We Are Members of One Another (Acts 11:27-12:25)

We Are Members of One Another

May 3, 2026

Acts 11:27—12:25

By Pastor Mike Conner

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We are continuing to explore the relationship between two of the first Christian congregations: the church in Jerusalem, where the Holy Spirit was first poured out upon the disciples, and the church in Antioch, about 300 miles north of Jerusalem in Turkey. Luke tells us this story in chapters 11 through 15 of the Book of Acts, the sequel to his Gospel. Antioch was a cosmopolitan hub in the ancient Mediterranean world. People from all over the known world lived and worked there. Many of them responded to the Gospel when it was first preached by a few unnamed, ordinary believers who had escaped persecution in Jerusalem and come north.

The church in Antioch was a radical community not only because of its multiculturalism, which was and is always significant, but also because Gentiles were as prominently a part of it as Jews. Gentiles, those long considered outside the scope of God’s favor and covenant, were now drawing near to Christ as beloved ones. The church in Antioch was living a question perfectly articulated by theologian Willie James Jennings in his commentary on Acts: “What will you do if I join you at the body of Jesus and fall in love with your God and with you?” Their boldness in living this question is why Antioch was the place where, as Luke tell us, “the disciples were first called Christians” (Acts 11:26).

When the leaders in the Jerusalem church—people like the apostles Peter, James, and John—heard about what was happening in Antioch, they Barnabas, another trusted leader whose name means Son of Encouragement, to go and nurture what was happening there.

After going and seeing and joyfully encouraging the Christians in Antioch, Barnabas went to another city, Tarsus, to find Saul (who we know as Paul). Barnabas brought Saul to Antioch and involved him in the work of God there for a year.

The Holy Spirit kept drawing the circle wider. Ordinary, unnamed believers carried the Gospel spark to the Jews and Gentiles of Antioch. Barnabas blew encouragement on this fire and brought Saul, a murder-turned-disciple, to work it into a blaze. All the while, two communities of Christians, one in Jerusalem and one in Antioch, were being brought into deeper partnership and solidarity with each other. 

The great American poet Mary Oliver has a very early poem called “Beyond the Snow Bank.” The poem describes a snowstorm that, in one county, is mild and lovely, but two counties north is fierce and devastating. People admire the picturesque snowfall in the one place, sending children out to play and skate. Meanwhile: “Two counties north the storm has taken lives.”

The poem is about the limits of human compassion, how we can only really grieve for someone or something that we have let touch us, that we in some way know and feel a sense of belonging toward. Mary Oliver ends the poem with these lines: “I only say, except as we have loved, / All news arrives as from a distant land.”

The question the poem leaves us with is this: How to expand the heart and bridge the distance between us our neighbors, so that their pain becomes our pain, their burden our burden? 

Two counties north was, in the poet’s words, “A wild place never visited, so we / forget with each ease far mortality.”

What does it look like when Christian communities in different places get entangled with each other, not only in a mystical sense as members of Christ’s Body, but in practice?

This is on my heart this week, and not only because of Pastor Deepak coming from Bangalore, India to Pocatello, Idaho in a few months, bridging the world in his own story and body. It’s also on my heart because of Dr. Boe’s presentation to our youth group last Sunday about his many experiences of medical mission work, connecting Christians around the world in shared concern and service. And because of the ISU campus ministry board meeting we had this past Wednesday night, which for the first time in five years had members from Pocatello, Blackfoot, and Idaho Falls in attendance, as well as multiple students.

There is a real sense in which Christiain life is not only personal, between me and God, and not only social, between me and my neighbor, but also ecclesial, or as the Methodists like to say, connectional, between communities of faith. We are members of one another. And the Apostle Paul, who learned how to do ministry in Antioch, tells us as much in the book of Ephesians: “There is one body and one Spirit, just as you were called to one hope when you were called; one Lord, one faith, one baptism; one God and Father of all, who is over all and through all and in all” (4:4-6).

Prophets came from the Jerusalem church to the Antiochian church. They reported that a famine would hit Judea in the near future. The Christians in Antioch began a financial collection to help provide for the Jerusalem church. To them, 300 miles south might be a distant land in fact, but it was not a distant land to the heart. They belonged to the other Christians there; they felt that belonging strongly. They wanted to help. The way Luke tells this story, there’s a feeling of immediacy to their actions. There’s no long deliberation or argument about whether they have enough resources to care for themselves and send help to the Christians in Judea. They simply decide that everyone according to their own ability will put some money in the pot.

