"A Slender Hope"--September 19, 2019
"After some days Paul said to Barnabas, 'Come, let us return and visit the believers in every city where we proclaimed the word of the Lord and see how they are doing.' Barnabas wanted to take with them John called Mark. But Paul decided not to take with them the one who had deserted them in Pamphylia and had not accompanied them in the work. The disagreement became so sharp that they parted company; Barnabas took Mark with him and sailed away to Cyprus. But Paul chose Silas and set out, the believers commending him to the grace of the Lord." [Acts 15:36-40]
This is going to sound weird to say, but I find a great deal of hope in this story of a friendship that went through strain and struggle, even to the point of parting ways--a story we don't get to know the end of (yet).
Maybe that's what allows me to be unexpectedly hopeful: the lack of completion, the unresolved tension, the honesty about conflict and disagreement between even deeply devout and faithful Christians. Knowing that the Bible doesn't shy away from telling stories like this--and to help us to see them as an unavoidable part of any Christian community that has real people in it--that helps me to be honest about the struggles and strains in our relationships with one another. And it helps me to see, too, that I can be held by God at the very same time that others are held in God's hand, even if disagreement keeps us from a closeness we had had before.
And so I find that I need to be reminded of stories like this one--stories which never make it into Sunday School coloring pages or lists of people's favorites--and I need it exactly because it doesn't have a spectacular miracle at the end or a happy ending, or really even an ending at all. I need to know that God really does work in the midst of messy human lives and wounded feelings and vulnerable hearts and the consequences of words we cannot take back... because that is the world that I live in every day.
I need to know that even though these two deeply faithful giants of the early church, Paul and Barnabas, had become very close in their friendship and their collegiality and work together, they could still reach a point where they struggled to maintain their friendship in its earlier form, and they couldn't make it work.... and yet both of them continued to be loved by God, used by God, and even to reflect Christ for the world by God.
The backdrop of this falling out is hinted at by Luke the narrator here. On their first missionary journey, Paul and Barnabas had traveled around the Mediterranean, bringing the news of Jesus and planting churches as they went. And at some point along the way, a young man named John Mark came along, too, but he bailed out on them and left midway. So when Paul decided he wanted to go back to visit all those congregations they had started, Barnabas wanted to get the whole band back together, as it were, but Paul wouldn't agree. And as Luke narrates, eventually this got to be a dealbreaker for Paul and Barnabas, and they decided to part company.
This story, as sad and regrettable as it is, just seems so very real to me. This is part of what reminds me that the Christian faith isn't (or shouldn't be) wishful thinking or fairy tales. Sometimes we slide into that, and we allow ourselves to think that being Christians will mean either that (1) there will always be a way to work out our relationship problems, if only we just put in enough willpower, (2) there is always a clear happy ending, (3) "real" Christians can always find ways to work together, or (4) that if you can't come to an agreement, it must mean that one of you is "right" and one of you is "wrong"--maybe even that one is a true believer and the other is not. Those are always tempting oversimplifications, honestly. But this scene from Acts doesn't go putting white or black hats on anybody. This isn't about who was the good guy and who was the bad guy, who was spiritual and wise versus who was worldly and foolish. This is about two people who both love Jesus and care very much for one another, but who see things differently and cannot come to a resolution about it. And it costs them--not their salvation, but their cooperation.
And to be fair, both have a point. Barnabas wants to give John Mark a second chance--after all, the Christian faith is very much about second (and third and fourth and hundredth) chances. He wants to train a new potential leader for the church, and he sees promise in John Mark, despite his past mess-ups. That's noble. On the other hand, Paul has a good point, too. It would be easy to read ego into this, but I don't think it's a matter of Paul being jealous or feeling like he's being replaced by John Mark. I think Paul honestly is concerned about what will happen to the quality of their work if Barnabas has to divide his attention and energy between serving the congregations they visit and the one-on-one time he is going to have to spend babysitting John Mark. I think Paul is concerned, too, about seeing John Mark letting them down again. And I think Paul can foresee that if John Mark is now added into the picture, there are a lot of ways the whole project can go south. Ironically, I'll bet Paul is even worried that if John Mark comes along and does mess things up again, it could permanently damage the friendship between all of them, with Barnabas feeling like he has to pick sides between John Mark and Paul. And Paul would rather just avoid all of those possibilities by just having John Mark stay home.
Maybe the particulars are different for us in our daily lives, but a lot of those same dynamics are there as potential minefields in our relationships as well. It's the question of whether you extend forgiveness to the friend who let you down or hurt your feelings before, knowing that they could hurt you or leave you hanging all over again. It's the question of whether someone who has messed up publicly in church life gets a second chance, or whether those chances can never be granted again because of the severity of their mistakes. It's the question in families of how kids--both in childhood and even as young adults--deal with the separation of their parents, or later, whether a parent's new boyfriend/girlfriend/fiancé is edging them out for the attention of their mom or dad. It's the question of how a friendship survives when it is strained severely enough, whether someone hurts you in a single moment or slowly fades away over time, and whether you can reverse the momentum to regain the trust and closeness that feels somehow lost. It's the question of what happens when you find out someone you respected a great deal also does or says something that causes you to lose respect for them--and whether you are willing to overlook the disagreements between you.
None of those are easy, and yet all of them are the stuff of actual, real, lived-in relationships. And instead of thinking that "real Christians" can always work out those differences, maybe it's worth remembering that these two major leaders in the early church couldn't find a way to work out their differences on this issue. And it meant, in this case, that they did part company. Looking at our own lives and the messes we find ourselves in quite often, it is somehow comforting to know that God can still use us and love and hold on to us, even when we can't find a way to hold onto or work with each other. That reminds me in a humbling sort of way that God's ways and abilities are bigger than mine, and it also gives me hope when I can't find a way to restore a relationship I have struggled--and failed--to heal.
Paul and Barnabas' story doesn't give us permission to just give up on each other with a shrug, but it does remind me that the story of Jesus' people in Acts is the story rooted in the messiness, heartaches, and struggles of real life. Now, we don't know what ever happened to the friendship between Paul and Barnabas in the rest of their earthly lives--there's no story given to us in Acts where they eventually reconcile and make peace with one another. We never find out if Paul was really just jealous that Barnabas was spending so much time on John Mark, or if Barnabas was being too naïve about whether John Mark might flake out on them. What we do know is that even after the separation, God continued to bless each of them. Paul went on to at least a second and third missionary journey, bringing the Good News of Jesus to Europe and getting into a long list of wonderful, holy troublemaking. And Barnabas and John Mark surely did important work where they went as well. God didn't have to pick sides, even if Paul and Barnabas couldn't work thinking out themselves. And sometimes, that may be all we can say about our struggles in friendships, collegial relationships, and ministry: we sometimes find ourselves led in different directions from one another, and cannot "work things out"... and yet we trust that God remains with both of us--you on your path, and me on mine, too.
That might seem a slender hope to lean on, but it is a solid one--solid enough for today, at least.
Lord Jesus, hold us and those we struggle to relate to, and be present on both our paths.
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