Fr Mark Schultz

Dear Friend,

Happy Feast of St Barnabas!

Barnabas was one of St Paul’s missionary companions, and St Luke, the author of Acts, tells us in one of our Office Readings today that “Barnabas” might be a nickname, not a proper name, meaning as it does, “son of encouragement.” Luke tells us, too, that Barnabas owned a field which, after his conversion, he promptly sold, giving all of the money from the sale to the apostles. The selling-all-you-have-and-giving-it-to-the-church motif is a big one in Acts, particularly early on where it becomes a sign of the Church’s other-oriented uniqueness…though it’s also a motif that might seem to us a bit extreme as a sign of devotion, so in the context of the story perhaps we’re inclined to understand it as a righteousness-trope of some sort and leave it at that.

But it’s our reading from Ecclesiasticus that fills in the context of Barnabas’ conversion story in a way that makes it clear we can’t write off Barnabas’ actions as a trope…that we need to see it as a challenge and an invitation.

The first thing we’ll notice about our reading is that it appears to contrast wealth and poverty: the wealthy toil for money to rest and enjoy their “dainties” and the poor toil for money for survival and have no rest whatsoever. But it becomes clear, as we read further, that rich and poor alike both suffer if their pursuit is wealth: “Many have come to ruin because of gold, and their destruction has met them face to face. It is a stumbling-block to those who are avid for it, and every fool will be taken captive by it.” And that sounds like a classic admonition not to seek money for the sake of money, but there’s more here…

There’s a sense that the pursuit of wealth in itself produces injustice. The wealthy person who rests from their labors to enjoy their dainties is unconcerned for the poor person who cannot rest at all but is caught up in cycles of poverty and economic oppression. The understanding here is that wealth for a sybaritic few actually produces poverty for the harried many. It’s hard to notice the pain of another when we’re focused on our own dainties.

We know that Jesus has told us that we can’t serve both God and Mammon (wealth). Now, it doesn’t appear as if Mammon corresponds to any wealth-god for which we have any evidence, though at least Gregory of Nyssa understood "Mammon" as another name for the Philistine god whose name of Baal-ze-baal, Lord of lords, was mocked by the Hebrews as Beelzebub, Lord of the Flies (which is a fitting name for a wealth-god if the Roman Pluto, god of both wealth and the dead, is indicative of any pattern of patronage among demonic “deities”). We do, however, know much more about a Canaanite god named Moloch who promised prosperity if people would only be willing to sacrifice their children to him. The image of one’s children "passing through the fire to Moloch" is a recurring image of oppression, degradation and dehumanization throughout the Hebrew Testament. And the reality that Ecclesiasticus this morning is pointing us towards is this: it is difficult to serve Mammon without also serving Moloch. It is difficult to worship and pursue wealth for its own sake without also being willing to sacrifice one’s fellows, even one’s family, in the process. It’s hard not to create the unjust conditions under which others are oppressed when we’re literally hell-bent on our own idolatrous and unrighteous pleasure.

Ecclesiasticus, though, tells us that true wealth and richness is not a matter of gold and its pursuit: true prosperity is to do with avoiding evil and, by implication, choosing and (by grace) doing the good. And if it’s true that the good is love in action, and love is other-oriented, neighbor-concerned, interested in the wellbeing of the stranger, invested in the good of the outsider, the not-me…then real wealth, real prosperity is not an individual concern, but a community concern that looks like justice, like a community whose business is righteousness.

And that’s precisely the model the Son of Encouragement, St Barnabas, has for us today. He was devoted to the good of the community, not his own good, not dainties—he emptied himself for the sake of love, for the sake of community, and he became a sign of the Kingdom of Love the shape of which is most clearly visible in the Church.

My dear beloved Friend, how might we follow St Barnabas’ example today? How might we live other-oriented lives, lives of love, lives of abundant self-giving, to cooperate with the Spirit’s toppling of the reign of those twin gods of injustice and oppression, Mammon and Moloch? How might we be signs of the Kingdom of Love today?

Under the Mercy,
Fr Mark+