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+ + + In Nomine Jesu + + +
Please join me in prayer: May the words of my mouth and the meditations of our hearts be pleasing in your sight, O Lord, our Rock and our Redeemer. (Amen.)
Dear Brothers and Sisters in Christ,
Grace to you and peace from God our Father and from the Lord Jesus Christ. (Amen.)
Restaurants’ customer service may have declined since the pandemic, and options such as opening an order on a smart‑phone application and closing an order on a tabletop Ziosk may have removed waiters or servers from those processes in some establishments. But, we all probably still understand enough about the concept of table service in order to understand Jesus’s reference to table service in the Gospel Reading for today, the feast of Saint Bartholomew, Apostle, which feast has been observed on August 24 since the eighth century. As an apostle (for example, Luke 6:12-16; Acts 1:13), Saint Bartholomew would have been at the table with the other eleven apostles when Jesus spoke the words of the Gospel Reading, after Jesus gave His Body and poured our His Blood in the institution of the Holy Supper, earlier on the night when He was betrayed. Even earlier that night, Jesus had served His disciples by washing and wiping their feet (John 13:1-20). In the Gospel Reading, Jesus emphasizes His first serving the apostles and then their serving. Considering primarily the Gospel Reading, with the help of the Holy Spirit, this morning we direct our thoughts to the theme “Like Saint Bartholomew, we are first served and then serve”.
As we heard in the Gospel Reading, a dispute arose among the apostles, as to which of them was to be regarded as the greatest, or, perhaps better, “the greater”. The apostles earlier may have been jockeying for position closer to Jesus at the table (Plummer, ad loc Luke 22:24‑30, p.500), or the dispute may have happened as the apostles questioned one another, which of them it could be who was going to betray Jesus (Luke 22:21-23). To what extent the dispute about who was to be regarded the greater included Saint Bartholomew, we do not know. One author says Saint Bartholomew was of noble birth (Weedon, CPR 35:3, 67), and, if so, Saint Bartholomew might have argued for his greatness on that basis, but Holy Scripture does not tell us that he was of noble birth, nor does it tell us much about him at all. Saint Bartholomew is often thought to be the same person as “Nathanael”, whom Philip found and told to “Come and see” Jesus (John 1:43-51; confer John 21:1-3). If so, his “personal” name—what we think of as a “first” name —may have been “Nathanael”, which name means “gift of God”, and his “family” name—what we think of as a “last” name —may have been “Bar-tholomew”, which name can mean “son of Tolmi”.
As a former fine-dining server at one of the city of Austin’s finest restaurants at the time, I can tell you that even those who serve still dispute among themselves as to which of them is a greater server, and so who should wait on the greater customers, whether those customers are the newspaper’s restaurant critic, top corporate executives, or important political figures, such as a former First Lady. As Jesus may have criticized those in authority over the Gentiles for calling themselves “benefactors” (Plummer, ad loc Luke 22:25, p.501), those who had done good works, such as serving their country, Jesus also essentially criticized His apostles and criticizes us for our regarding ourselves as greater, for not acting as those with the least claim to greatness (TLSB, ad loc Luke 22:26, p.1765; confer Luke 9:48), and for not serving as we should. As we heard in today’s Old Testament Reading (Proverbs 3:1-8), we should not be wise in our own eyes but fear the Lord and turn away from all evil, which is said to bring healing to our flesh and refreshment to our bones. If Saint Bartholomew is Nathanael, then he may have been repenting of his sins before Philip called him, when Jesus saw him under a fig tree, sometimes associated with the tree of the knowledge of good and evil in the midst of the garden of Eden, from which tree the man and the woman may have not only eaten but also may have picked their fig leaves for their loincloths (Genesis 2:9, 17; 3:3, 7; see Weinrich, ad loc John 1:45-51, pp.288-289).
