Peace
From the prophet Isaiah in today’s communion motet: “Thou wilt keep him in perfect peace, whose mind is stayed on thee: because he trusteth in thee.” Isaiah 26.3
When I was a child, I used to look at pictures I really shouldn’t have looked at. And I don’t mean the underwear section in my mum’s Freeman’s catalogue.
I’m not very good with gory pictures, with blood and guts, and when I saw things like that as a child, the images would haunt me for weeks.
The lives of the saints are littered with gory pictures, and none are much gorier than the martyrdom of St Bartholomew. Of course we know precious little about this Apostle.
He comes in at number six in the lists of Apostles given in the synoptic Gospels, Matthew (10.3), Mark (3.18) & Luke (6.14). He has dropped to number seven in the listing by the time we get to the Acts of the Apostles. (1.13).
The Gospel of John doesn’t mention him, but appears to replace him with Nathaniel, who is not mentioned in the other Gospels.
(This, by the way, is why the Old Testament reading today is Jacob’s ladder with the angels descending and ascending - it ties in with the Gospel reading of Nathaniel under the fig tree - a reading we don’t use because it is not the Prayer Book reading - an intelligent congregation is supposed to make these connections...)
So he is often referred to as Nathaniel Bartholomew, which means Nathaniel son of Talmai (or Ptolemy).
In church history he doesn’t get a citation till Eusebius in the early fourth century, who mentions that he preached in India and gave the church he founded there a Gospel of Matthew in Hebrew.
According to legend, he was either beheaded or flayed alive and then crucified upside down.
Which brings us back to those gory pictures.
One of the least bloody representations is found in Michelangelo’s Last Judgement painted on the altar wall of the Sistine Chapel in the Vatican. St Bartholomew is portrayed in the usual form, holding his own skin and with a skinner’s knife. (As a little conceit, Michelangelo makes the skin the Apostle is holding look like himself, the artist.)
With that fine mediaeval penchant for devotion to saints who died particularly horrible deaths, he is patron saint of many gilds, including Skinners and Tanners.
Thomas Traherne, the mystic Anglican poet of the seventeenth century, wrote a poem entitled An Hymn upon St Bartholomew’s Day, and it was reading this that led me to the theme for the sermon.
Traherne is musing about the way his soul seems, so loosely, to inhabit his body. It is perhaps a reflection of the bemused look on St Bartholomew’s face as he regards his owed flayed body.
In the spiritual context, Traherne is exploring the ability of the Christian to live in the world below, while finding his true home in the world above. Here is the fourth stanza:
Dull walls of clay my Spirit leaves,And that brings us back to our text: “Thou wilt keep him in perfect peace, whose mind is stayed on thee: because he trusteth in thee.” Isaiah 26.3
And in a foreign Kingdom doth appear,
This great Apostle it receives,
Admires His works and sees them, standing here,
Within myself from East to West I move
As if I were
At once a Cherubim and Sphere,
Or was at once above
And here.
Peace of mind is not a modern obsession, although contemporary adverts play heavily on it to prize open our wallets. It appears to be a concern running through the millennia of human consciousness.
As soon as we developed the ability for self-reflection, we became anxious, or more importantly, we knew we were anxious. Animals appear to demonstrate anxiety, although presumably without reflecting on it.
The baboon pacing up and down in his cage and showing all the signs of worry, is unlikely to be pondering universal angst and the pointlessness of existence without a fixed cosmic referent. Indeed that particular issue doesn’t keep many of us awake at night. It is more likely to be the gas bill, or as I have found out more recently, the dentist’s bill.
The Bible, in both Old and New Testaments, constantly addresses the tendency of the human spirit to be anxious. And its message is consistent although expressed in different ways.
The changes and chances of living in a frail body, on a delicate planet, in an unpredictable society, are enough to make anyone anxious. And there is no fixed point in this earthly realm which can give us security.
But, as the Apostle Paul puts it, ‘our citizenship is in heaven’. (Phil 3.20) Our point of reference is heaven. Isaiah expresses it in a different way - ‘whose mind is fixed on thee’ - our point of reference is the eternal and unchanging God. That is our fulcrum, our anchor.
