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Two readings from scripture, both from the Gospel according to Matthew. The first from chapter 10, just three verses, verses 2, 3, and 4. These are the names of the twelve apostles. First Simon, who is called Peter, and his brother Andrew; James, son of Zebedee, and his brother John; Philip and Bartholomew; Thomas and Matthew the tax collector; James, son of Alpheus and

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Thaddeus; Simon the zealot; and Judas Iscariot, who betrayed him. And then also from Matthew, this time from chapter 25, I read the 14th to the 30th verses. "Again," Jesus said, "it will be like a man going on a journey, who called his servants and entrusted his property to them. To one he gave five talents of money, to another two talents, and to another one talent, each according to his

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ability. Then he went on his journey. The man who had received the five talents went at once and put his money to work and gained five more. So also the one with the two talents gained two more. But the man who had received the one talent went off, dug a hole in the ground, and hid his master's money. After a long time the master of those servants returned and settled accounts with them.

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The man who had received the five talents brought the other five. Master, he said, you entrusted me with five talents; see, I have gained five more. His master replied, Well done, good and faithful servant. You have been faithful with a few things; I will put you in charge of many things. Come and share your master's happiness. The man with the two talents also came. Master, he said, you

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entrusted me with two talents; see, I have gained two more. His master replied, Well done, good and faithful servant. You have been faithful with a few things; I will put you in charge of many things. Come and share your master's happiness. Then the man who had received the one talent came. Master, he said, I knew that you are a hard man, harvesting where you have not sown, and gathering where you

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have not scattered wheat. So I was afraid, and went out and hid your talent in the ground. See, here is what belongs to you. His master replied, You wicked, lazy servant! So you knew that I harvest where I have not sown, and gather where I have not scattered seed? Well, then you should have put my money on deposit with the banker, so that when I returned I would have at least

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received it back with interest. Take the talent from him, and give it to the one who has the ten talents. For everyone who has will be given more, and he will have an abundance. And whoever does not have, even what he has will be taken away from him. And throw that worthless servant outside, into the darkness, where there will be weeping and gnashing of teeth. And may God bless to us

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this reading from his word. Pray with me. In the name of the Father, and of the Son, and of the Holy Spirit. Amen. On these Sunday evenings of the autumn together, we are talking about some men merely mentioned. Personalities who appear in the Bible and are mentioned only once or twice, and very little detail about them is given. And tonight I'd like to think with you

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about Bartholomew, the man who was average. In the first three Gospels, Matthew, Mark, and Luke, there are lists of the twelve disciples. And in all three of those Gospels, Bartholomew is listed as number six among the twelve. But interestingly enough, in the Gospel according to John, where the disciples are listed, the name of Bartholomew is not recorded. But there is one name that appears

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in John that doesn't appear in the other lists. And that is the name Nathaniel. Now this has led some people to believe that Bartholomew and Nathaniel are in fact the same person. Bartholomew is actually, in the language of that day, two words. "Bar" which means "son of" and "Ptolemy" or more completely "Ptolemaeus" which was a common name of that time. Bartholomew then means "son

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of Ptolemaeus." And some suggest that this son of Ptolemaeus' real name was Nathaniel, but that he was commonly called the son of Ptolemaeus. So that in Matthew, Mark, and Luke, he is called Bartholomew, but in the Gospel of John he is called Nathaniel. Now I think the reason that scholars are anxious to try to link these two names together and make them in fact the same person is this. Nothing at

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all is mentioned about Bartholomew except that he was a disciple. We have no news concerning him whatever. There is not a sentence or a syllable in the New Testament which tells us anything about Bartholomew except that he was a disciple. Now about Nathaniel we do know a few things. Nathaniel, you will remember, was the man who was found by Philip. Nathaniel was sitting under a fig tree,

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and when Philip saw him he said, "Come, we will show you a man who will answer all of your questions." And Nathaniel said, "Where is he from?" And Philip replied, "He is from Nazareth." And you remember the words that Nathaniel responded with, "What good can come out of Nazareth?" Nazareth was a very inconspicuous place in that time. As a matter of fact, the leading historians of the day

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nowhere mention Nazareth. We wouldn't know about Nazareth if it were not for Jesus. But Nazareth does happen to be very near to the town of Cana, which is the town from which Nathaniel came. So when Nathaniel said, "What good can come out of Nazareth?" it was a kind of a neighborhood rivalry kind of thing, you see. What good can come out of the next town? Our town is the good one. Well,

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Philip says to Nathaniel, "Come and meet Christ." And as Nathaniel comes to Jesus, Jesus says to him, "Behold, here is an Israelite in which there is no guile." Now the word "Israelite" means to be part of the people of God. And to be without guile means to be a very honest person. What Jesus says to Nathaniel is very high praise. He says, "Here is a member of the family of God who is absolutely

