Day Twenty Six - Encouraging love and helping out

Hebrews 10:24-25 (NRSV)

And let us consider how to provoke one another to love and good deeds, not neglecting to meet together, as is the habit of some, but encouraging one another, and all the more as you see the Day approaching.

Hebrews 10:24-25 (The Message)

Let’s see how inventive we can be in encouraging love and helping out, not avoiding worshiping together as some do but spurring each other on, especially as we see the big Day approaching.

I don’t know how the church you normally attend has coped in the last year. I know some churches have stayed open nearly all the time, while others have shut their doors for months on end. And what has your fellowship done to replace the usual Sunday services, Bible studies, coffee mornings, toddler groups etc? I am fed up with the cliched phrase “unprecedented times” but it is well-used because it is the truth.

In Acts 4:36 we read about a Cypriot Levite called Joseph, whom the apostles nicknamed Barnabas, because it means “son of encouragement”. I think we all need an encourager in our lives – I mean a human one, I haven’t forgotten the Holy Spirit!

Some ecclesiastical traditions think that Hebrews was written by Barnabas. Hebrews was written to encourage the early Christians not to give up on their faith and revert to Judaism. There had not been a mass conversion in Israel, so those Christians were in a minority, probably under pressure from friends and family and thus wavering.

Barnabas is the name of a project in Manchester, which provides, among many other things, a cooked breakfast for ninety people every weekday. They are encouraging people all over the UK to take part in their Big Easter Family Sleepout to raise both funds and awareness. Even if we feel we can do nothing active to bring God’s kingdom closer, we can always pray and donate money to organisations which are undertaking “good deeds”.

My husband treasures a newspaper cutting from the early 70s, which shows him and five others who were doing a sponsored starve. Entertainment was offered by the local churches so the six teenagers went to play table tennis in the Methodist church. A journalist had a good idea. He went across the road to the corner shop and asked to borrow £10 of chocolate; he laid it on the ping pong table in front of the young people and after he had taken the photo, he took the goodies back to the shop! That act was the opposite of being encouraging! The sponsored starve was organised by Plymstock Congregational church, which is now URC.

Those early Christians were avoiding gathering together because it was a dangerous time and place to believe in Jesus. This verse has been used, erroneously, to insist that people attend church weekly. But these verses were written by A Barnabas, if not THE Barnabas and they apply today – we do not know when the day of the Lord’s return will be, but we should be caught in worship or good deeds – or both!

Elaine Kinchin