apostles

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

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A row of six colorful pop art portraits in the style of Andy Warhol. From left to right: a man in a yellow and green outfit with a red background, a blonde woman with a pink and blue face against a peach background, a woman with black hair and a pink face on a beige background, a bald man in a red suit with a yellow face, a man with dark hair and a beard shirtless with a yellow background, and a man with short hair and a brown face on a yellow background.

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.”

A decorative wall plaque shaped like a shield, painted teal blue, with three vertical knives mounted side by side. Each knife has a braided brown handle topped with a gold cap and a slightly curved, weathered silver blade pointing downward.
A shield with the Symbol of St Bartholomew in the Church of the Good Shepherd, Rosemont, Pennsylvania, USA.

We know almost nothing about St Bartholomew, yet he is hugely relevant to how we should live our lives in the 21st 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 4th 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?

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Forgiveness and Repentance: (Second Sunday of Easter: 27th April 2025)

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A wide photograph shows a large, ancient stone wall with uneven blocks, some with patches of greenery. In front of the wall, dozens of people gather in an open plaza. Many are standing, some sitting on white plastic chairs, and others are under large white umbrellas. A few individuals wear black hats or colourful clothing, and some appear to be in prayer or conversation. A flagpole with a blue and white flag stands near the centre. The scene is bathed in warm, golden light, with stone structures and arches framing the left side.

Preached at St Mary’s, Potterne

Readings – Acts 5. 27-32; John 20. 19-31

“God exalted him … that he might give repentance to Israel and forgiveness of sins.”

A fresco painting shows a group of people in a historical setting with stone buildings and a tower in the background. On the left, a woman in a grey dress holds a child, while others in robes stand nearby. In the center, two men in flowing robes, one yellow and one red, appear to be speaking or gesturing. At their feet, a person in a red robe lies on the ground, seemingly lifeless. The scene is framed by architectural elements, including a column on the right and a red wall with a small window on the left. The sky is pale with soft clouds.
St. Peter Distributing the Common Goods of the Church and the Death of Ananias, Mascaccio (c.1427), a fresco in the Brancacci Chapel within the Church of Santa Maria del Carmine in Florence.

On Good Friday, I heard an interview by the Rev’d Kate Bottley on Radio 2 with Esther Ghey, the mother of Brianna, the teenaged victim of a particularly brutal murder in Warrington two years ago, a murder carried out by other teenagers and motivated at least in part by transphobia. It was emotionally intense and at times profound, especially when Mrs Ghey said she had befriended the mother of one of her own daughter’s murderers, having witnessed her genuine distress at the trial and realising as a result that they shared a depth of woundedness that few mothers do. Such extraordinary empathy is rare and is often those who have been deeply wounded themselves who are capable of it.

Mrs Ghey was very clear that she wasn’t religious herself. Yet at the same time, she also reported seeing vivid sunset skies far more often since her daughter’s murder. As pink was Brianna’s favourite colour, she interpreted this as Brianna letting her family know she was OK from wherever she was now. The two things that jumped out at me are, firstly, if it needs to be said again, we Christians have no monopoly on goodness and Jesus Christ never said we would; and secondly that, although most people in this country now seem to think of themselves as having left Christianity behind, their attitudes are still saturated with Christian concepts which over dozens of generations have soaked into the psychological soil of this country and continent. By and large, people still believe there is something more than this life, although they may be reluctant to define what that “something” is.

The final words of this morning’s Gospel reading want us to believe in something very definite—“that Jesus is … the Son of God, and that through believing you may have life in his name.”

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A Vision for the Appointed Time: Sermon Preached at St John’s, Devizes, Sunday 3rd July 2022 (Feast of St Thomas)

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Readings – Habbakuk 2: 1–4; John 20: 24–29

“…there is a vision for the appointed time.”

It hasn’t been much of a summer, has it? Even by Wimbledon fortnight standards, we have had a depressingly heavy dose of rain. We are promised rather better for the next fortnight, and the wet start to the summer means we shall appreciate it all the more if we are indeed blessed with a fine spell in the next few weeks, when the days are still at their longest.