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trustworthy." And when he says this to Nathaniel, Nathaniel was amazed. He said, "How do you know anything about me?" And Jesus says, "I saw you when you were sitting under the fig tree." And Nathaniel is astonished. He realizes suddenly that this one he is meeting for the first time already knows a great deal about him. And he utters one of the most remarkable sentences in all of the

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scriptures. He says to Jesus, "Surely you are the Son of God and the King of Israel." That's the first time in all of the Bible, in all of the New Testament, in all of the Gospels, where Jesus is acknowledged as the Son of God and the King of Israel. And it's by this man, Nathaniel. And Jesus says, "Well, if you are so impressed with just what has happened in this moment, stay with me and you

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will see far more amazing things." And it was just a few days later that Nathaniel, staying with Jesus, found himself in his own hometown of Cana. And you know what happened at the wedding in Cana, how Jesus caused the wine to be multiplied. And many other miracles were presented to Nathaniel across the time, but he was a disciple of Jesus. So we know a certain amount about Nathaniel. But is he

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really Bartholomew? Are these the same person? Well, the fact of the matter is it can't be proved one way or the other. There is no way it can be demonstrated with certainty. And for myself, in my own approach to the Scriptures, if I cannot find something which can be proved without difficulty and with positivity, then I have a tendency to lay it aside and to go with what the Scriptures say.

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There was a man named Bartholomew and there was a man named Nathaniel. They may have been the same, but there is no evidence to demonstrate that. And so I understand them to be two different people. And Bartholomew must have been a very average person, since nothing at all is recorded about him. As a matter of fact, I think that's the reason that these biblical scholars are so anxious to

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turn Bartholomew into Nathaniel. It kind of bothers them to have a disciple of Jesus about whom we don't know anything. Who is this mystery person? If we can tie him to some other name, even if it takes a bit of sanctified imagination to do so, well then we'll be able to say something about Bartholomew. They're uncomfortable with this man who was so average that there's nothing in the

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Bible about him. You find a lot about Bartholomew in legends. We even know that at one time, we don't have a copy of this, but we do know that at one time there was a book called "The Apocalyptic Gospel of the Blessed Bartholomew," and it has some amazing sections in it. We have little portions of the book, but not the whole thing. But this book we know was written hundreds of

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years after the time of the disciples, and it claims things that are not in fact true. In the Egyptian church, even to this day, they honor Saint Bartholomew because, according to tradition, Bartholomew went and was a missionary for Christ in India. Now don't think of the India we think of today. India in that day was South Arabia, and it may very well have been that Bartholomew went

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and served there. In the Egyptian church, they even have a description of what Bartholomew looked like. This is what they have. They say that he had black hair, which he wore long over his ears, that he was a white man, that he had very large eyes, that he had a long grizzled beard, that he wore a white robe with a purple stripe on it, and that in the four corners of his cloak there were

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four purple gems sewed, that he wore his shoes for 26 years and they never wore out, that he wore his cloak for 26 years and that it never wore out, that he prayed a hundred times every day and a hundred times every night, that he had a voice that sounded like a trumpet, that the angels served him 24 hours a day, that he was always happy and that he could speak every language on the face of

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the earth. Well that is obviously legendary material. A lot of people, you see, have tried to attribute a lot of things to this Bartholomew, but the fact of the matter is he's the disciple who's merely mentioned. A plain sort of fellow, undistinguished, average. But precisely because of this, he speaks to my heart and he says two things. The first thing he says is this, "It

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doesn't take much of a person to be a Christian." It doesn't take much of a person to be a Christian. You don't have to be a special edition of the human story to be a disciple of Jesus Christ. You can be average, like Bartholomew. I was talking a while back to the director of admissions at Westminster College, and at Westminster College on the application blank they have a portion that is

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filled out by the parent, parents to say something about his son or daughter. And one of the questions there is, "Does your child have leadership possibilities?" And one father filled that question in with the following answer, "No, my daughter does not have leadership qualities, but she is a wonderful follower." Well the girl was received into Westminster College as a freshman,

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and the guidance counselor and admissions counselor there at the college told me that the freshman class at Westminster College this year now consists of 501 leaders and one follower. Everybody thought their kid was a leader, but only one a follower. Well you see, Bartholomew was a follower. He was average. There are people, you know, who think that they're not good enough to

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be Christian. I remember in the first church that I served, a very, very beautiful man in whom the Spirit of God dwelled. Yet that man would never receive the bread and wine of Holy Communion. He always said he felt unworthy to receive it. Now you see, there's a real problem in that man's theology. None of us are worthy to receive the body and blood of Christ, but the fact of the matter

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is God is so worthy that he gives it to us when we're unworthy. See, this man is trying to build up enough goodness to be blessed of God. We can never summon that much goodness. Our hope lies in the fact not that we are good, but that God is good. It's not our grace that saves us, it's God's grace that brings us home. There are a lot of people, you know, who go through their lives

