Wednesday, August 24, 2022
Feast of Saint Bartholomew, Apostle
           (click here to listen to or read today’s scriptures)
Bartholomew will keep us busy
Saint Bartholomew, patron saint of plasterers? Or librarians? The saint system is notoriously inaccurate on the internet. I need to look at a book written long ago, one I can take a little more seriously:
The Book of Saints honors Bartholomew as the patron of tanners and leather-workers, in honor of the knives which flayed him into martyrdom. Hmmm.
We do know he was an apostle, although he was probably the same person as Nathaniel.
Nathaniel said to Philip, “Can anything good come from Nazareth?” But Jesus said to Nathaniel, “I say to you, you will see heaven opened and the angels of God ascending and descending on the Son of Man.”
I don’t know, nor do you, which name God inscribed on the city walls of holy Jerusalem, Nathaniel or Bartholomew, or both.
The holy city comes down out of heaven from God. It gleams with God’s splendor. At its twelve gates twelve angels are stationed, and inscribed on the gates are the names of the twelve tribes of the children of Israel. The wall of the city have twelve courses of stones as its foundation, on which are inscribed the twelve names of the twelve Apostles of the Lamb.
And those names inscribed would be, according to Matthew, Luke, John and Paul: Peter, James, John, Andrew, Bartholomew/Nathaniel, James the Younger, Judas, Jude/Thaddeus, Matthew/Levi, Philip, Simon the Zealot, and Thomas.
Here are some facts about Bartholomew. His parents lived in Cana. So did he. He became a missionary in Armenia, and perhaps India. The Armenian Church claims him as its founder and martyr.
Bartholomew was the only disciple to come from royal blood. His name means Son of Talmai, who was king of Geshur, and whose daughter Maacah became the wife of David and mother of Absalom.
“He developed into a man of complete surrender to the Carpenter of Nazareth, and one of the Church’s most adventurous missionaries.”
Dr. Seuss named a hero after him, The 500 Hats of Bartholomew Cubbins (1938) and Bartholomew and the Oobleck (1949). “In Illuminati writings, he is one of several archangels who were left on Earth to battle in the apocalypse. Bartholomew Cubbins presses the silly King Derwin of the Kingdom of Didd into humility and repentance, encouraging the king to apologize for his harmful actions.”
OK, that last paragraph isn’t exactly “facts.”
The website I linked above has color portraits of each disciple except Matthew, although I suspect these guys are actors. But at the end of the website is a list of how each disciple died, and where they died.
Jesus’ disciples-become-apostles, heroes of the Christian faith, exemplified something Frederick Buechner believed about life and death. Compared to the fullness of these mens’ lives, death was nothing. Buechner wrote, “What’s lost is nothing to what’s found; and all the death that ever was, set next to life, would scarcely fill a cup.”
Let all your works give you thanks, O Lord, and let your faithful ones bless you.
Day and night they live their surrendered lives with Jesus. They might talk sometimes of the old days, but I imagine they are far more involved in the present than the past.
Let them discourse of the glory of your Kingdom and speak of your might. Your Kingdom is a Kingdom for all ages, and endures through all generations.
Bartholomew waits, as we will also, for the once-again-coming of the King. While the Lord is near. There is plenty for us to do.
The Lord is near to all who call upon him, to all who call upon him in truth.
(Revelation 21, Psalm 145, John 1)
(posted at www.davesandel.net)
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