Feast of Saint Bartholomew (Sermon at the 10 am Mass)

Hereford Mappa Mundi, c. 1300

Hereford Cathedral in England houses a treasure of medieval cartography: the Mappa Mundi, or Map of the World, dating from approximately the year 1300. Part of the map’s fascination is the glimpse it gives into what might be called the literal world-view of pre-modern European Christians.

The map is circular, in the shape of a disc, and is oriented differently from modern maps. The vertical axis has East at the top and West at the bottom, while the horizontal axis has North to the left and South to the right.

Significantly, the city of Jerusalem occupies the spot at the very center of the map, marked by a cross. The half-disc of the map above Jerusalem represents Asia, with India and the Ganges at the very top. The two bottom quadrants represent Europe to the left and Africa to the right, divided by the Mediterranean Sea, extending vertically from just below Jerusalem to the bottom, terminating at the Pillars of Hercules. Even though the map was made in England, the British Isles are squeezed in at the very perimeter, to the lower left, at the far edges of Europe.

The Mappa Mundi expresses the early Christian worldview in which Jerusalem stands at the center of a divided into three great continents: Africa, Asia, and Europe. Into these three continents, after Christ’s death and resurrection, the Twelve Apostles went forth from in all directions, preaching the Gospel and planting the Church.

For easily understandable reasons, however, the New Testament and subsequent Christian history focused on the missionary journeys of Paul and the other few apostles who brought the Gospel west, into Europe, through what is today Turkey into Greece and ultimately to Rome itself, the center of the Empire. Saints Peter and Paul both died as martyrs in Rome. Three centuries later, the Roman Empire itself adopted Christianity as its official religion. For these reasons, it’s easy to fall into the trap of misidentifying ancient Christianity as a primarily European phenomenon.

Nothing could be further from the truth. From the first century on, beginning with the Twelve Apostles themselves, Christian missionaries went forth from Jerusalem not just west into Europe, but in all directions, sometimes well beyond the frontiers of the Roman Empire: south into Egypt, Ethiopia, and Libya; southeast into Arabia and even as far as the coast of India; east into Persia and Syria; northeast into what is today Georgia and Ukraine; and north into Armenia and the Caucasus. But their missionary journeys, sermons, and miracles were not recorded in the New Testament. We know about most of them only from oral traditions and legends that were written down many years later.

The Apostle whom we commemorate today, Saint Bartholomew, is a case in point. His name appears in the lists of the Twelve that appear in the Gospels of Matthew, Mark, and Luke. He is very likely the same person who appears in the first chapter of John’s Gospel under the name Nathanael – the one who asks, “Can anything good come out of Nazareth?” and of whom Jesus says, “Behold, indeed, an Israelite in whom is no guile.” If that is the case, then Nathanael would have been his first name, and Bartholomew – meaning “Son of Tolmai” – would have been his last name.

That he was one of the Twelve Apostles does tell us something about the shape of his life. The Twelve were the hand picked inner circle of disciples. They traveled about from town to town and village to village with Jesus as he preached, taught, and healed the sick. They were with him at the Last Supper on the night before he died. After his Resurrection, he appeared to them and commissioned them to preach the Gospel to all nations.

Beyond that, however, the New Testament is silent about Bartholomew. Tradition has it that he traveled to such far away places as India and Ukraine, and finally suffered martyrdom in Armenia by being flayed alive. In art he’s depicted holding a tanner’s knife, the instrument of his death. For this reason also, we wear red today, as on all Feasts of Martyrs.

This morning, I want to make two points about how Bartholomew speaks to us across the centuries in the midst of the world we live in today. First, as the horrific events of this summer have reminded us, ancient Christian communities continue to this day in places like Lebanon, Syria, Iraq, Egypt and Ethiopia. These communities are not the product of European expansion and colonization beginning in the so-called Age of Discovery, but have been there since the earliest centuries of the preaching of the Gospel.

Second, according to the tradition, all but one of the Twelve Apostles ultimately died as martyrs for their faith. The one exception was John, the Son of Zebedee, who lived to a ripe old age and died in Ephesus in what is today Turkey. Being an apostle meant being willing to give up everything to follow Jesus, including ultimately life itself. The word martyr means “witness” and the Apostles, including Bartholomew, were among those who bore witness to Christ even unto death.