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wondering all the time about their salvation, carrying great bags of guilt around with them everywhere they go. And they don't think they can be fully Christian because of this thing that they did yesterday, or this thing that they did ten years ago. This thought that they thought, this cruel and ugly and obscene word that they said. They think it keeps them forever out of the

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kingdom. The fact of the matter is, it doesn't take much of a person to be a Christian. It's not our own goodness that wins our way in the faith. It's not our own excellence. It's not our knowledge. It's nothing about us. It's the grace of God. Bartholomew was not like Peter. He didn't say, "Thou art the Christ, the Son of the living God." Bartholomew was not like Andrew. Here's a young

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man with two loaves and five fish. Can you feed the people with these? Bartholomew is not like John, who stood by the cross of Jesus and was the only one of the disciples to stay there until Jesus died upon that cross. There are no great histories, there are no great stories about Bartholomew. He was average. But it doesn't take much of a person to be a Christian. I want to

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tell you a story which is a very ugly story, and it gives me no pleasure to share it. I only share it in all of its hideous details because I want to make the point. There's a woman in the state penitentiary of Indianapolis, of Indiana tonight, whose name is Gertrude Banaszewski. Gertrude Banaszewski lived in Indianapolis. Across the street from her lived a man and a woman who worked

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in a carnival, and they had a teenage daughter. And once when they were going out on the road with their carnival, they left their daughter with Gertrude Banaszewski. And Gertrude Banaszewski murdered her. But she did not murder the girl until she had first horribly tortured her. She starved her, she mutilated her body, she beat her with a belt, she burned her with cigarettes, she

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made her drink her own urine, she was forced to sleep in the basement on rags, she put lighted matches under her fingernails, she carved her name into the girl's body at six different places, and she forced filth into every orifice of the youngster's body. The coroner of the city of Indianapolis said that it was the worst murder he had ever seen, and the most sadistic brutality he

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had ever encountered. Gertrude Banaszewski was convicted by a jury of twelve and given life imprisonment. She will be in jail until she dies. There was a minister who was concerned for the soul of Gertrude Banaszewski, and he went and witnessed to this woman who had done this unspeakably cruel and awful thing. And she became a Christian. And she began to study the scriptures.

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And she became active in the community of worship in the prison where she still lives. Her life was so changed that three years after she was in prison, a photographer went to the prison and took her picture. And then he took that picture to every one of the twelve jurors who had sat across from her for ten days in the courtroom. And he showed every one of them that picture.

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And not a single one of them knew who it was. Gertrude Banaszewski's life has been so completely transformed that she doesn't even look the same. People who knew her then don't know her now. It doesn't make any difference how black our record is, how ugly our past, how lackluster we are, how unimportant or insignificant, how rotten our history. Christ accepts us and changes us. I said

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we had a lot of legendary material about Bartholomew. There is a legend which says that Bartholomew on one occasion said, "The science of the knowledge of God is both very great and very small, and the gospel is wide and at the same time short." You know he was right. Because you can sum the whole gospel up in one word, which is as wide or as narrow as you want it to be.

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That word is love. It doesn't take much of a person to be a Christian, because God is love. But the second thing that Bartholomew teaches me is this. While it doesn't take much of a person to be a Christian, it does take all there is of that person. Anyone can become a disciple of Christ, but to become a disciple of Christ, you must give everything that you are. We were talking

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tonight with the Ankus who are going to be joining our church next Sunday morning and took their vows before the session tonight. Mr. Ankus is studying ethnomusicology at the university, specializes in drums, African drums, the language of African drums. He's going to play for us in one of our services sometime soon, which will be something new for this old room. I was at

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a service once in Africa accompanied by drums where it came time for the offering. Now in the African church, they don't pass the plates. Everybody gets up and walks up and puts their money in the plate which stays on the communion table. And they don't come in any order, you just come as you feel led. But the choir stands over at one side and it sings. And it starts to look

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at anybody who hasn't come yet. And it points to them after a while until everybody gets up and comes forward and puts something in the plate. I've seen it with my own eyes. Now I didn't see this next thing happen, but I've been told of it. I was shared with by a missionary, told me once of seeing a little girl come forward at the time of the offering in an African church and step into

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the offering plate. She offered her whole self. Just a little girl, just a little uneducated girl, just a little ignorant girl, just a little girl who didn't know much about the faith. She was average, but she understood the principle of discipleship. It doesn't take much of a person to be a Christian, but it does take all there is of them. This is a key principle of all the

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scriptures. That's the reason I read this parable of the talents that Jesus told. See, not everybody has the same talents. One man had five, one had two, one had one. God does not expect us all to be the same. But what does he expect? He expects us to do the most we can with what we have. The man with five earned five and was blessed. The man with two earned two and was blessed. The man

