Readings:
Sermon:
If you think about Christology at all and I’m sure you do,Christology being that branch of Theology that asks about the identity of Jesus Christ(and remember Jesus often asks,‘who do you say I am’?), you won’thave to wait long before you will find Him being defined as ‘fully human’ and also ‘fully divine'. Christology teases away at the problem of how one being can be simultaneously both.
We see and hear the disciples being wholly human today, and not being even vaguely divine, as they figure out between them which of them is the greatest. It’s an odd conversation to have after 22 chapters of Luke’s Gospel – they’ve evidently forgotten Jesus’s teachings about humility, but let’s be charitable and put their conversationdown to the high spirits that living in the presence of Jesus must have led to. Jesus gently corrects them, and draws out a lesson for them to ponder; ‘For who is greater’, he asks, ‘the one who is at the table or the one who serves? Is it not the one at the table? But I am among you as one who serves.’
Think about it, chaps, he says. But, fine, lets play along with them. Who do you say the greatest of them is? Peter must rank highly. Andrew, or James, the originals? Or the other James, the little one? Thomas, who has the courage to doubt? John? I’d be surprised if anyone’s gone for Bartholomew, which is a shame as it’s his Festival Day today, and I hopeyou’re all celebrating with suitable collects and prayers. And he’s shadowy; in the synoptic Gospels he doesn’t really say a word, being usually just included in the list of disciples. John’s Gospel doesn’t mention him at all, but many scholars think that he was also known as Nathanael,and if they are right (and who am I to question them?), John often tells stories of Philip with Nathanael, as in John 1:45 for instance.
And some scholars think that the name ‘Bartholomew’ is actually a surname, translated as ‘son of Talmai.’ So perhaps we should give him his full name and really be celebrating Nathanael Bartholomew today.
In John 21:2 we hear that Nathanael Bartholomew hailed from Cana in Galilee; perhapshe had also been a wedding guest at Jesus’s first miracle. Soon before the wedding, Philip had introduced Jesus to Nathanael, when Nathanel famously asked, “Can anything good come out of Nazareth?”
John 1:47 says: ‘When Jesus saw Nathanael, he said of him: “Here is a true Israelite. There is no duplicity in him.” He sounds like a worthy man to be celebrating today, to me. And as so often, we know Jesus’s disciples, and what Jesus thought of them, in fragments. So here we here have a shard of an identity, and a sliver of what Jesus thought about him. But even a speck of what Jesus thought is worth preserving. Bartholomew is distinguished and characterised in these fragments. “Here is a true Israelite. There is no duplicity in him,” says Jesus.
How very content would we be should Jesus say the same thing about us.
Questions:
- Which sliver of faith characterises your discipleship?
- Which shard of your character does Jesus love?
- Can anything good come out of Nazareth today?