York Minster

Bartholomew - not on the podium

Date: 24th August 2008
Preacher: The Reverend Canon Jeremy Fletcher

Bartholomew – not on the podium  Luke 22. 24-30

There is a contest which is taken incredibly seriously by some, with commitment and energy devoted to gaining the reward of success and adulation when all is achieved. It is happening as I speak. It is the ‘guess which topical reference the preacher will use to start today’s sermon’ competition. It has a second phase: ‘having started like that, how on earth will it be related to anything to do with God?’. For those players eagerly awaiting today’s piece of topicality, I will not disappoint and will start, as I have to, with the Olympics.

I don’t quite know what I will do tomorrow morning, glued as I have been to all those sports I forget exist for the three years before the next games. There are wonderful small pleasures to be had: finding out the name of the little moped that starts the cyclists off for one of their disciplines, and learning that much of Japan’s health system is financed by gambling on that same type of track cycling. Discovering that our kayak specialist is an A+E doctor who has continued to practise full time as he trains. Realising that my sons learnt to swim in the same pool and at the same time as ‘Dame’ Rebecca Adlington.  We watched most of the first week on French TV: we saw a lot of fencing and Greco Roman wrestling. Guess which sports the French were doing well in at the time.

Up until these games it is these small pleasures which have had to do. In Atlanta we gained one gold medal. Yesterday the Olympic Breakfast team apologised that they had to make us wait until 8.20 a.m to give us the first gold medal of the day. Success is unaccustomed, but thoroughly welcome – and it was superb of the IOC President yesterday to single out the stellar achievement of Ben Ainslie, one of our sailors, who won his third consecutive gold. There is hidden success as well as the showy stuff in the Bird’s Nest. So, that’s the first phase. Now, you ask,  having begun with the Olympics, how is he going to relate it to God.

By thinking about the people who have not, to use those two wonderful new verbs, ‘medalled’ or ‘podiumed’. Tomorrow, when the ‘Olympic Heroes’ return, not many eyes will be on Andy Baddeley or Ben Swift or Jeanette Kwakye or Jo Pavey. Each of them also gave their all, but the media spotlight likes success above everything, and sterling efforts, even the making of the final (or ‘finalling’ I suppose) are not enough. There was a wonderful cartoon in the paper this week of a teenager holding his GCSE results and saying to his parents, ’Put it this way. At least it was a personal best’. The overwhelming majority of athletes in Beijing did not win a medal.

If you were to hand out medals to Apostles there would be some obvious contenders. Peter, James and John formed an inner group of the Twelve. Thomas fails, or succeeds, heroically.  Philip has quite a role in the book of Acts. Andrew puts in some good performances: I’m sure his brother Peter would give him due credit in the post race interview. (I do love those interviews. I count the number of times athletes say ‘unbelievable’, and marvel at the desperate situations interviewers get themselves in. As one writer put it, if one of them were interviewing the Almighty the question would be: ‘God, you’ve just made the world in six days. How proud do you feel?’). Judas Iscariot we know about. But what about James the son of Alphaeus, Simon the Cananean, or Bartholomew?

Bartholomew is so vague that we are not even sure if he was the same person as Nathanael, the one whose cynicism about Nazareth meant he wasn’t sure about Jesus as the Messiah, but followed Christ and was present at the Sea of Galilee after the resurrection. Bartholomew is there in the Olympic Village, but there’s no way he’ll get much of an interview. And yet we honour him with a red letter day just like Peter and Andrew, James and John. I think we do this not because all sorts of further beliefs about Bartholomew have grown up: that he died in a gruesome fashion in Azerbaijan and is depicted in art in a pretty horrible way which will put you off your coffee if I tell you; nor that Canterbury Cathedral is said to be the last resting place for one of his arms.

We venerate him because he was there, because he was recorded as being one of Christ’s followers, because he was one of the twelve, because he accompanied his fellow disciple (in the Synoptic Gospels it’s always Philip) when they went out in twos, because he witnessed the resurrection and received the Spirit and spread the Gospel. I hope you felt just a little uncomfortable when I talked about awarding medals to the Apostles, because that’s not what they thought they were about. They were following Christ because they could do nothing else. Some of them had a prominent role in certain events. But all were essential, because all were called, and all could do nothing else but follow, giving all that they had to do so.

Those who don’t get the best seats and the prominent roles and the media coverage can take heart from Bartholomew. I was going to say ‘those of us’, but none of us who occupy this pulpit and appear on the TV can say we’re not just a bit prominent. It is not prominence and importance and adulation and honour to which we are called. We are called to serve, to witness, to be the presence of Christ in the world. We are called to take part, because to take part is to win. All will receive a crown, and those whose service is hidden rather than prominent will receive the same reward. It’s interesting that Bartholomew has become associated with the ministry of healing – think of the hospitals dedicated to him. It’s a historical accident, as some of his relics were venerated in a church in Rome which then took over an old pagan medical centre. It’s not then because Bartholomew was a gifted healer: the ministry of healing is a gift to the whole church and Bartholomew is as much connected with it as we are. It is God who is great. It is Christ who saves. It is we who follow.

The most gracious Olympians, and there have been many, recognise that success and prominence is the result of vast amounts of their own faithful and hidden work, and even more to do with the teamwork of all sorts of people who will never see the limelight. In the mid 1990s British Cycling was a week away from complete disaster and bankruptcy. All sorts of people have worked to enable Chris Hoy and Bradley Wiggins and Nicole Cooke and Victoria Pendleton to achieve what they have, starting with the person who redesigned the system from scratch. Some Christians will occupy pulpits like this, wear fine clothes, write brilliant books, do great deeds. Some will be like Bartholomew. In practical terms, we need each other. Spiritually, all are called to follow, and in doing so, all will receive the glory, for it is given to us already in Jesus Christ. The question for each of I us then is this: how can I serve? How must I follow? And where will Christ lead me?