The Antioch experience

For many religious movements there is usually a place or event that is foundational to the growth and spread of that movement. Not long after Jesus’ death and resurrection the early Christians quickly made their way to other parts of the Middle East, as we read in today’s first reading (Acts 11:19-26), “as far as Phoenicia and Cyprus and Antioch”. But something happened in Antioch that was crucial for the future growth of this new movement, Jesus’ followers began “preaching to the Greeks” and a large number of them “were converted to the Lord”. It is hard to underestimate the significance of this practice of reaching out to the non-Jews. It is like - you do something and you don’t quite know why - except that it is what Jesus would want you to do, that there is something in Jesus’ teaching and his death and resurrection that demands you go beyond your own familiar community and your own long-standing belief that God’s salvation is only intended for the Jews. Now news of this radical practice of inviting non-Jews to become part of this new community reached Jerusalem. Rather than stopping it, the elders in Jerusalem had the sense to send someone whom they could trust to investigate what was happening. They sent Barnabas who saw that something powerful was happening in Antioch, the emergence of a community that was alive in the Spirit. These people not only believed in Jesus but they lived out that belief in the way they were truly and visibly committed to one another. As Paul would later write, they were “no longer Jew or Greek, male or female, slave or free. All are one in Christ.” It was here that these people were called, for the first time, Christians. This remarkable experience prompted Barnabas to look for Paul. If there was somebody who could share this openness to a whole new way of life and who could also begin to make sense of what was happening it would be Paul for he had also undergone a radical transformation in his own life, from being a persecutor of Christians to being a proclaimer of Christ as Lord and Saviour. Paul and Barnabas stayed in Antioch for a year and the rest, as they say, is history. Have you had an Antioch experience in your own life or maybe a few? There are two parishes in Fiji in which I have had my own Antioch experiences and I will be forever grateful to those friends whose faith and commitment have had a deep impact on me and changed my life.