A carpet of flowers in the Namaqualand desert around a water-pumping mill.
The desert blooms briefly in South Africa’s Namaqualand region as winter ends. © Gerry Lynch 27 August 2011

On the other side of the world it isn’t high summer, but the depths of winter. In August, when winter starts to give way to springtime, something remarkable happens in the deserts that straddle the border between South Africa and Namibia. Normally almost completely barren, for a few weeks the desert blooms with carpets of flowers, sometimes stretching for miles in brilliant purples, oranges, and bright yellows, all giving off the most wonderful perfume. It is as if heaven has suddenly broken into the mundane world.

The same thing happens in a few other spots around the world as winter ends, where a desert approaches a western ocean coast and the rainfall patterns are favourable – in parts of Chile and California and Western Australia. The barren desert blooms with billions of wild flowers, and it comes and goes in a few weeks, and then the barrenness returns.

There is a vision for the appointed time… wait for it.

This is one of the more pessimistic times any of us have lived through. The desert has plenty of charms and compensations compared with the barren dryness of our culture and our political discourse.

It is not, despite all that, a time that quite matches the mood of hysterical doom-mongering that dominates our media reporting and especially our online discussions. I remember the 1980s, which were at least as politically divided as the current era, and also a time which in this country and generally in Western Europe was marked by much more politically-motivated violence than today, both in terms of terrorism and of street fighting. Most of it is now forgotten. The threat of war with Russia was quite a bit more intense then, with TV shows like Threads depicting the likely consequences of a nuclear war for ordinary people in grizzly detail. We also had a thousand miles of fortifications through the middle of Europe with easterners routinely shot dead by their own governments for trying to cross them. I am not going to join the panic-mongers just yet about our own situation, even if the United States seems to be in the grip of collective insanity.

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The Worth of Doubters: Sermon Preached at St John’s, Devizes, Sunday 24th April 2022 (Second Sunday of Easter)

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Readings – Acts 5: 27–32; John 20: 19–31

“Reach out your hand and put it in my side. Do not doubt but believe.”

I wonder when you last heard a friend or an acquaintance described as “a bit of a Doubting Thomas?” Perhaps you have even been described as a “Doubting Thomas” yourself. It isn’t usually intended as a positive assessment. A Doubting Thomas, including the original in today’s Gospel reading can often be presented as a cynic who is committed to nothing.

‘Still Doubting’, by John Glanville Gregory, after Caravaggio.

Yet ‘uncommitted’ isn’t the picture of Thomas we get from other passages in John’s Gospel. To shed light on this and some other things in this morning’s Gospel reading, we need to jump back to the 11th chapter of John. As I don’t expect you to remember what happens in every bit of the Bible by chapter number, let me reassure you that this is a passage of scripture familiar to most of you: it’s the story of the raising of Lazarus. One significant thing about it is that it’s the last miracle and indeed last major “action scene” in John’s Gospel before Jesus’ final entry into Jerusalem.

Back then, when Jesus’ life was under threat by stone-throwing mobs, Thomas was the one who responded to His suggestion of a trip into deeply hostile Judaea by telling his fellow disciples, “Let us also go, that we may die with him.” Here we see not an uncommitted backslider but a deeply loyal follower of Christ; perhaps even a fanatic.

Despite his deep commitment, can we blame Thomas for being sceptical, faced with tales from his friends that Jesus had returned from the dead, walking through walls to appear in the middle of locked rooms? We have all experienced people reacting to shocking news, especially to the death of a loved one, with denial. Indeed, I have found myself engaging in denial at times, and I suspect most of you have done so too. It’s a natural human tendency; so personally I have more than a little fellow-feeling with Thomas in this passage when he is wary of his companions engaging in denial.

The Church needs its Thomases, because it needs Christians of all sorts of temperaments and outlooks. It needs its sceptics as well as its enthusiasts, its pragmatists as well as its romantics. And that means that the Church needs all of you, just as you are, otherwise God would not have called you to be here this morning.

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