouragement. He saw the grace of God there and was glad, and exhorted them all with purpose of heart to cleave to the Lord. Then he went to Tarsus to find Paul and brought him to Antioch, where they taught together for a whole year. It was from Antioch that the Holy Ghost sent them out on the first missionary journey. The first journey of what would become Paul’s world-transforming mission was a joint enterprise, Barnabas equally named, equally sent. They preached in Cyprus, Barnabas’s home island, and then in Asia Minor. It was only after the dispute at Perga over John Mark — Barnabas’s cousin, whom Paul would not take because he had deserted them — that they parted. Barnabas took Mark to Cyprus; Paul took Silas into Asia Minor. The son of consolation had not abandoned the man who had once failed; he gave him a second chance, just as he had once given Paul his first.
After the separation from Paul, the New Testament is silent about Barnabas. The tradition sends him back to Cyprus, where he preached and is said to have been martyred in Salamis (SAL-ah-mis) around 61 AD. The Cypriot church claims him as its founder and first bishop, and the claim is entirely credible: he was born there, he knew its people, and the first missionary journey began in its synagogues. The church of Cyprus is one of the oldest in the world, and tradition places its foundation in the hands of a man whose scriptural portrait is entirely consistent with the kind of patient, trusting, encouraging figure who builds communities that last. Paul’s letters mention Barnabas occasionally and with respect even after their separation; the breach over Mark was not the end of their regard for each other, and the church Barnabas planted in Cyprus survived and flourishes to this day.
Barnabas is the patron of all hidden ministry — of all who labour faithfully without record or recognition, who open doors rather than walk through them, who give others their chance rather than taking their own. His feast in Trinity-tide, on 11 June, falls in the season of ordinary faithful labour, which is where he belongs: not in the drama of martyrdom or the glory of the Transfiguration but in the long, patient, daily work of opening doors for people who have been kept out, of trusting those whom everyone else fears, of going back to your own people with the Gospel you have received. He is the saint of second chances — the man who gave them to Paul and to Mark alike — and the cloud of witnesses that surrounds him includes every person whose conversion was made possible by someone who trusted them when no one else would. What Barnabas accomplished in Cyprus, what became of the people he taught there, how far the faith spread from those early Salamis congregations — only God knows. But the church is there still.
O Almighty God, who by thy servant Barnabas didst teach the Church that the most necessary gift is the willingness to trust the untrusted and open the door to those whom fear would keep outside; Grant that we may exercise the same generosity of spirit toward those who come to us with wounded histories, knowing that the one we trust today may be the one through whom thou dost change the world; through Jesus Christ our Lord, who liveth and reigneth with thee and the Holy Ghost, one God, world without end.
Amen.