Feast of St. Bartholomew (Luke 22.24-30) and Confirmation of Sarah Mackay, Tim and Paul Goeglein
“Do you intend to continue steadfast in this confession and Church and to suffer all, even death, rather than fall away from it?” This is one of the questions asked in the rite of Confirmation. It is an astonishing question to ask anyone. Sarah, Tim, and Paul (all Biblical names, by the way!) will be asked it in a few moments, and I doubt they are really prepared to answer it. I doubt any of us are prepared to answer it. It’s not unlike the marriage vow. It’s one thing to say “I will” when asked on your wedding day, “Will you love and cherish your spouse in sickness and in health, for better or for worse?” Sickness and worse have not come yet. The answer does not always remain, “I will,” when the cross comes. Reckless are the vows we make, as we stare with seeming certainty into an earthly future that is, in truth, unknown.
Sarah, Tim, Paul – the cross will come. You likely will not be asked to undergo torture, beatings, crucifixion, or beheading for being a Christian. The devil, in our day, rarely needs to resort to such tactics. He is successful with so much less! Sarah, Tim, Paul, in a few years when you leave home, the pillow and blanket on Sunday morning might be all the temptation you need, as the Supper of our Lord becomes less important than the things of this earth. People renounce their faith often little by little, by making small accommodations and compromises in order to be popular, in order to experience sexual pleasure outside of marriage, in order to make more money. The foundation is chipped away, as the Word of God becomes less and less important.
Submit your body to be burned, for the sake of Christ? Be cast into a fire? Thrown to the lions? Stripped naked and left to freeze in a Siberian winter? Hah! Satan has you for so much less, as each day you fail to renounce the devil, and all his works, and all his ways. Repent, and every one of you, be confirmed anew today at the table of the Lord’s forgiveness.
Today, we remember one whom the Lord forgave: Bartholomew. It’s his family name, “Bar-Tholmai,” son of Tholmai – John’s Gospel tells us his first name, Nathanael. He is one of the Apostles, and the Church always remembers and celebrates the Apostles with joy, because they taught us the truth, they passed on to us the teaching of Jesus and the meaning of His birth, death, resurrection, and ascension.
We don’t know much about Nathanael Bartholomew outside of the New Testament, except that after the Ascension he preached in Armenia. There he was martyred by having his skin torn from his body while alive. And after they ripped the flesh off of that Apostle of Jesus, they further abused him – some accounts say by stoning, others by crucifixion. But every account has the flaying – unimaginable torment!
What drives a man to such an agonizing end? We leave our air-conditioned homes to ride in air-conditioned cars to our air-conditioned church, and some may think us odd for wasting our Sunday morning, but we take care to otherwise appear normal and not fanatical. After all, the rest of our life looks pretty much like everyone else. People who claim they are Christians curse like everyone else, fornicate like everyone else, imbibe like everyone else, lust after the things of this world like everyone else, obsess and argue and gossip just like everyone else. Are you any different? “Do you,” in fact, “intend to continue steadfast in this confession and Church and to suffer all, even death, rather than fall away from it?” Reckless are the vows we make. But Bartholomew, when the question was not merely hypothetical, followed his Lord unto death.
Yet it was not always so. He, and the rest of the disciples, were once overcome with pride. Pride is a sickness worse than cancer. Cancer kills the body, but pride kills the soul. The body will be raised up again – but the soul consumed by pride is in danger of eternal death.
Today’s Gospel shows how deep the sickness of human hubris runs. Immediately after Jesus institutes the Lord’s Supper, where He gives His disciples His gifts and announces that His body will be given for them and His blood shed for the remission of their sins – immediately following that, the disciples begin arguing about which of them is the greatest.
Jesus rebukes them—and us!—teaching that to be a Christian is to be a servant. But our primary desire to serve ourselves, and have others serve us. The desire of the natural mind is for what pleases self; the desire for the Christian, spiritual mind is for what pleases God. Greatness in the kingdom of God, Jesus says, is in service – specifically, table service. What an odd thing to say! But spoken in the context of the Passover meal, where Jesus has just instituted the Sacrament of the Altar, the Lord’s Supper, the Holy Communion, we see its meaning: Jesus is the servant, the Table-Servant, who serves all mankind. How? With what? The Lord Jesus came to be a waiter, to serve at table, in order to serve us Himself, the true food and true drink of His body and blood. And in that meal is the remission of sins, the resurrection of the body, all for us miserable wretches who, like the Apostles, argue even in church about authority and power and greatness and control, who know little of suffering and little of service except how much we would like to be served.
Yet precisely for arguing disciples, selfish disciples, proud disciples, jealous disciples, scared disciples, sinful disciples, does Jesus die. Which means, He dies also for Sarah, for Tim, for Paul, for every one of you. He serves you, today for the first time, the wonderful meal that joins you to the enfleshed God. How you feel at the table doesn’t matter. What you taste in the meal doesn’t matter. For this meal is eaten with the mouth, but tasted with the ears, as the Lord speaks His Word to you: “Sarah, take and eat”; “Tim, take and drink”; “Paul, this is the new testament in My blood, shed for you for the remission of all your sins.”
And then you are sent out into the world: to scouts and soccer games, to ballet and baseball, to school and work, to marriage and your own homes; and all around you is the devil and the world assaulting your faith; and you have your flesh, longing, urging you to give in to temptation. The spirit willing, but your flesh weak. And it all ends in suffering, death.
But we heard the Word of God tell us in the Epistle: The Christian is afflicted in every way, perplexed, persecuted, struck down – but is not overcome by any of these things. Why? Because we are in Christ, who overcame all things for us already. So Bartholomew could bear the flaying of his body, and the Christian can endure all things, because the Christian life is lived in its entirety in view of the resurrection of the body. The life of Jesus, Paul says, will be completely manifested in our bodies.
So just after today’s beautiful Epistle, St. Paul says, “Therefore we do not lose heart…. For our light affliction, which is but for a moment, is working for us a far more exceeding and eternal weight of glory.” And that is how Bartholomew could go to his death. He could even be skinned alive, because he knew that nothing could be taken from him that the Lord could not give back. He had been at the table. Jesus had served him – and in that meal had received forgiveness, and life, and the seed of the resurrection.
Believe it – Jesus is still at His table, and today He serves you with the same things Bartholomew received. Whatever you suffer in this life, even to the point of a martyrdom like Bartholomew’s, you cannot be deprived of the gifts our Lord has given you. Love what Bartholomew believed, cling to it for dear life, because his doctrine is your life; the death and resurrection of Jesus is your life; the holy Sacrament is your life.
Sarah, Tim, Paul – your family loves you, your church loves you – but even more than that, God loves you. May He keep you, and every one of us, faithful unto death, and at the last, bestow the crown of life.
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