Labour and Rest

The Rev’d Devin McLachlan

Sunday, 24 August, 2025: The Feast of St Bartholomew

“I am among you as one who serves.”

It’s one of those passages where, as the saying goes, I have to check my privilege: A little less lording it over folks, and pouring coffee after dinner — sure, I can do that. But Bartholomew, James, John, Peter, Mary, the rest of the apostles: They knew what the real work of serving was, and they knew the deep ache in their bones for security and comfort:

Stability. Safety. Respect. What the gentile kings and the Roman Benefactors had in spades.  Isn’t that what this new Kingdom would bring for them?

But serving. It’s not just humbling – these are salt of the earth disciples, after all, anonymous in the eyes of history, in the eyes of those with power and privilege; they thought they already knew service.

Serving is hard work. 

Serving is demanding. 

Service is a sacrifice not just of status, but of time and energy as well. 

There’s no prosperity Gospel in this passage, no opening for Christian triumphalism with nationalist overtones. Just the gift of doing the hard graft that needs to be done, with love and humility, for the very least as well as for the high and mighty. 

“Let the brethren serve one another…. Let [them] serve one another in love,” St Benedict told his community in Rule 35. Service is at the heart of our Christian community.

“You are those who have stood by me in my trials,”

Jesus tells the disciples. 

You know well what that can entail.  A thriving church like St Bene’t’s asks a lot of its leadership. We hold sixteen services a week,  and provide pastoral care, guidance, study, formation and welcome to members old and new, young and old.  We steward a thousand year old building,  we witness to the love of Christ on a daily basis, we tend to one another and welcome the stranger and the lost. 

None of that can be done without generous gifts of time, treasure, and talent. 

Thank you. 

In the two years following Mthr Anna’s death,  a particularly heavy burden fell on our lay leaders. You provided such care for one another, and kept that flame of hope burning brightly even at a dark time.  And there were real costs to that work, sacrifices of time that could have been spent with family, or on careers, or sleeping in on a Sunday morning. 

Thank you. 

We’re at a natural time in the ebbs and tides of parish life when we’ll be looking for new people to step forward in lay leadership. I’m grateful this past month to Hariett to stepping forward to guide our young people’s ministry, to Felicity for leading our Social Committee, Anne for Warm Space, and to many others.  We are praying hard for a new treasurer to follow George, and for two people to come forward as deputy churchwardens.

And there are ongoing opportunities to get involved with Children and Young People’s ministries, to lead and host evening prayer, to take part in our liturgies. 

The August bank holiday, the vicar just back from vacation, isn’t the strategic time to encourage new lay leadership.  But it is in the time of rest that we hear afresh Christ’s call.

It is in seeing how work can be set down 

that we remember how we are called to serve.

Just as in the Rule of St Benedict ministries of service  are rotated through the community, we should expect to both ebb and to flow, to take rest and sabbath time and to gird ourselves to kneel at the feet of others and serve. 

Which brings me to Saint Bartholomew,  whose feast is today.

As I pointed out in this week’s Benison,  we don’t know much about Bartholomew.  He says nothing at all in the three synoptic Gospels; and yet this was the apostle that would, according to tradition, begin the work of converting Armenia as the first Christian nation and travel through Ethiopia and perhaps India, preaching the Good News. 

Perhaps Bartholomew was like one of those great hurricanes —

his later service and power and ministry so bold

precisely because his formation and strength was in silence and stillness,

the great eye of silence where God is,

giving power to the creative, world-troubling edges. 

Christian leadership comes from service.

And Christian labour comes from stillness.

Much of my time away was spent looking on the sea,

watching the ebbs and flows of tide and current,

the darksome depths and the bright sparkle on the surface —

and sometimes at night, the dark stillness of the water’s surface,

and a galaxy of bioluminescence swirling and eddying in the deeps. 

Currents and depths.

Stillness and wave.

Quiet and creativity. 

Service and leadership. 

God has given us signs all around,

from the quiet of his apostles to the wonders of the deeps. 

God’s universe is not static,

its hierarchies and callings not dead but living and bright:

A sea of glass tinged with fire, as we hear in John’s Apocalypse. 

As we reflect on Bartholomew’s calling, may that light reflect on us —

may our stillness give life to our journey.

Let our service feed our faith,

deepen our commitment to Christ. 

And let our stillness, our prayer, our rest in Christ

inspire us to service, 

that we may eat and drink at Christ’s table in his kingdom.

Amen. 

Detail from the East window at St Bene’t’s, Cambridge