Daily Reading for June 11 • St. Barnabas, Apostle
The only reason that the twelve were willing to have a face-to-face meeting with Saul at all was that their major contributor, the “son of encouragement,” vouched for him. Luke does not offer a reason why Barnabas suddenly appeared, nor why he stood up for Saul. It really does not matter. The fact is there probably would be no “apostle Paul” if Barnabas the encourager, Barnabas the steward of others, had not stood up for him.
Barnabas did more than simply welcome the newcomer. He also nurtured the giftedness and leadership potential in Saul. . . . When the apostles heard of the dramatic success in Antioch, they decided to send a representative, an ambassador, to check on things and provide a connection between the new believers and the Jerusalem leadership. Their choice in a representative was—no surprise here—Barnabas. What is more surprising is that on his way to his new assignment, this bridge-builder took a detour to Tarsus, where he sought out the very person the apostles earlier avoided: Saul. For Barnabas, it was not enough that Saul had met the Jerusalem leaders; now it was time to put him to work. His decision once again illustrates excellent stewardship on Barnabas’s part, for he obviously saw in this cocky upstart the kind of leadership gifts that could be well utilized in a new church plant.
The story of Barnabas thus develops along a fascinating line, from making a substantial financial gift and entrusting it to the apostles for the support of the community, to reaching out to the newcomer that no one else wants to include, to nurturing Saul’s leadership so that he in turn moves from newcomer to useful worker. Later in Acts, we find Barnabas doing one of the hardest things of all: he takes second place to Paul’s leadership, as Luke’s phrase “Barnabas and Saul” becomes “Paul and Barnabas.” A true steward, Barnabas displays a humility that may not have come naturally, but was necessary if he really wanted to see the new communities built up in the most effective ways. He could choose to cling to the leadership role bestowed on him by the apostles and accepted by the believers in Antioch. Instead, he continues to do what he has done from the start: discern the need, and then do whatever it takes to meet that need—even if it means laying his ego, like his possessions, at the feet of Christ.
From Transforming Stewardship by C.K. Robertson, a volume in the series Transformations: The Episcopal Church of the 21st Century, edited by James Lemler. Copyright © 2009. Used by permission of Church Publishing Incorporated, New York, NY. www.churchpublishing.org