Today, the Christian descendants of the communities founded by the Apostles in the Middle East are similarly being subjected to the persecution that makes martyrs: especially in areas where radical Islamic jihadism is on the rise. The point not to be missed about the recent murders of Christians in Iraq is that in each case -- at least in the case of the adults -- the Christians appear to have been given the option of converting to Islam. Only when they refused to betray Christ were they beheaded.

Thus, they have borne witness to their faith in Christ as more precious than life itself. In this sense, their deaths do not represent defeat; they have conquered their enemies and won the martyr’s palm of victory. And I am convinced that long after the so-called Islamic State has been consigned to the dustbin of history, the Universal Church will have in its calendar of saints a day of solemn commemoration of the Martyrs of Iraq.

In the meantime, we may be confident that Saint Bartholomew and the rest of the apostolic martyr band are welcoming their children home. This month we have been praying every day for persecuted Christians and religious minorities throughout the world, and especially in Iraq and Syria. Today we invoke Saint Bartholomew’s prayers for them as well. In the early centuries of Christianity, the blood of the martyrs was the seed of the Church; and we may rest assured that it will be so again in the twenty-first century.

Proper 16, Year A (Sermon at the 8 am Mass)

Ruins of the Temple of Pan, Caesarea Philippi

Matthew 16:13-20

A reciprocal identification takes place in today’s Gospel. Peter identifies Jesus as the Christ, the Son of the Living God; and Jesus in turn identifies Peter as the Rock on which he will build his Church.

Our Lord and his disciples have just arrived in the region of Caesarea Philippi. This town was located in the very north of Galilee, near the foot of Mount Hermon, in the area known today as the Golan Heights. Its older name was Paneas, because its predominant landmark was a shrine to the god Pan, about which I shall say more presently.

Here Our Lord asks his disciples, “Who do men say that the Son of Man is?” (Jesus typically referred to himself as the Son of Man, a phrase that seems simply to have meant “human being.”) The initial answers are intriguing. “Some say John the Baptist; others say Elijah; and others Jeremiah or one of the prophets.”

By this time, John the Baptist is already dead. Yet Matthew’s Gospel reports that when King Herod heard about the fame of Jesus, he said to his servants, “This is John the Baptist, who has been raised from the dead; this is why these powers are at work in him.” So the rumor that Jesus was John the Baptist returned from the dead was already circulating in high places.

As for Elijah, many Jews believed that Elijah would return as the messenger sent to prepare the way for the Messiah. This belief was based on a verse in the Book of Malachi, “Behold I will send you Elijah the Prophet before the great and terrible day of the Lord comes.”

And as for Jeremiah or one of the prophets, many Jews were expecting a figure called “the Prophet.” This expectation was based on the parting words of Moses to the Hebrews: “The Lord your God will raise up for you a prophet like me from among you—him shall you heed.”

John the Baptist, Elijah, Jeremiah or one of the prophets: all interesting speculations as to Jesus’ identity, but all falling short of the truth. So, he asks the disciples: “But who do you say that I am?” Speaking up on behalf of the rest, Simon Peter replies, “You are the Christ, the Son of the Living God.”

The title “Christ” in English comes from the Greek word Christos, which in turn translates the Hebrew Messiah, which means simply “Anointed One.” Contrary to what many of us grew up thinking, “Christ” is not our Lord’s surname, but rather his title. To call him “Jesus Christ” amounts to calling him “Jesus the Messiah,” or “Jesus the Anointed One.”

The Jews of New Testament times were expecting God to send a Messiah or Anointed One as the agent of God’s kingdom on earth. When the Messiah came, he would defeat God’s enemies and inaugurate a universal reign of justice and peace.

As Christians, we believe that Jesus was the Messiah, though his exercise of the messianic office was very different from what the Jews of his time was expecting. So he congratulates Peter for his answer. “Blessed are you, Simon Bar-Jonah, for flesh and blood has not revealed this to you, but my Father who is in heaven.”