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with one earned nothing. And he was sent into the outer darkness. We're not all expected to produce the same. We don't have equal IQs. We don't have equal contacts. We don't have equal backgrounds. Some of us have been raised in Christian homes and have never known a time when Jesus Christ was not honored. And others of us have had to walk very hard roads, like Tim Hart, who told us tonight

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of his struggle with drugs. Our backgrounds, our present experiences are totally different. God does not expect us to be the same, but he does expect us, whatever we have, great or small, to do the most that we can with it. This is the reason why the Bible lays down the tithe as the standard of Christian giving. The tithe is one tenth of that which God gives to you. God doesn't

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set a figure which everyone is to give, saying we're all to give the same because some would not be able to reach that figure. For some, the figure would be too high, and for others, the figure would be too low. So instead, God says everyone is to bring the tithe, the tenet. And that means each of us responds in accord with how God has blessed us. The man I worked with in the

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first church it was my privilege to serve as a student intern was Dr. John Calvin Reed, and he told me of visiting an older lady in his church, and he found her in very poor circumstances. She lived in a very, very stark apartment, practically no furniture. It was obvious that she had very little, and after he called on her as he was ready to leave, she said, "Oh, Dr. Reed, please take my

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tithe to the church." And he said to her, "Oh, man, I think you can use this money better than the church can. Why don't you keep it and use it for your own needs?" And the woman replied to him, "Young man, Jesus doesn't ask us for much, only for all that we're able to do. This is all that I'm able to do. Do not refuse it." She had her finger on the center of Christian commitment,

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and Bartholomew reminds me of this. Well, next Sunday morning we'll be celebrating communion in this room, and we'll be coming to the table of the Lord together. And it is fitting that we should examine ourselves before we come. Are we doing what we can with all that we have in the service of our Savior? We need each one of us in the privacy of our own thoughts this week to ask,

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"Are we using our minds to glorify Christ? Do we read the scriptures? Are we reading other Christian literature which will help us to grow in faith? Are we taking good care of our bodies, which are the temples of the Holy Spirit?" This is an area of special difficulty for me. My diet counselor is a Roman Catholic nun, Sister Anne Therese, and I talk with her about the importance

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of faith and the care of the body. Do we get enough rest? Do we put into the body the things that are good for it? This body has been given us by God. God expects us to do the most we can with it. Do we exercise regularly and faithfully? A strong body makes for a stronger mind and a healthier spirit. And what about our spirits? Are you being a Christian husband? Are you being a

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Christian wife? Do you love your loved one as Christ loved the church? When your children look at you, do they see what a Christian mother or father ought to be? Do your friends know that you are on the Lord's side? Does your church know that you are an important part of the body? Do you pray for the worldwide church? Or when you think of the world, do you always see it with the good old

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USA in the center? Is your first citizenship to the kingdom of heaven above and beyond any other citizenships which might be yours? These are questions of the spirit. And I urge you, in memory of Bartholomew, if you will, to ask yourself these questions. Remember, it doesn't take much to be a Christian, but it does take all that you have. When I was a very little boy, I was

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told a story. I don't remember how long ago, just that I was very young. It was about a man who took a candle, and the candle was lighted. And he said to the candle, "I'm going to take you very high." And they went up steps, round after round after round of steps, until finally the candle became terrified and said, "What are you going to do with me at this height?" And the man said, "I'm going

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to use you to guide the ships at sea." And the candle said, "But I have only a little flame." But the lighthouse keeper replied, "If your light is small, keep it burning bright and leave the rest to me." And with that candle, he lighted the great columns of light that went out across the sea to guide the ships. We don't all have the same wattage. Some of us are 200 watts, and some are

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only 25. What we're called upon to do is burn to the brightest, of which we are capable. And we need to examine ourselves and to think of these things as we approach the Lord's table. These thoughts are brought to me by this man, Bartholomew. He was average, just merely mentioned. Let us pray. As we go to prayer, I would share with you these lines from a child's poem. "Is your place a small

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place tended with care? God set you there. Is your place a large place guarded with care? God set you there. What air your place, it is not yours alone, but his who set you there. Oh God, thou hast set us where we are. Grant that we might love thee in that place, and love thee with such passion and openness that others will know that we belong to thee first and from the heart. Guide us as we

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examine ourselves this week, that we might come to your table next week presenting ourselves as just average, but as ones who are seeking to give all that we have to the service of the precious name of your Son, in whose name we pray. Amen." And now we'll close our service as is our custom by standing and singing together our benediction, which you got on the sheet of paper as you came

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into the room. Jim, will you introduce it for us please? Shall we stand? May the Lord, mighty God, bless and keep you forever. Grant you peace, perfect peace, courage in every endeavor. Lift up your eyes and see his face and his grace forever. May the Lord, mighty God, bless and keep you forever. Good night.