Regardless, God moved Nathanael from being skeptical that the One of whom Moses in the Law and also the prophets wrote could and in some sense did come from Nazareth (for example, Matthew 2:23) to believing and confessing that Jesus is the Son of God and King of Israel. And, Jesus told Nathanel and tells all who repent and believe that they will see greater things than what the Old Testament Scriptures contained, that is, they will see the fulfillment of those prophecies: they will see the glory of God in the redemption of Israel, by the Son of God in the human flesh of the man Jesus on the tree of the cross. (Weinrich, ad loc John 1:45-51, pp.289‑295, with reference, for example, to Genesis 28:10-22.) More than Jesus’s promising to serve His servants on the Last Day, as we heard Him say two weeks ago (Luke 12:36-38), and more than Jesus’s serving His disciples on the night that He was betrayed, Jesus, out of God’s great love and mercy, served on the cross by giving His one life as a ransom for all of the many people who have existed, exist now, and ever will exist (Matthew 20:28; Mark 10:45). Then Jesus rose from the dead. Thus, not only Nathanael but also we who repent and believe are truly Israelites in whom there is no deceit. When God leads us to repent, then God forgives us our sinful nature and all our sin, for Jesus’s sake, freeing us from the death that we otherwise deserve, instead giving us eternal life, through His Word in all of its forms.
After Pentecost, Saint Bartholomew according to tradition eventually went east of the Holy Land, for example, to what today is Iraq and Iran and India, reportedly leaving a copy of Saint Matthew’s Divinely‑inspired Gospel account at least in India. Surely like the other apostles, including Saint Paul, and like their successors, pastors today, Saint Bartholomew read and preached God’s Word of law and Gospel to groups such as this group and applied the Gospel to individuals with water in Holy Baptism, with touch in Holy Absolution, and with the bread and wine of the Holy Supper that are Christ’s Body and Blood. As Jesus once had so served them, they then served other people, down to us today. They left to other workers the serving of tables that was the daily distribution of food to those in need, and they devoted themselves to the ministry of preaching the Word of God and of administering His Sacraments, including waiting on table such as this one (confer Acts 6:1-7).
Saint Bartholomew is said to have baptized a local king and his queen and his children and his people, which conversions moved the king’s pagan brother to martyr Saint Bartholomew, perhaps by crucifixion, flaying, and beheading—thus the blood‑red paraments, banners, and bulletin covers. In the Gospel Reading, Jesus describes the apostles as those who had stayed with Him in His trials. They may have stayed with Him to that point, though they would not stay with Him later that very night (for example, Matthew 26:56). So, Jesus may have been explaining everything in the kindest way or speaking prophetically. We can relate to the apostles in forsaking Jesus sometimes, and we can relate to what Saint Paul describes in today’s Epistle Reading (2 Corinthians 4:7-10): being afflicted in every way but not crushed, perplexed but not driven to despair, persecuted but not forsaken, and struck down but not destroyed—the death and life of Jesus’s showing forth in our bodies.
“Like Saint Bartholomew, we are first served and then serve”. We serve in our various vocations, including at Pilgrim, with no‑one’s service here greater or lesser than another’s service, whether, for example, cleaning, processing audio, or teaching Sunday School. As we prayed in the Collect of the Day, together we love what Saint Bartholomew believed, and we preach what he taught, and, with daily repentance and faith, we live in God’s forgiveness of sins for when we fail in any way. As for the apostles, so also for us: sorrow becomes joy (Plummer, ad loc Luke 22:30, p.502), for as we stay with Jesus in our trials that come from faith in Him, so God assigns to us a Kingdom, where also we eat and drink. Perhaps there we will be served by angels (confer Hebrews 1:7), like the one who told St. John to write, what we on the basis of that writing believe, teach, and confess, that “Blessed are those who are invited to the marriage supper of the Lamb” (Revelation 19:9).
Amen.
The peace of God, which passes all understanding, keep your hearts and minds in Christ Jesus. (Amen.)
+ + + Soli Deo Gloria + + +