And this is part of the mystery of faith, testified to by the lives of countless millions down through the ages: that such a seemingly ephemeral thing - belief in God - can provide so firm a foundation that it gives us peace of mind.
One of the purposes of liturgy and Bible reading, of mass and the daily offices, of priests and the religious; is to bring us back to that quiet centre; to recall us to the peace of God which passes all understanding.
But of course, nothing is ever as simple as that. There’s a dialogue between Lucy & Good Ol’ Charlie Brown which illustrates the dilemma.
Charlie Brown is irritable and restless and Lucy says to him: “I thought you had inner peace.” “I do” replies Charlie, “but I still have outer obnoxiousness”.
There is an inbuilt tension in our human make-up. The strength of that tension will vary with our personality and with the circumstances of our life.
The degree to which we can be at perfect peace and show it by our outward demeanor, is moderated by another probably evolutionary force which disturbs our equilibrium and leaves us dissatisfied with the cheap answers of religion.
It is probably this creative tension which urges the human spirit to it’s greatest feats of love, beauty and creativity, as well as its depths of destruction and depravity.
This is the life force which constantly we need to temper by trying to reflect the goodness of the Giver of life.
George Herbert picks up this tension in the title of his poem The Pulley - will we be lifted up to God and peace, or drawn down to earth - to Pandora and chaos - for there is also a Christian reworking of the Pandora myth in the poem.
At risk of turning this sermon into an edition of Poetry Please let me read you The Pulley.
When God at first made man,Those words of Augustine readily spring to mind: “Thou awakest us to delight in Thy praise; for Thou madest us for Thyself, and our heart is restless, until it repose in Thee.” (Augustine of Hippo, The Confessions of Saint Augustine, Chapter 1)
Having a glass of blessings standing by—
"Let us," said he, "pour on him all we can;
Let the world's riches, which dispersed lie,
Contract into a span."
So strength first made a way,
Then beauty flowed, then wisdom, honour,
pleasure:
When almost all was out, God made a stay,
Perceiving that, alone of all his treasure,
Rest in the bottom lay.
"For if I should," said he,
"Bestow this jewel also on my creature,
He would adore my gifts instead of me,
And rest in nature, not the God of nature:
So both should losers be.
"Yet let him keep the rest,
But keep them with repining restlessness;
Let him be rich and weary, that at least,
If goodness lead him not, yet weariness
May toss him to my breast.
(George Herbert 1593-1632)
As we pursue God, and try our best to trust in him, we do indeed achieve a good measure of peace of mind. But in order to keep alive the divine spark within us, we will also experience a divine restlessness.
If we don’t want the restlessness to overwhelm us, then we must put in place those structures that enable our inner life to come back, again and again to the hope of the Gospel; to be stayed on God.
Let this Bread & Wine be such a recollection for you.
“Thou wilt keep him in perfect peace, whose mind is stayed on thee: because he trusteth in thee.” Isaiah 26.3
For interest of readers I add the poem
An Hymn upon St Bartholomew’s Day
By Thomas Traherne (?1636–1674)
WHAT powerful Spirit lives within!
What active Angel doth inhabit here!
What heavenly light inspires my skin,
Which doth so like a Deity appear!
A living Temple of all ages, I
Within me see
A Temple of Eternity!
All Kingdoms I descry
In me.
An inward Omnipresence here
Mysteriously like His within me stands,
Whose knowledge is a Sacred Sphere
That in itself at once includes all lands.
There is some Angel that within me can
Both talk and move,
And walk and fly and see and love,
A man on earth, a man
Above.
Dull walls of clay my Spirit leaves,
And in a foreign Kingdom doth appear,
This great Apostle it receives,
Admires His works and sees them, standing here,
Within myself from East to West I move
As if I were
At once a Cherubim and Sphere,
Or was at once above
And here.
The Soul’s a messenger whereby
Within our inward Temple we may be
Even like the very Deity
In all the parts of His Eternity.
O live within and leave unwieldy dross!
Flesh is but clay!
O fly my Soul and haste away
To Jesus’ Throne or Cross!
Obey!
