5th Sunday of Easter (2024)

For the last five weeks since Easter, the Church has been giving us a refresher course on discipleship. It reminds us of how Jesus’ disciples learned to become influencers. An influencer is a person who uses their talents to become a compelling force that affects other people’s actions, behaviors, opinions, and thinking. In so doing, they affect outcomes. They transform the world.

Usually, influencers only make a limited impression on a relatively small number of people for a short time. Jesus is the most significant influencer of all time. Today, nearly four billion people, and throughout history billions more, profess him to be the person with the most tremendous impact in their lives. Jesus has held sway over people’s hearts for over two thousand years. He has made a mark not only on Christians but also on people of other cultures and faiths or those without any faith.

Jesus has been so influential because he started a movement. A movement the early Church referred to by the Greek term ecclesia. In its original usage, the Greeks called groups of people who organized themselves to help others on behalf of the larger community an ecclesia. An ecclesia wasn’t a fraternal group like the Elks, Knights of Columbus, or Chatham Woman’s Club. They didn’t organize for the betterment of only members but focused on non-members.

While the early Christians chose to call themselves an ecclesia, they intended to be much more than just a group of people doing good works and helping others. They wanted to be more than a social welfare group. They envisioned being people organized as the presence of the living Christ in the world. As John’s Gospel tells us, they intended to be branches on the living vine of Jesus Christ. The first Christians thought of themselves as a vehicle for the saving power of God to reach out to the whole world. They wanted Jesus’ teachings, healing, and love to transform all the earth into the Kingdom of God embodied by Jesus during his lifetime. The early Church wanted a deep relationship with God, the Father, as Jesus had. They tried to represent Jesus Christ’s presence alive and living in our world.

Jesus desired to organize his followers into a group that would continue his ministry and positively impact the world. Jesus’ followers would encourage the world by taking on the issues of everyday life just as he did, one suffering person at a time, leading by word and example.

This weekend, members of Holy Redeemer Parish participated in one such gesture. More than a dozen parishioners joined a Chatham clean-up day sponsored by the Chatham Conservation Foundation. I’m proud to tell you Holy Redeemer had the largest representation from any group in town. I expect to see even more parishioners out there next year. The clean-up was one small gesture by our parish, encouraging the community by showing Jesus’s followers care about the world created by a loving God.

Christians have a critical role in encouraging our community. Encouraging others, especially our youth, is vital, even if they number only a few. I spoke about that last week. Encouragement means providing someone with support, confidence, and courage, equipping them with hope.

Look back over your life and think of people who encouraged you. They were your cheerleaders whom you could depend on to accentuate your achievements and reassure you when you fumbled. They always had your back. Maybe it was a parent, a teacher, or a career mentor.

I’m very grateful for a man in this parish who has occupied that role for me. Soon after I came to Holy Redeemer, we had a discussion. He told me about his background and recognized my challenges as your new pastor. He encouraged me and pledged to always be honest with me. He has been faithful to his word and me, and I am very grateful.

The first reading today is an example of the power and impact mutual encouragement had on the growth of the Church. It is the story of a unique friendship between two central figures in the Apostolic Church.

Aside from Jesus, the most influential Christian is St. Paul. He was the Church’s greatest missionary. He was a great theologian who argued for and justified the early Church’s outreach to Gentiles. His missionary zeal inspired him to journey throughout the Eastern Mediterranean world, preaching Jesus’ gospel message. He brought the Good News to Rome. Paul is responsible for almost half the writings of the New Testament. His letters, confronting controversies and misunderstandings plaguing the early Church, counseled and directed them to be faithful to Jesus’ word.

Paul didn’t start out being the most extraordinary Christian emissary. He started as a great persecutor of the disciples of Jesus. Paul admitted he was educated as a Pharisee. We hear about the Pharisees often being opposed to Jesus. They were a small but influential sect of Judaism who wanted to follow the Mosaic Law strictly. The Pharisees and Paul opposed the Church because they felt they were too lax in obeying the Law.

