“Bartholomew’s Story”
John 20:19-29
Allen Huff
Jonesborough Presbyterian Church
4/23/17
My name is
Bartholomew. Literally, that means Son of
Talmai. Bartholomew also means hill
or furrow. So, as Bartholomew, I am a
mountain and a ditch, a rise and a fall. I’m neither here nor there. The irony
isn’t lost on me. I’m a charter member of one of the most famous groups of men
in the history of the world, the disciples of Jesus of Nazareth, and if any of
you know anything about me, it probably begins with: “According to legend…”
So, that’s me,
Bartholomew: a great mystery in which no one is interested.
But I was there. I was there the
night following the morning when the women came saying that they had seen Jesus
who had died. Peter and the disciple we called Yadid, The Beloved, said that they had also seen the tomb, and it was
empty. That left us with a kind of terrified hope. If what they said were true,
what happened? Would we see also Jesus? What could all this mean?
Matthew, ever the dispassionate tax
collector, calmed us down. He said that, by itself, an empty grave proved
nothing – especially since Jesus was buried by Joseph of Arimathea and
Nicodemus. None of us ever trusted those two. They skulked around the edges of
things afraid of what might happen if the Jewish leadership saw them with Jesus.
Then again, on Friday, the rest of
us fled into the shadows for that very reason. Except for Yadid. Yadid, along
with Jesus’ mother, saw the whole sad matter through to the end.
On Saturday night, when things were
returning to business as usual in Jerusalem, we regrouped in the garden where
Jesus had been arrested – and abandoned. We crept around the city, trying to find
a safe place to hide and figure out what to do next. We felt like homeless
children, sneaking around, scared, indecisive.
We all looked at Simon Peter. He
knew we were looking at him, watching him, waiting to take our cue from him.
But Peter, The Rock, seemed to be
crumbling.
Finally, Simon led us down a dark
side street and sat down on an empty rain barrel. A waxing moon leaked just
enough pale light for us to see each other’s faces. Peter hung his head and
said, “Had I been the man I thought I was, I’d have died yesterday, too. My
death would have helped you more than my pitiful life ever will.” Then he raised
his head and looked at each of us individually. We all stared back at him.
After a few moments, the old
fisherman stood up slowly. He quit making eye contact with each of us, and he
cast his gaze over all of us at once. I don’t know what he was seeing. It
wasn’t apparent that he knew, either. But I’d seen that look before, when he
was fishing, when he was reading the water, smelling the wind, feeling the
energy beneath the boat. All the fishermen had that look, but none wore it more
intensely Simon.
Peter’s demeanor began to change,
as if something inside him was shifting, or turning. He seemed to be looking at something, or for something in the small but deep sea of our faces. I suppose
it’s no trifling thing to have a group of nervous, exhausted, silently-pleading
faces focus on you all at once. Especially when you love them. And for all his
bluster and bravado, Peter was, we knew, driven by love.
“Ok,” said Peter. “We can’t get far
tonight. So, let’s get safe. We’re going where no Jewish leader will come
looking for us.”
That’s how we ended up in that room
above a butcher shop. Fishermen and butchers tended to know each other, and
Peter knew this butcher well. His name – and I’m not making this up – was
Porcius. A Gentile butcher named pig.
Peter was right. The Jews would not look for us at Porcius’ shop.
As we entered the room, James lit a
candle and moved to set it on a small table, the lone piece of furniture in
that space. In wordless haste, Peter blew the candle out. Our quick glance into
the room revealed that it was large enough for the twelve – eleven – of us, and
that no one lived there. Our first breath told us why. You could purge only so
much of the stench of rotten flesh and blood out of those porous, mud walls. In
dark silence, we locked the door and shuttered the window.
We stayed inside all night, and all
the next day. Knowing where we were, the women brought some food and water to
us soon after we settled in on Saturday night. But we ate nothing. It was hard
enough just to breathe that rancid, venomous air. Interred in that room, we not
only smelled death; we smelled of
death. We yearned to escape, to get outside, back into the light and into clean,
moving air. But our memories of Friday smothered our spirits and kept us
sitting there in a lifeless heap.
Except for Thomas. Thomas, well, he
never seemed to be all there. He was always restless, always missing something and
having to go fetch it. He often came back with nothing but stories of having
been in some dangerous place searching for God knows what. “You’re going to get
killed going places like that,” we’d say. But Thomas would just shrug us off. So,
we were only mildly surprised to wake up on Sunday morning and discover that he
had slipped out in the middle of the night.
