fame

Faith over Fame – Sermon Preached on 14th June 2026 (Third Sunday of Trinity)

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Preached at Holy Cross, Seend and St Mary’s, Potterne

Romans 5.1 – 8; Matthew 9.35 – 10.8

“God proves his love for us in that while we still were sinners Christ died for us.”

A woman reclines while having her makeup applied by two unseen stylists. One stylist applies lip colour with a brush, while another works on her hair. She has dark, glossy hair swept back, heavy eye makeup with dark liner and mascara, and full, glossy lips. She is wearing a black top with a sequinned neckline. The image is shot at a slight angle, with a blurred red object in the foreground.
Natural beauty? Kim Kardashian in 2010.

Strong and perfect. That’s what we’re supposed to be. Well, to be fair, we all know nobody is perfect. So, strong and nearly perfect is what we’re told we’re supposed to be.

How often do you see an ugly person on a TV show? Oh, the odd time you’ll see a politician interviewed who is no oil painting, or perhaps a professional sportsperson whose sporting prowess makes them indispensable even if they have a face that could sink a thousand ships. But have a look at the presenters of the chat shows. Have a look at the actors – and even more the actresses. The odd flawed vessel slips through by force of personality – at least if they’re a man – but what is presented to us as what we should aspire to looks a lot different from most of us: far more glamorous and perfect, indeed far more perfect than anyone could be without plastic surgery and stage make-up.

If you look at the influencers on social media, they’re even more perfect. Not a hair out of place, most of them. Industrial quantities of hairspray in use there, so that companies can pay them to encourage us to buy their brand of make-up, or craft beer, or whatever it is. Let’s think through what that implies. We live at a time when some people are famous just for being famous, and this seems to matter to enough ordinary people for it to be worth companies paying people who are famous to endorse what they want to sell us – even if it is an empty form of fame.

So we should aim to be famous, to be strong, physically and mentally, to be attractive to an almost inhuman pitch of perfection, and most of all, to be successful. Failure is for losers. That is the world we live in.

In this morning’s Epistle reading, St Paul, writing to the first Christian community that ever existed in Rome, says something very different about what God thinks about us. He says that we are of immeasurable value to God when we are weak, and when we are still sinners. We are of such absolute value to God, just for being human, just for being God’s children, that God came into the world in the person of Jesus Christ to die on the Cross for us.

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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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Reflection on ‘Fame’ for Holy Week: Tuesday 4th April 2023

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Given at Christ Church, Worton

Matthew 21. 12-16

“Fame! — I wanna live forever.”

Seven young adults in a posed photograph, some sitting, some standing, on a promo graphic for the 1980s TV show 'Fame'. Another young character is in a box top right.
Soon, anyone old enough to remember the original Fame will pretty much have lived forever

So ran the theme tune of a popular TV drama of my youth, about a group of teenagers at a specialist high school in New York for those aiming at a career in the performing arts. The young characters wanted to be famous for their talents – as did the young actors who played them. But we live in a time when people don’t become famous necessarily for their talents or achievements, but often become famous just for being famous. The celebrity lifestyle is one that some people actively chase, indeed that some are willing to degrade themselves to achieve, drawn like a moth to the flame of being a household name.

The Gospels present Jesus as something of a celebrity, followed by crowds everywhere; sometimes, as when he overturned the money-changers’ tables, he could even carry out what we might call today a ‘PR stunt’. Yet the crowds’ attention was often exhausting to Christ; in Galilee, after a day surrounded by throngs of people clamouring to be healed and to be entertained, he would retreat into the hills, or out into the lake on a boat. Sometimes, the crowds followed him even there. As we believe that Jesus Christ was God in human form, we see something here about the character of God that is perhaps a little surprising.

One of the hallmarks of the early 21st Century has been the way that technology has eroded the distinction between public and private life – for celebrities and public figures, certainly, and also for quite ordinary people.

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