Let’s notice that it’s not the larger, established community in Jerusalem that is helping Antioch this time, but the smaller, newer community in Antioch that steps up to help Jerusalem. In the Body of Christ, what determines who helps who is nothing other than need. Antioch needed leaders and teachers, so Jerusalem sent Barnabas. Jerusalem is going to need food, so Antioch sends money. I’m reminded of when we were raising money to reroof our church two years ago, and about a dozen other churches, rural and urban, near and far, Methodist and non-Methodist, chipped in. At that time, we promised to do the same, should they ever need help. Naturally, Barnabas and Saul were the bearers of the Antioch church’s gift. Luke tells us, about a chapter later, that they were successful: “After they had completed their relief mission, Barnabas and Saul returned from Jerusalem, taking along John who was called Mark” (12:25). 

Barnabas and Saul came to Jerusalem during a tender time, a time marked by both profound hardship and resilient joy. King Herod had recently “attacked some who belonged to the church,” killing John, one of the original twelve apostles. He had also imprisoned Peter, the chief apostle, intending to make public sport of him by executing him after the Passover Festival. But “the church was praying fervently to God for [Peter]” (12:5) in the home of a woman named Mary, the mother of John Mark. And God, through an angel, responded to their prayers, rescuing Peter from his prison cell and restoring him to the community.

James’ death and Peter’s freedom were signs that the church would be both a persecuted and a praying community, a community marked by both death and resurrection. Through it all, God’s providence was at work. God had not abandoned the believers; they could continue to trust in the Spirit.

Either during or shortly after the Jerusalem Christians were living through the ups and downs of that moment, Saul and Barnabas arrived with the gifts of Antioch. Peter and the others could rejoice that, even as they were enduring the violent whims of Herod, the Spirit was taking care of them for what would be a future challenge, the famine. They had partners in ministry, siblings in Christ, 300 miles away who had given generously to take care of them. Angels met them in their present, and angels me them for their future. They would have a future, Herod or no Herod, and they wouldn’t be alone in it.

And, of course, beloved Barnabas was back! The Son of Encouragement. The one who had a special gift for caring for the person right in front of him. I have to think that Barnabas would’ve heard about what had happened to James, and would have taken John aside for conversation, tears, and prayer.

What would Barnabas and Saul take back with them to Antioch after delivering the collection.? They would have fresh stories of God’s faithfulness, like Peter’s prison-break. They returned to Antioch with another new ministry colleague, John Mark, whose home was the site of the church’s intercessory prayer. They would bring to the church in Antioch a renewed realism and hope: yes, persecution would come from the powers and personalities that are opposed to the radical love of Christ, and yet God would take care of them.

Luke caps off this part of the story with short verse that is bursting with energy: “But the word of God spread and multiplied” (12:24). The Greek word for “word” – logos – can also be translated as message, report, news. So Luke, I think, wants us to see multiple meanings here. The actual Gospel is spreading, the proclamation about Jesus Messiah. More and more people are trusting in his name and in his love. And also, reports of God’s faithfulness in different communities are circulating. As more people in more places come to faith and have their lives woven together, there is a proliferation of stories. Stories of hardship and prayer, of faith, and freedom in the midst of pain. Stories of liberation from prison, provision for famine. 

The early Christians shared material resources like money, food, and people, as well as spiritual resources like prayer and stories. It is good for us to reflect on our own understanding and practice of Christian fellowship. Do we feel ourselves connected to, responsible toward, and grateful for Christians in other parts of our town, our state, and our world? What does the movement of God among the Methodists of Pocatello have to do with the movement of God in other congregations and communities? What is God doing in other parts of our state or our world that we should learn from, incorporate, join in? What does it mean, in a political climate like ours where many Christians are behaving badly by aligning themselves with nationalistic fear and aggression, to still open outward, getting to know other of people faith and weaving a wider web of love?

And, on a more individual level, each of us ought to ask: God how are you calling me, like Barnabas and Saul, to be the bridge between your people here and your people in other places? What are you asking me to do to strengthen the whole family of faith? 

These are some of the questions that Jerusalem and Antioch prompt us to ask. There’s no single right answer but may beautiful possibilities of partnership. In a season when much is changing for us here, perhaps we can see the cycling of people and stories and prayers and resources as a good and holy part of being the Church. The Spirit is always drawing the circle wider. Our anxieties cause us to narrow our vision; our hope causes us to expand it.

Friends, for five years, God has raised you from the ashes of the pandemic, and we have all learned how to be a church again.

Who knows what God will ask you to do next? Who will join us in this place? To whom will be sent? 

Thanks be to God for the questions. Amen.