Sunday morning. That’s when the
women came telling the news I mentioned earlier. When Peter and Yadid told us
their story, none of us had anything but questions and outright doubts. Between
sunrise and sunset on Sunday, we were all Bartholomews. We all wavered between
joy and fear, belief and unbelief, yes and no.
Then. Then came Sunday night.
Peter’s voice startled
me.
“Who opened
the window?” he said with an angry hiss. “Do you want us to be found out?”
“The window is
closed, Brother,” said Andrew.
And, it was. But we did feel and smell
fresh air move through the room. Not knowing or, at the moment, even caring
where it came from, we all inhaled deeply. The unsullied air revived us,
renewed us.
“Peace be with you,” said someone.
To hear of something is one thing.
To experience it is altogether different. In this case, however, neither was
particularly comforting at first. I can’t explain any of this, but when we turned
toward the voice, we saw him. We saw outstretched hands, and ragged wounds.
At first, we just looked, and blinked,
and looked again. As for me, Bartholomew, while my mind leapt forward to
embrace him, my body inched backward and cowered behind the others.
“Peace be with you,” he said,
again. “As the Father has sent me, so I send you.”
Then Jesus opened inhaled deeply.
He pursed his lips, and blew on us. I felt and heard a wind rush through the
room. It rustled our cloaks and tousled our hair.
Now, it took me a while to make peace with the
next thing Jesus said because it sounded like he was telling us to forgive some
people and to withhold forgiveness from others, and that it was up to us to
choose. It sounded so unlike him, that it made me think that wasn’t Jesus at
all, but some cruel hallucination induced by fear, guilt, fatigue, and the unyielding
stench of our hideout. As soon as he spoke those peculiar words, he was gone.
Thomas returned not long after
this…encounter. We told him what had happened, what we had, indeed, seen and
heard. When he refused to believe us, I got angry with him. Over the last three
years, we had learned to trust each other. It’s how we faced all our ordeals
and still managed to stay together, to stay focused and committed. Who was Thomas
to doubt our word, to judge our experience?
So, the first
time I saw Jesus on Sunday ended up making me mad at Thomas for the rest of the
week. Isn’t that just like me?
After that, we
started to venture out, carefully. A week later, all of us were back in that
room. “Peace be with you.” And there he was, again.
The first
thing he did was to show his wounds to Thomas. You know, at first I wanted
Jesus to rebuke Thomas. I wanted to watch him cringe and apologize. But when he
saw Jesus with his own eyes, when he touched him, Thomas said, “My Lord and my
God!”
At that moment, something opened inside
me. I began to understand that being a disciple meant, and means, living a life
through which Jesus sneaks up on others and breathes his shalom upon them. It
means practicing forgiveness and compassion. In a world where so many of us
hole up behind locked doors, terrified of others, or of ourselves, withholding
the grace and forgiveness of Christ within us can be to deny that same holiness
in others. The work of a disciple is to claim and to share Christ’s love within
us, and to seek and to evoke that love in others, regardless of the cost.
You know, “according
to legend,” I was responsible for the most underwhelming miracles, feats having
to do with how much certain things weighed, and when they weighed it. When I
died, I was either beaten and drowned, or crucified upside down, or skinned
alive. Regardless of the lore around my unremarkable life and death, the only
thing I care about is whether even one story remains of me introducing other people
to the Christ within them. While legend
seems to have forgotten such things, apparently, at some point between climbing
hills and digging furrows, I loved others as Jesus loved me.
If, as Bartholomew, I ran hot and
cold, well, that’s a human thing. I bet you’ve done it, too. But as
Bartholomew, I was also a height and a depth, just like holiness. The great and
glorious, Christ-taught truth is that in life and in death, seeking shalom, seeking
oneness with God through giving and receiving love, this is the search that
leads us toward authentic human life. Surely, this is to know and to proclaim salvation.
I pray that
whatever you see or do not see, you not only believe what I’ve told you, but
that you trust that you bear God’s image, that the love within you is Christ’s
presence, and that the peace stirring your heart is Holy Spirit’s breath.
May you believe and trust that this
is true not for yourself alone, but for everyone you meet. And may you share
your faith with unbroken gratitude and fearless generosity.
Know this,
too: With the Love of Christ, I love you all.
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