Saint Bartholomew the Apostle

The Collect of the Day
Almighty and everlasting God, who gave to your apostle Bartholomew grace truly to believe and to preach your Word: Grant that your Church may love what he believed and preach what he taught; through Jesus Christ our Lord, who lives and reigns with you and the Holy Spirit, one God, for ever and ever. Amen.
~BCP pg. 243

The Psalm
91:1-4

The Readings
Deuteronomy 18:15-18     +     1 Corinthians 4:9-15     +     Luke 22:24-30

The greatest among you must become like the youngest, and the leader like one who serves . . . I am among you as one who serves.
~Luke 22:26, 27b

The Bible doesn't tell us anything about Bartholomew, other than that he was one of the twelve apostles. It is fitting that the church remembers and honors Bartholomew and all the holy apostles--those chosen by Jesus to be his closest friends and followers, and to carry on the work of the kingdom he came to proclaim. Yet the gospels are continually reminding us of their all-too-human failings, as in today's Gospel reading, which begins with the apostles arguing among themselves as to who among them is the greatest--on the very night of Jesus' betrayal and arrest, no less! Yet these are the ones to whom Jesus gave the authority to preach and teach, to heal and judge--to confer on them a kingdom, so to speak. But it is a strange sort of kingdom, with a strange sort of authority.

The disciples confess and follow in the way of the only true king--Jesus, who set aside his glory and came among his own as one who serves. And he laid down his life in service until he gave the last full measure. The kingdom to which the apostles were called, and to which we are called, is a kingdom that upends what we think we know about leadership and greatness and authority. How could it be otherwise, when we serve a King who washes our feet?

Closing Prayer

Lord Jesus, thank you for showing us by your own example that to be great in the kingdom of God is to be one who serves; thank you for calling us into your kingdom, and welcoming us to eat and drink with you at your table. Amen.

Coptic (Egyptian Christian) icon of St. Bartholomew

Saint Mary the Virgin, Mother of Our Lord Jesus Christ

The Collect
O God, you have taken to yourself the blessed Virgin Mary, mother of your incarnate Son: Grant that we, who have been redeemed by his blood, may share with her the glory of your eternal kingdom; through Jesus Christ our Lord, who lives and reigns with you, in the unity of the Holy Spirit, one God, now and forever. Amen.
~BCP pg. 243

The Psalm
34:1-9

The Readings
Isaiah 61:10-11     +     Galatians 4:4-7     +     Luke 1:46-55

But when the fullness of time had come, God sent his Son, born of a woman . . . so that we might receive adoption as children.
~Gal. 4:4-5

The loving regard in which Mary has been held by so many Christian faithful through the ages, and her universal appeal, is surely not unconnected to the universal experience of birth. It is simultaneously the most ordinary and extraordinary fact of human existence: we are all born into this world. And, O magnum mysterium, even God is born into this world. God the eternal Word, the Creator of everything that has come into being, is born in time and becomes the child of Mary, so that we might become the children of God.

Hymn number 258 in our hymnal expresses this wonder beautifully. At first glance, it may seem to be a paean to Mary (and to an extent it is, rightfully--all generations shall call me blessed). But it is of course actually a hymn addressed to her Son. And this is what Mary does: she invites us to join her in adoration of Jesus our Savior, and to magnify the Lord. 

Virgin-born, we bow before thee: blessed was the womb that bore thee;

Mary, mother meek and mild, blessed was she in her Child.

Blessed was the breast that fed thee; blessed was the hand that led thee;

blessed was the parent's eye that watched thy slumbering infancy.

Blessed she by all creation, who brought forth the world's salvation,

and blessed they, forever blest, who love thee most and serve thee best.

Virgin-born, we bow before thee; blessed was the womb that bore thee;

Mary, mother meek and mild, blessed was she in her child.

The choir of Wakefield Cathedral sings the text by Reginald Heber, 

to the tune Psalm 86 by Claude Goudimel

Closing Prayer

Lord Jesus, thank you for your love in coming and being born among us, that we might be reborn in you. Thank you for the great faithfulness of Mary in bearing you into our world, and give us grace that, like her, our whole being may exult in you, our Savior. Amen.

The Transfiguration

The Collect
O God, who on the holy mount revealed to chosen witnesses your well-beloved Son, wonderfully transfigured, in raiment white and glistening: Mercifully grant that we, being delivered from the disquietude of this world, may by faith behold the King in his beauty; who with you, O Father, and you, O Holy Spirit, lives and reigns, one God, for ever and ever. Amen.

The Psalm
99

The Readings
Exodus 34:29-35     +     II Peter 1:13-21     +     Luke 9:28-36

Now about eight days after these sayings Jesus took with him Peter and John and James, and went up on the mountain to pray. And while he was praying, the appearance of his face changed, and his clothes became dazzling white. Suddenly they saw two men, Moses and Elijah, talking to him. They appeared in glory and were speaking of his departure, which he was about to accomplish at Jerusalem.

~Luke 9:28-30

In his wonderful little book, The Dwelling of the Light: Praying with Icons of Christ, former Archbishop of Canterbury Rowan Williams writes:

So as we look at this icon (of the Transfiguration) and let it shape our prayers and reflections, we can think first of that infinite 'hinterland' that is the background, the inner dimension, of Jesus' human life. It doesn't stop being human in any sense; but it is a humanity which in every moment 'performs' God's own life. When we see that, we see that every act and suffering of Jesus is part of the act of God, embraced feely in God's journey towards us out of his depths. We can also think of how the shape of our own lives is finally going to be in God's hands, not ours: like Moses and Elijah, we don't know yet (in St John's words) what we shall be. Our time, our stories about ourselves, our histories are the best we can do from where we stand and look; but God's perspective can do strange things with history, and we are not the best judges of the meanings of our lives, what really matters to God, what shows God to the world. But we are given a glimpse of what God can do in this rare moment of direct vision, when the 'door of perception' is opened by and in Jesus, and the end of the world is fleetingly there before us. And finally, we can let ourselves contemplate the fact that the divine freedom shown us in this vision tells us both that there is no escape from the world in which we have been put as creatures and that there is nowhere from which God can be finally exiled. This is the great challenge to faith: knowing that Christ is in the heart of darkness, we are called to go there with him. In John 11, Thomas says to the other disciples, 'Let us go and die with him'; and ahead indeed lies death--the dead Lazarus decaying in the tomb, the death of Jesus in abandonment, your death and mine and the deaths of countless human beings in varying kinds of dark night. But if we have seen his glory on the mountain, we know at least, whatever our terrors, that death cannot decide the boundaries of God's life. With him the door is always open, and no one can shut it.

 

Closing Prayer

Help us, Lord Jesus, in the midst of uncertainty and disquietude, to see you, and to walk confidently in the light of that vision. Amen