Messy Relationships

Acts 15:36-41

Introduction

I want you do something. Without look around the room, I want you to think back. Is there any person who is a part of this church that has disappointed you? Is there anyone who said or did something that really bothered you? Has there ever been a time when you saw a person and you deliberately wanted to avoid them?

How can that be? The church is made up of followers of Jesus. When we come to Christ, we are transformed and made new. We become brothers and sisters in the family of God. We should be filled with love for one another. That should mean that we all have healthy and happy relationships with one another. Or does it?

The problem with the church is that God allows a certain kind of people into the church, specifically human beings. Even as followers of Jesus, we have emotional baggage, we have issues with our families of origin, we have insecurities and bad days in which we have little patience. This makes the church messy because there will be times when we might love one another but not necessarily like each other. Rather similar to biological families.

This message is not about how to prevent disagreements and disappointments from happening. Rather it is a reflection on one conflict between two godly men and what we can learn about ourselves from it.

Paul and Barnabas

Before we get into the details of what happened between Paul and Barnabas, I want to point out something. This event takes place on the heels of the Jerusalem council. We have just gone through a major conflict that threatened to tear the entire church apart. They were able to get through it intact only to stumble on something relatively minor.

What we have seen for a while in Acts is the close relationship between Paul and Barnabas. When Paul first came looking for the apostles, they were afraid of him with good reasons. It was Barnabas that reached out and helped to bring Paul into the church, advocating for this former persecutor, seeing in him something the others could not. This began a chapter of Paul and Barnabas as a ministry team. Rather it was Barnabas and Paul as Barnabas was the senior partner in this team. Paul’s ministry gifts quickly developed and Paul rose to prominence. Paul and Barnabas were the dream team and God did some amazing things through these two men.

Of course this was not just about Paul and Barnabas. One of the people who joined them in ministry was a man named John Mark that we see numerous times in Acts. This Mark was likely the cousin of Barnabas. We was a valuable member of the team. That is until Acts 13:13, where John Mark mysteriously leaves the team and returns to Jerusalem. We are not told why he left, only that he had left.

This brings us to our current passage after the Jerusalem council. Paul and Barnabas, along with Judas and Silas were ministering in Antioch after presenting the letter from the council. Paul was not much for staying in one location and so he suggested to Barnabas that they go back to the other cities they had been to and follow up on their ministry. Barnabas was all for this but he wanted to bring along John Mark. We may think of Paul as a super Christian but we see is a man who could not get over the disappointment of what Mark had done. He left them when they needed him and he was not going to put himself in that position. Barnabas, on the other hand, wanted to give Mark a second chance and allow him to redeem himself. In Paul and Barnabas, we see two kinds of people in ministry. One is mission first and the other is people first. Who was in the right? It depends on your perspective.

This disagreement led to more than a rejection of Mark by Paul. We see that the disagreement was so sharp that this was the end of the team of Paul and Barnabas. Paul took Silas as his new partner, while Barnabas took Mark. It is sad that it ended this way, although God used the circumstances to create two new dream teams.

Is this the end of the story? Perhaps. But there is a hint of eventual reconciliation. In 2 Timothy, likely the last letter of Paul before his death, we read: “Get Mark and bring him with you, because he is helpful to me in my ministry.” (2 Timothy 4:11) If this is the same Mark, it may be that Paul and Mark were reconciled.

But what I want you to see is that even the early church, relationships were messy. There were disappointments and disagreements. Some people had to agree to disagree and even chose to go their own ways. None of this meant that Christianity was any less true. It only meant they were human and had messy relationships.

Relationships in the Church

Baptists are what is called a restorationist movement. What that means is that the first Baptists attempted to restore the church to what it looked like in the New Testament. Of course their success or failure depends on your interpretation.

We sometimes have an idealistic idea of the New Testament church. We think they were pretty much perfect and it was only after the death of the apostles that things began to fall apart. But what we have seen is that even the great Apostle Paul had his issues and experienced messy relationships. It is good for us to aim to be the best possible church, but we also have to take into account the human element.

We are a community made up of individuals. We come from different backgrounds and cultures. We learned different things from our families. We have attended different churches before coming here. Our reading of Scripture is going to be somewhat different, even if we agree on most of the essentials.

This means that there is going to be conflict to varying degrees. It may mean that you are slightly annoyed by someone or that you cannot serve on a committee with that person. It may be for a short season or you may struggle with that person for a long time.

You may be a Paul who sees the mission of the church to be the priority. Or you may be a Barnabas who sees the people of the church to be the priority. Or you may be a John Mark who has disappointed someone and you just wish someone would give you a second chance.

I wish I could give you some simple advice that would prevent all future conflict but I cannot do that. But I can point something out from the experience of Paul. In all of the letters we have from Paul, we have no hint of Paul slandering either Barnabas or John Mark over this conflict. While Paul could not bring himself to trust John Mark so soon after what had happened, they were still brothers in Christ. There was a way for Paul to be mission first and Barnabas be people first and the kingdom of God could still be spread. They may not have agreed with each other’s response, but they were still working toward the same goal.

The point is that we do not have to agree with each other. We may even be frustrated with each other. And conflicts will come eventually. None of that changes the fact that God has adopted us into his family and that we are brothers and sisters.

Conclusion

When I asked you if anyone had disappointed you or frustrated you in this church, what emotions did you experience? You may be extremely confident that you are in the right and they are in the wrong. It is okay to experience those emotions. But what we should avoid is long lasting bitterness or gossip about how bad that person is. We are all human beings in God’s church and that means that things will get messy. That is okay. But if we focus on who each of us are in Christ, we can get beyond those disagreements and work toward the building of God’s kingdom.