Then he continues: “And I tell you, you are Peter, and on this rock I will build my Church, and the powers of hell shall not prevail against it.” Here Jesus is indulging in a bit of wordplay. In Greek – the language in which the New Testament is written – the name Peter, Petros, is similar to the word for rock, petra. And remarkably, the same is true in Aramaic, the language that Jesus was speaking, where both the name Peter and the word for “rock” are the same, kepha.

Also, the literal translation of “the powers of hell” is “the gates of Hades.” Here we come back to the point I made earlier about Caesarea Philippi being the site of a temple of the Greek god Pan. An especially lecherous deity, Pan had the head, torso, and arms of a man but the legs, hindquarters, and horns of a goat. His worshippers engaged in orgiastic rituals involving lewd practices best left unmentioned.

At the present-day site of Caesarea Philippi, the ruins of the temple of Pan can be seen on an outcropping of rock overlooking the town. Directly behind the temple rises a 100-foot cliff, in which opens out a great gaping entrance to a cave. Pagan worshipers believed that such caves were gates to the underworld, Hades. (For them, Hades was not so much what Christianity later came to depict as Hell, as simply the abode of the dead: a dreary world in which the departed spirits took the form of pathetic shadows of their former selves.)

With a little imagination, then, we can picture Jesus and the disciples arriving in the environs of Caesarea Philippi, and seeing the rocky hillside with its temple, and its cave believed to be one of the gates of the underworld. Over and against such temples built on physical rocks, Jesus declares that Peter and, by extension, the other apostles are the rock on which he will build his Church – in Greek, his ecclesia, or assembly – against which the gates of Hell itself would not prevail.

So far as I’m aware, this is the one and only time the Gospels depict the presence of Jesus and his disciples – if only by implication – in the vicinity of pagan shrines and temples. Such centers of idolatrous worship and debauched religious practices would have been deeply offensive to their monotheistic Jewish sensibilities.

Yet perhaps it’s especially appropriate that here, of all places, Peter should confess Jesus to be the Messiah, the Christ, the Son of the Living God; and that Jesus in turn should name Peter the Rock upon whom he will build the Church against which even the gates of Hell shall not prevail. Already they are the advance guard of a movement of the Spirit that will sweep away all such false worship by the power of God’s truth.

The Roman historian Plutarch relates an incident that took place during the reign of Tiberias – who was Emperor from 14 to 37 AD, a period largely overlapping with the life of Jesus. A sailor, Thamus, was sailing from Greece to Italy, when he heard a divine voice calling over the waters, “The Great God Pan is dead.”

Christian apologists from Eusebius of Caesarea to John Milton to G.K. Chesterton have symbolically interpreted this proclamation of the death of Pan as coinciding with the birth of Christ. But I like to imagine that it coincided instead with this exchange between Jesus and Peter within sight of Pan’s shrine at Caesarea Philippi: “You are the Christ, the Son of the Living God;” and “You are Peter, and on this rock I will build my Church, and the gates of hell shall not prevail against it.”

Proper 15, Year A

Matthew 15:21-28

One of the treasures of the Anglican liturgical tradition is the prayer we say together every Sunday just before Holy Communion: the Prayer of Humble Access (sometimes affectionately known as “the Humble Grumble”). “We do not presume to come to this thy Table, O merciful Lord, trusting in our own righteous, but in thy manifold and great mercies.”

But some people find the second sentence of the prayer problematic. “We are not worthy so much as to gather up the crumbs under thy table.” On one or two occasions, I’ve had parishioners complain that they find this line demeaning. Doesn’t respect for human dignity require us to acknowledge the inherent worthiness of all people to sit at the table, let alone forage around underneath it? Today, indeed, a great many Episcopal churches display welcome signs proclaiming, “There’s a place for you at the table.”

The key point that we’re apt to overlook, however, is that the sentence, “We are not worthy so much as to gather up the crumbs under thy table” alludes to todays’ Gospel. In response to Jesus telling the Canaanite woman, “It is not fair to take the children’s bread and throw it to the dogs,” she answers, “Yes, Lord, yet even the dogs eat the crumbs that fall from their master’s table.” So, to understand what’s really going on when we recite the Prayer of Humble Access, it helps first to understand what’s going on in this rather odd exchange between our Lord and the Canaanite woman.

