Bartholomew

Feeling suitably inspired to preach for today I had a look at the readings – St. Bartholomew’s Day.

Now I think it’s generally a good thing to celebrate Saints Days as they can give a nice bit of human interest in the examination of their lives… However, there are some about whom we know so little that preaching about them is not very easy !! St Bartholomew falls into that category.

Although he’s mentioned in the gospels as one of the 12 disciples, we know very little else about him at all. Suddenly my inspiration seemed to be disappearing a little !!

That was until I realised that St Bartholomew is actually a perfect representation of most of us. We’re there as part of a Church, part of a family, chosen by God to represent him, supported and sustained by the Holy Spirit, but leading sometimes unremarkable lives, and that’s not a bad way to be.

Many of you will know the story about St Maximillian Kolbe a Roman Catholic Priest imprisoned in Auschwitz by the Nazis who gave his life up literally instead of another person.

Though he had spent time sharing the gospel, being involved in various newspapers and so on prior to his arrest, nothing about him has impacted people as much as his death. That death, his courage, his determination, his reliance on God, was enough to transform lives, and point people to God, and pointing people to God is what we are all called to do.

The important thing about Bartholomew is that he was chosen by Jesus himself to be a servant of others, and that is a privilege that we all share today. Throughout the world today we see many examples of extremists or fundamentalists as they are often called in religious terms. As we look at their lives we see that actually they are often people who are filled with the best intentions.

They follow the calling to be faithful, to study scripture, to pray, and to sacrifice something of the world in order to put their devotion to God first, and there is of course nothing wrong with any of that. In fact, I like to think those are my priorities too… But I suppose a person moves from the category of quiet, faithful follower to the category of extremist the moment the compulsion to do any one of these things—pray, study, sacrifice— supersedes attention to the rule of compassion.

Jesus was an extremely religious person – he adhered to the laws of the Jewish faith. He knew it backwards, he taught about it, and yet he also knew that the need to display compassion was the overarching thing that would lead people to follow him.

At the very core of his faith, Jesus was an observer of people. He always had an eye for the one in the corner, the blind man, the woman scorned, the one so crippled by a spirit she was not even able to stand up straight. Compassion is Jesus’ first instinct, and that is the instinct that must be at the very heart of his followers.

The remarkable thing about Bartholomew is not a list of achievements, it’s not any wise sayings or actions, but the fact that he was called to follow Jesus, and called to display Jesus to others… And that is the remarkable thing about all of us as Jesus chooses us personally to go out and do his work, to show his love and compassion, to extend the hand of friendship to those without friends, to offer hope to those who seem to have lost all hope.

And in this choosing Jesus gives us all gifts to show as well. It may not always seem like it, sometimes our gifts are things we wouldn’t want, maybe experiences in our lives that we actually would prefer not to have had, and yet those experiences can sometimes be used to transform the lives of others for good.

Jesus said, ‘Come to me, all you who labour and are heavy-laden and I will give you rest.”

None of us can expect to find all the relief or nourishment we need from any one person, practice, situation or institution. Our hearts are restless until they find their rest in God, Saint Augustine so famously said, and it is essential that we as a family united by God remember that and point others to that fact.

God is present no matter how unsettling circumstances get, and as part of a family, the same family as Bartholomew and Peter and Paul, and millions and millions of others, we encourage each other to remember that.

We exist as a Church in Christian community in order to live the way of Jesus, regardless of the wonderful or irritating personalities, regardless of anything else… Above all else we gather to point one another to God, the source of all life, the source of all healing and growth… if we are failing to point one another to God, we are failing as a church.

But the good news—for you, for me, for the church—is that in any given moment we can choose to turn around, turn back again to our source. Rowan Williams, in his book, Where

God Happens, says, “A healthy church is one in which we seek to stay connected with God by seeking to connect others with God.”

It’s easy to think of our own way of seeing God, and our own ideas about him and work hard to connect others with that image but we should always be wary of one of the oldest clichés in the book about church and that is that ‘everyone knows the right way to do things, but everyone doesn’t agree on what the right way is.’

We won’t always agree on the right way to do things, but we can agree that the living God is the source of our health and growth, and our unity, not the next great idea or person or study group, however good those things may be…

So in the face of all the frustration, change, and newness that Christian community is never without—indeed, that all of life is never without—Jesus shows us the fundamental way to be:

compassionate observers. Observant Christians who point our neighbours to Christ, who show the compassion that Christ showed, even if at the same time we’re having to let go of what is familiar, or give up what has become comfortable, or try some new ways of being.

If we are all to share in the healing and restoration, that assurance of God’s presence in our lives, we must have eyes and ears and hearts of compassion to observe those who stand on the outside, in restlessness and pain, and point them to God. Jesus says, “come to me all you who labour and are heavy-laden; and I will give you rest. “

We point each other to God as we strive to live out the compassionate way of Jesus with each other... We’re not called to be God’s Warriors, but brothers and sisters. 

Brothers and sisters who bear one another’s burdens with acts and attitudes of compassion; brothers and sisters who hold loosely what we hold dear for the sake of bringing in others; brothers and sisters whose life together is ordered around pointing each other to the presence of God in the world that God so loves.

It is actions like these that represent the unremarkable example of people like Bartholomew but they are actions worth fighting for and working for. AMEN