The Bible tells us Paul was so opposed to the followers of Jesus that he was a driving force behind persecuting them. He so desired to eliminate them that he led the group that stoned St. Stephen, the first martyr, and got permission from the religious authorities to travel to Damascus to persecute the Christians there.

It was on that journey Paul’s life suddenly changed. He was knocked to the ground and blinded by light. He experienced a vision of Jesus, who asked Paul why he persecuted the Christians. The vision experience converted Paul, whose friends led him to Damascus, where he was baptized into the Christian community. Paul felt called by Jesus to become the Church’s spokesperson. He spent a long time in prayer, becoming more devoted to Jesus, and then returned to Jerusalem to try to become a member of the Church.

Naturally, Jesus’ followers were suspicious of Paul. They found it difficult to believe Paul had converted from persecutor to follower. That could have been the end of Paul’s story, and without his talents, the Church could have died out or been just a small sect of Judaism. 

Thanks to a man you might not know as well as Paul, that didn’t happen. Today’s reading from the Acts of the Apostles tells us of Barnabas, an early Christian. The Book of Acts speaks of him as a believer from Cyprus who was a Levite. Barnabas really bought into Jesus’ message. He lived where the rubber meets the road and was such a committed Jesus follower that the others called him “son of encouragement.” Barnabas was so dedicated to promoting Jesus’ message he sold his property and donated the proceeds to the Apostles to facilitate their work. Barnabas shows us that there is no better use of our material goods than committing them to spread Jesus’ Gospel.

Somewhere, Barnabas heard about Paul and his desire to commit himself to preaching the Gospel. Barnabas used his influence with the Apostles and disciples to introduce Paul to them. Paul persuades the Church to accept him as genuine and to support his missionary preaching for their cause. Paul, Barnabas, and a few others set off on the first missionary journey; the rest is history. The success of the Church is based on Barnabas’ encouragement of Paul.

Barnabas’ encouragement of Paul was his claim to fame. Sometimes, the most significant impact we can have in life isn’t our accomplishments; it is the encouragement we give others to do great things. Barnabas is one of history’s great influencers because of the encouragement he shared with Paul.

Barnabas has many things to teach us about being a successful influencer for others. We start by having a generous spirit and the desire to use it for the benefit of others. Find a person or persons to believe in. Look for people with potential who can benefit from some encouragement. They can be young people or ones with less experience than you. Give them some appropriate coaching.

Next, express your belief in them. Help them to envision their possibilities. Hold them in esteem. Barnabas saw Paul’s potential and was willing to take the risk to promote his abilities to skeptical disciples. Recognize the strengths of the person you want to promote. Barnabas was impressed with Paul’s preaching abilities and wanted them to be used to help encourage more people to experience Jesus in their lives.

When the person you are encouraging experiences failure or discouragement, step up and defend them. Reinvigorate their confidence. After experiencing an inevitable setback, be sure to have their back. Be honest with them about mistakes they made, but do so in constructive ways. Remind them success only comes after failure.

We encourage the success of those we are mentoring by expecting their success. Barnabas recognized Paul’s supersuccessful potential as a missionary and theologian. He spoke to Paul about how he envisioned Paul’s success. That must have made a great impression on Paul because it fortified Paul when he faced harassment, beatings, shipwrecks, and imprisonment.

Easter is all about growing as a Christian disciple by imitating the first disciples like Barnabas and Paul. This week, we begin our small faith-sharing groups. Being a small group member is all about encouraging the faith of others. If you participate in a small group, put encouraging each other into practice when you meet this week.

Everyone, ask yourself, who is the person or persons God is calling you to encourage this week? Name them. Right now and in the next few minutes, the Holy Spirit will give you the name or names of people God is calling you to encourage and mentor. Your words of encouragement are bound to influence our world for the better. Your encouragement of others this week will be a blessing that will brighten this world.