Jesus and the disciples have entered the region of Tyre and Sidon in what is today Lebanon. When this Canaanite woman starts crying out to him to heal her demon-possessed daughter, he’s initially silent and unresponsive. His disciples beg him to send her away; and he declares, “I was sent only to the lost sheep of the House of Israel.” Then, when she kneels before him and begs for his help, he seems not only to rebuke but to insult her: “It is not fair to take the children’s bread and throw it to the dogs.”

Biblical commentators have spilled oceans of ink trying to explain – and in some cases to explain away – his apparent rudeness to the woman. But his statement is best understood in light of what he’s already just said: “I was sent only to the lost sheep of the house of Israel.” Those words open up deep questions. At bottom, our discomfort with the story stems from what’s sometimes called "the scandal of particularity." That’s shorthand for the difficulty many people experience with the idea that God chooses to work through certain specific individuals and peoples, and not others, in furthering his purposes in the world and carrying out his plans within history.

Yet the rest of Matthew’s Gospel indicates that during his earthly life our Lord understood his mission in precisely these terms. He begins his missionary charge to the twelve apostles with the instructions, “Go nowhere among the Gentiles, and enter no town of the Samaritans, but go rather to the lost sheep of the house of Israel.” Only after his Resurrection does he expand the mission by telling them: “All authority in heaven and on earth has been given to me. Go therefore and make disciples of all nations …”

In my priestly ministry I’ve discovered that when I’m faced with competing demands on my time and attention, it’s necessary to sort out my priorities. At any given point in time, I could be doing many different things, all equally important and worthwhile. Yet trying to do everything would result in accomplishing nothing. One useful test is to ask the question: How well would acting on this suggestion serve to advance the specific mission of this parish or to fulfill my specific vocation as a priest? I certainly don’t claim always to get the answer to that question right. Far from it. But it’s the right question to ask. And before one can even begin to try to answer it, one needs a clear sense of one’s own mission and calling.

Well, our Lord did have a clear sense of his mission and calling. For the time being at least, he’d been sent only to the lost sheep of the house of Israel. So, confronted by a Gentile woman from outside Israel claiming his time, attention, and energy, the substance of his response isn’t all that unreasonable: Sorry, I can’t do everything; and this just isn’t part of what I’ve been sent to do. Beyond that, he doesn’t owe her anything, and he says as much.

Why, then, does he relent in the end and grant her request? We could chalk it up to her courage, persistence, and wit, as many commentators do. But I think that we can go one step further. Her response – “even the dogs eat the crumbs that fall from their master’s table” – displays enormous insight into the mystery of God’s election of the Jews in relation to Gentiles such as herself. She reminds Jesus that the ultimate purpose of his mission to the lost sheep of the house of Israel is precisely to enable Israel to fulfill its vocation of being a light to the nations. Moreover, our Lord’s mission to Israel lays the groundwork for the Church’s mission to the world. Then the dogs – that is, the Gentiles – will indeed be fed by the crumbs that fall from their master’s table.

One problem is that contemporary church people reading this Gospel tend to identify with Jesus and the disciples and derive a message about how we need to be more inclusive and accepting of outsiders. But the real force of the story hits us only when we realize that we are the outsiders. The beauty and power of the Prayer of Humble Access is that it reminds us that the characters in the story with whom we’re to identify are precisely the dogs.

We are, after all, most of us Gentile Christians. God chose the Jews first. They’re the children who have the first place at God’s table. Any place we may have at (or for that matter under) that table is secondary and derivative – it comes to us through Israel and through Jesus, the Jewish Messiah.

Jesus doesn’t owe us anything, just as he didn’t owe the Canaanite woman anything. We have no claim to a place at God’s table on the basis of any inherent worthiness or merit of our own. Yet our Lord granted the Canaanite woman’s request on account of her great faith. And insofar as he grants us anything that we seek from him, it can only be on account of our faith and trust in his mercy, and nothing else.