SPEAKER_00: There are twelve names written on the foundations of heaven.
SPEAKER_00: That is an extraordinary image Saint John gives us in the first reading today.
SPEAKER_00: He sees the heavenly Jerusalem, the city of God, and beneath that city are twelve foundation stones.
SPEAKER_00: On those stones are written the names of the twelve apostles.
SPEAKER_00: We know some of those names immediately, Peter, James, John, and Thomas.
SPEAKER_00: But today the church asks us to remember one of those quieter names carved into that foundation, Bartholomew.
SPEAKER_00: Today's his feast day.
SPEAKER_00: And that name is worth thinking about because compared with some of the other apostles, we know remarkably little about him.
SPEAKER_00: There's no gospel according to Bartholomew.
SPEAKER_00: There's no letter of Bartholomew in the New Testament.
SPEAKER_00: We do not have a great sermon of his recorded in the Acts of the Apostles.
SPEAKER_00: In fact, his name appears in the Gospels mainly in the list of the twelve.
SPEAKER_00: And yet, according to Revelation, his name is carved into the foundation of the heavenly Jerusalem.
SPEAKER_00: There's something beautiful about that.
SPEAKER_00: The church has traditionally identified Bartholomew with Nathaniel, the man we meet in today's gospel.
SPEAKER_00: We cannot prove that identification with absolute certainty, but it is an ancient Christian tradition.
SPEAKER_00: And if Bartholomew is Nathaniel, then the first thing we discover about this apostle is that he was not easily impressed.
SPEAKER_00: Philip comes running to him excitedly.
SPEAKER_00: We have found the one about whom Moses wrote.
SPEAKER_00: And Nathaniel basically responds, Really?
SPEAKER_00: Well, can anything good come from Nazareth?
SPEAKER_00: I love that.
SPEAKER_00: Because sometimes we imagine the apostles as stained glass windows, perfect men walking around with halos, waiting for Jesus to find them.
SPEAKER_00: They were not.
SPEAKER_00: They were humans, people who actually walk this earth.
SPEAKER_00: Nathaniel is skeptical.
SPEAKER_00: He has opinions, he has prejudices, he has already decided what God can do and where God can do it.
SPEAKER_00: And Philip does not argue with him.
SPEAKER_00: He simply says, Well, come and see.
SPEAKER_00: And that changes everything.
SPEAKER_00: Because when Nathaniel finally stands before Jesus, Jesus says something that stops him in his tracks.
SPEAKER_00: He says, Before Philip called you, I saw you under the fig tree.
SPEAKER_00: Well, we don't know what happened under the fig tree, and perhaps that's exactly why the sentence is so powerful.
SPEAKER_00: Whatever did happen belonged to Nathaniel and God.
SPEAKER_00: And Jesus is telling him, You think this is the first time we have met?
SPEAKER_00: It isn't.
SPEAKER_00: I already know you.
SPEAKER_00: I saw you before you saw me.
SPEAKER_00: Maybe that's a word somebody needs to hear today.
SPEAKER_00: Because you came looking for God.
SPEAKER_00: God was looking for you.
SPEAKER_00: Before you walked into this church, he saw you.
SPEAKER_00: Before you knew how to pray, he knew your name.
SPEAKER_00: He saw the moments nobody else saw.
SPEAKER_00: The questions, the disappointments, the sins, the sacrifices, the prayers you never told anybody you prayed.
SPEAKER_00: The things that happened under your fig tree.
SPEAKER_00: Well, Jesus says, I saw you.
SPEAKER_00: And suddenly the skeptic becomes one of the great professions of faith in the gospel.
SPEAKER_00: Bartholomew says, Rabbi, you are the Son of God.
SPEAKER_00: You are the King of Israel.
SPEAKER_00: That man becomes an apostle.
SPEAKER_00: And then something fascinating happens.
SPEAKER_00: He largely disappears from the biblical story.
SPEAKER_00: But tradition tells us that Bartholomew carried the gospel far beyond Israel.
SPEAKER_00: Ancient Christian sources connect his missionary activity with the lands to the east and Armenia.
SPEAKER_00: Armenian Christians have long honored Bartholomew as one of the apostles who first brought the faith to them.
SPEAKER_00: Tradition also remembers that he eventually gave his life for Christ in a horrific martyrdom.
SPEAKER_00: He was flayed alive.
SPEAKER_00: The man who once asked can anything good from Nazareth eventually became willing to die for the man from Nazareth.
SPEAKER_00: Think about that.
SPEAKER_00: Something happened between those two moments.
SPEAKER_00: He came and saw, and what he saw changed everything.
SPEAKER_00: Maybe that's why Bartholomew matters so much for us.
SPEAKER_00: Most of us will never be famous.
SPEAKER_00: Our names will never appear in a history book.
SPEAKER_00: Most of the good we do will never be recorded anywhere.
SPEAKER_00: But the kingdom of God has never been built only by famous people.
SPEAKER_00: It has been built by men and women who encountered Jesus Christ, allowing themselves to be changed by him and then quietly gave him their lives.
SPEAKER_00: That's why I keep coming back to the first reading.
SPEAKER_00: At the end of the Bible, when Saint John sees heaven itself, Bartholomew's name is there, but not on a banner, not on a monument, on a foundation stone, hidden underneath everything else, holding something up.
SPEAKER_00: Maybe that's holiness.
SPEAKER_00: Not necessarily being noticed, not necessarily doing something spectacular, but allowing Christ to build something upon the gift of your life.
SPEAKER_00: And it begins exactly where it began for Bartholomew.
SPEAKER_00: Come and see.
SPEAKER_00: Come and see who Christ really is.
SPEAKER_00: Come and see what he can do with your life.
SPEAKER_00: Come and see what happens when you stop telling God where he can and cannot be found.
SPEAKER_00: Because long before you ever came looking for him, he already seen you.
SPEAKER_00: And if you give him your life, one day you may discover that God was building something with it all along.
SPEAKER_00: Amen.