Unknown Bartholomew is the Saint for Our Times: Sermon Preached on 24th August 2025 (St Bartholomew)

Preached at St Peter’s, Poulshot and Christ Church, Bulkington

Acts 5. 12-16; Luke 22. 24-30

“A dispute also arose among them as to which one of them was to be regarded as the greatest.”

We know almost nothing about St Bartholomew, yet he is hugely relevant to how we should live our lives in the 21^st century. If that seems like a contradiction in terms, please let me explain.

Here’s what little we do know about St Bartholomew. He is mentioned by all three synoptic Gospels – that is Matthew, Mark, and Luke – as one of the Twelve Apostles. He is also mentioned in Acts, as one of the apostles who gathered in Jerusalem after the Ascension to choose Judas Iscariot’s replacement, so he was clearly a significant figure in the very early Church. Apart from that, we know nothing for certain – except for one thing: Bartholomew was a surname, because “Bar” literally means “son”—so he was the Son of Ptolemy.

While Bartholomew is mentioned in Matthew, Mark, Luke, and Acts – that name isn’t mentioned in John. But because Bartholomew is a surname, we are pretty sure that he is the same person as someone who is named in John’s Gospel and only there, and who like Bartholomew is always paired with Phillip when he appears—and that is Nathaniel. So he was probably named Nathaniel Bartholomew.

John’s Gospel tells of Philip bringing Nathanael to Jesus, who said he was an Israelite without deceit—which was very generous of Jesus, as Nathaniel’s first reaction to Philip telling Him about Jesus was to ask if anything good could come from Nazareth. But when Bartholomew did meet Jesus, he recognised him immediately as the Son of God.

Some stories have come down to us about Bartholomew’s later life. It is said that he spread the Gospel beyond the boundaries of the Roman Empire. Firstly, he is said to have gone far to the east, perhaps even as far as India; then he went to Armenia, which we know was one of the first countries in the world to have a substantial Christian presence. But these stories vary considerably in their details, and none of them seems to have been written down until the 4^th century, so we’re not entirely sure what the truth of Bartholomew’s later life was. All of the accounts agree that he was martyred somewhere in Greater Armenia, probably around the year 70.

In the West, it was always believed that Bartholomew was flayed alive, which is why his symbol is three knives, one on top of the other. You’ll see it on churches and other institutions dedicated to him, as well as in windows of the twelve apostles. Even by the standards of the apostles this was a pretty gruesome death.

We don’t know whether or not Bartholomew ever married and had children. We don’t know the details of his journeys, or if he made any converts. His life may have been, by any reasonable standards, a complete failure. Yet, still, the Churches still have a special day to commemorate Him 2,000 years later.

Why is all this relevant to our lives today?

One of the hallmarks of our times is the cult of celebrity. Of course, a lot of people can enjoy a bit of gossip about celebrities, or enjoy the music or films or sport celebrities are involved in, without getting caught up in the cult that surrounds them. But both the old-fashioned TV channels and newspapers, and online influencers and news outlets, sell us the idea that we should all be really interested in celebrities—and some people are quite consumed with celebrity obsession. Some want to be celebrities themselves. The Internet makes it easier than ever to attempt to be a celebrity. You can have your own YouTube or TikTok channel; if you’re a cleric, you can even publish your sermons on your own website and promote them on your social media channels or your WhatsApp group. It’s now nearly sixty years since Andy Warhol said that, “In the future, everyone will be world-famous for 15 minutes”—and he didn’t know the half of it.

The Internet is full of people pouring their heart and soul into ventures that never have a few dozen subscribers or regular viewers. That’s certainly the fate of almost everyone who publishes their sermons on the Internet! A minority of big names collar most of the celebrity interest on the Internet, and the income that goes with it, and the vast majority of people who try to make a living that way struggle. When it comes to being famous, it seems that many are called but few are chosen.

Yet we shouldn’t get carried away with the idea that this need to be a big name is entirely new. Today’s Gospel reading showed the Twelve Apostles arguing among themselves about which one was the was the greatest. Now, they may not have had the same values as today’s celebrities, but they display many of the same aspects of character—the same ego and the same need to pretend that we’re better than others.

What’s even worse is that this morning’s Gospel records this incident as happening at the Last Supper. At the Last Supper! Immediately after Jesus has told the apostles “this is my body” and “this is my blood”. Talk about not reading the room! The apostles wasted what turned out to be some of the last moments they had with Christ on this silly squabble.

Yet, after they had received the Holy Spirit at Pentecost, this motley group of egoists had changed completely. Because whatever the apostles and the early Christians were doing following Jesus, they weren’t out for earthly glory. Christian tradition has generally passed down that all bar one of the Twelve Apostles were martyred, with the only exception being St John the Evangelist.

All the good they did, like those moments recorded in our first reading when they were healing and teaching in the Temple in Jerusalem, were done under the constant threat of arrests, beatings, and exile, when the Christians were a tiny group of perhaps a few hundred people at most. In the eyes of the world, they were absolute mugs. Yet they didn’t give up; something had been transformed in them by the Holy Spirit.

The Holy Spirit still transforms people’s lives, allows them to live holier lives than they could ever have imagined wanting let alone actually living out. If you worry that living a Christian life leaves you looking like a bit of a mug in the eyes of the world, remember that God knows what we have done for Him. God knows the times we have done good and been left unrewarded in this life; the times we have done good only to be maligned or mistreated for it; the times we have done good that had, for various good reasons, to remain entirely secret—God has seen all these good deeds and knows what was in our hearts when we did them.

We may know almost nothing about St Bartholomew, but God knows everything about him, even the deepest secrets of his heart, just as God knows the deepest secrets of the hearts of each one of us. The lesson from St Bartholomew’s almost unknown life is to worry less about what the world thinks of us and more about what God thinks of us. Whatever the agonies Bartholomew endured for the sake of Christ in this world, he has been rewarded a myriad times over in heaven. And if we trust Jesus Christ and His promises, then we will, like he promised the apostles after that silly squabble, eat and drink at His table on thrones in His kingdom.

And now to God the Father, God the Son, and God the Holy Ghost, be ascribed all might, majesty, dominion, and power, as is most justly His due, now and forevermore. Amen.