24 August - St Bartholomew: Isaiah 43:8-13, Acts 5:12-16 and Luke 22:24-30
Some years ago, Rowan Williams made headlines for sharing his love of The Simpsons. His then eight-year-old loved it and he appreciated the richness of allusions and references.
He said in a BBC interview that ‘what you see in The Simpsons’ is not a dysfunctional family but a family with remarkable strength and remarkable mutual commitment’.
Rowan continues ‘for all that Homer is a slob and Bart is a brat and Lisa is a pain in the neck, you know there’s affection and loyalty’.
Today the church remembers another ‘Bart’: one of the twelve disciples called Bartholomew.
We know much less about him than his namesake in The Simpsons. He is listed alongside the other disciples by Mathhew, Mark and Luke - and 400 years later, the church historian Eusebius writes that he went on to preach in India.
Some have conflated this Bart with Nathaniel who encountered Jesus early on in John’s Gospel and became a disciple. Jesus describes him as someone without guile or deceit - someone honest and transparent in his dealings.
We might therefore seek encouragement in remembering him today: recalling a faithful follower of Jesus, obscure yet known and loved by name; who shared the same quirks and imperfection as The Simpsons - or indeed us!
Someone who embodied loving service in the face of oppression; one who lived and died in Christ - in mutual affection and commitment - steady, reliable, trustworthy, loyal.
Yet, as with the sibling, friendship or community rivalries we experience - reflected back to us in shows like The Simpsons - he was caught up in disputes. Luke records one such moment which takes place moments after a shared meal. The context of what we call the Last Supper.
Before his betrayal and arrest, Jesus has shared bread and wine with them. He has signalled that they are to ‘do this’, to remember him; to receive these gifts as his own body and blood. It is profound, intimate.
Perhaps we can recall evenings which descend into heated debate provoked by a seemingly casual remark or a comment taken in offence. Today we glimpse the disciples becoming entangled in a disagreement about who among them was to be regarded as the greatest.
Perhaps they had the structures of empire in mind. We might draw parallels with tech billionaires, social influencers and politicians in our own generation. Jesus makes comparisons with other forms of leadership and authority to point out that the way of their fellowship and community life should be marked by different qualities.
They may have observed the hierarchies at play at other meals, when Jesus was invited to eat with those in positions of influence. They wouldn’t have been immune to the jostling for social status; or the expectations of those enslaved in service within such a system.
Jesus bursts bubbles of privilege and entitlement by saying it would not be like them with them because he was among them as one who serves.
He is the one who comes amongst as that we might know, believe and understand the love of God, as Isaiah puts it.
Bartholomew is one such witness to the self-offering of such love: from the manger to the sermon on the mount, from busy streets to a shared meal, from the cross to the grave and resurrection. This love restores life and hope, bringing healing and forgiveness.
He points not only to himself but to the ones who lacked status, authority and position: to the very youngest. This is something picked up in the Rule of Benedict in the ordering of community life as he advises consulting younger people before important decisions - having the courage to listen to their faith, questions, ideas and challenges.
Jesus looks around the table where he and his disciples are eating and talking and reminds them that they have been with him in times of trial as well as blessing. He moves them from a place of dysfunction and disagreement to a remarkable vision of mutual commitment that he calls the kingdom.
Such an imagination and lived reality is to be shaped by this supper. Jesus speaks of a time when people of all ages and backgrounds will eat and drink at his table.
The Eucharist - the communion - we celebrate week by week is our Lord’s Supper: echoing his last with every repetition and re-enactment. In this present moment we remember, through the lens of cross and resurrection.
Our past is set behind us as restored penitents, but the future is also spread out before us. Jesus is casting our hearts and minds forward to a time when God will be all in all. A kingdom of justice, mercy and compassion fulfilled.
Jesus points to a time of complete reversal of the world’s version of greatness. In this sacred meal, our hands out-stretched, we are reminded of who we are: servants of a loving and gracious God called to be servants of others.
In the community of Christ no one person lays claim to greatness. Instead filled with the bread of his life we are called to live as he did. To be willing servants of all.
In our creaturely quirks and imperfections, we are drawn into the solidarity of mutual affection and commitment.
We see some of that radical imagination in our reading from Acts. In his commentary on this passage, Willie Jennings reminds us that God is present with us in this community - ‘untamed, uncontrollable, but desired’. He reminds us that we are called to live and move in what he calls the ‘sacred meeting space between wounded human cry and out-streteched divine arm’.
Like Bartholomew and countless others, named and unnamed, have sought to do this.
When Rowan Williams was asked if he saw himself in Homer Simpson, he replied, ‘Homer is the average human creature liable to self-delusion and somehow by the grace of God, or something like that, surviving. So yes, there is an element of that.’
We are all liable to self-delusion - yet we also know something of God’s grace. We survive. We find joy and contentment. We work through grief and trauma. We find ways of charting our own course amidst the world’s assumptions. We aren’t merely consumers indifferent to the plight of others. We are to listen to the human cries - and stench out our arms in love.
May the fellowship in the Spirit which we share in the receiving of forgiveness, peace, communion and blessing stir our hearts to a vision of a better world: being people who listen well, seeking healing rather than division, looking to Christ who is our mediator. Amen.
© Julie Gittoes 2025