Somebody Has to Walk You In and Usually Nobody Does

He has been coming for two years and he still leaves before the coffee.

Not because he does not want the coffee. Because there is a mechanism at the coffee that he has never been able to solve, which is that everybody there is already in a conversation, and every conversation has a shape, and joining one requires either being invited or performing an intrusion, and he cannot do the second and nobody has done the first.

So he stands for a moment near the table, holding a cup, at the correct distance from three separate groups, and then he puts the cup down and gets his coat.

He is not shy in any other part of his life. He runs a team at work. This is a specific problem with a specific room, and it has now lasted long enough that walking in would require explaining two years of not walking in, which has made it harder rather than easier.

Acts 9 has a man in exactly that position and one person solves it in one verse.

The room was not wrong to be wary

The situation is described honestly and the church comes out of it neither well nor badly.

And when Saul was come to Jerusalem, he assayed to join himself to the disciples: but they were all afraid of him, and believed not that he was a disciple. (Acts 9:26, King James Version)

He assayed to join himself. He tried. The verb is about attempting, which means it did not work, and it means he had a go.

They were all afraid of him. All of them, and they had good reason. This is the man who had been hunting them, and some of them had lost people, and the report of a conversion is exactly the sort of thing somebody in his previous line of work would arrange.

So nobody in that room is being cold. They are being sensible, and the sensible thing is producing the wrong outcome, and this is the ordinary way rooms fail: not through unkindness but through an entirely reasonable inertia that nobody in it is responsible for.

You are standing outside a room that is not being cold to you. Acts 9:26 gives them a reason rather than a fault, and it is by the Spirit, Ephesians 4:3, that the unity is kept rather than negotiated between people.

One man does what the church could not

Then the next verse, and the verbs are physical.

But Barnabas took him, and brought him to the apostles, and declared unto them how he had seen the Lord in the way, and that he had spoken to him, and how he had preached boldly at Damascus in the name of Jesus. (Acts 9:27)

Took him, and brought him. Two physical verbs. Somebody put a hand on this man and walked him across a room.

And then declared unto them, which is the second half and it is the one that actually works: Barnabas does the talking. Saul does not have to explain himself, or produce his testimony under suspicion, or perform the intrusion. Somebody else says the sentences.

That is what the man at the coffee table needs and cannot ask for. Being invited is not the same as being permitted, and being permitted is what he has had for two years.

You are the kind of person one man can walk in, and it takes one. Acts 9:27 has a single named individual doing what the whole congregation could not, and it is by the Spirit, 1 Corinthians 12:7, whose manifestation is given to every man to profit withal.

Who Barnabas was and why the name matters

Luke had already told us who this man was, two chapters earlier, and the detail is a nickname.

And Joses, who by the apostles was surnamed Barnabas, (which is, being interpreted, The son of consolation,). (Acts 4:36)

The son of consolation. The word covers encouragement, comfort, coming alongside. It is the same root as the word for the Comforter.

So the apostles had given this man a nickname based on the thing he did, which means he had been doing it long enough and often enough to be known for it before Acts 9 ever happened.

And what that tells you is that the person who walks somebody in is not usually the leader of a room. He is a person with a habit, and the habit is unremarkable, and it accumulates a reputation without anybody planning it.

You are able to be walked in by somebody whose whole reputation is doing that. Acts 4:36 gives the nickname from the same root as the word for the Comforter, and it is the Comforter, the Holy Spirit of John 14:16, who is named as the one given to come alongside.

The instruction to the room is a command

The New Testament does not leave this to somebody's temperament. It is commanded, and the standard given is severe.

Wherefore receive ye one another, as Christ also received us, to the glory of God. (Romans 15:7)

As Christ also received us. That is the measure, and it is not a comfortable one, because He did not receive anybody on the strength of a clean record or a settled reputation.

And Hebrews adds a reason that is deliberately unsettling.

Be not forgetful to entertain strangers: for thereby some have entertained angels unawares. (Hebrews 13:2)

Unawares. The point of that verse is that a room cannot tell. The person at the edge of it holding a cup is not identifiable, and the instruction is therefore general rather than targeted.

I would say this to anybody who has been standing at the edge for two years and to anybody standing comfortably in the middle: the room is under an instruction, and nobody in it is going to receive that instruction from the person at the edge.

You are covered by a command given to the room rather than to you. Romans 15:7 addresses the receiving to the congregation, and it is by the Spirit, Ephesians 4:3, that the bond of peace is kept while a room learns to obey it.

What is available while nobody comes

The honest part, because two years is two years and this article cannot produce a Barnabas.

What is available immediately is not a solution to the room. It is that the standing at the edge is seen, and that the seeing is not by anybody in the building.

And there is something specific worth doing with it, which is why the physical action here is what it is. A person who has never said out loud what they actually believe has been waiting, without knowing it, for a room to make an occasion for it. That occasion may not come. The sentence can be said anyway, alone, and it is a different thing to be somebody who has said it and is standing at the edge than to be somebody who has never said it at all.

And if the edge has become heavier than an awkwardness, if two years has become the kind of aloneness where you are not sure anybody would notice and not sure you want to be here, say it out loud to a doctor, a counselor, a social worker, or a pastor you trust. In the United States the 988 crisis line is answered by a real person at any hour, and calling it is not a failure of faith.

You are able to say it alone while the room has still not made an occasion for it. Acts 9:26 has him attempting and failing and still being described as a disciple, and it is by the Spirit, Romans 8:16, that the witness about a person is borne rather than granted by a congregation.