Acts 5.12–16; Luke 22.24–30

‘…they even carried out the sick into the streets and laid them on cots and mats, in order that Peter’s shadow might fall on some of them as he came by.’

May I speak in the name of the living God, who is our creator, sustainer and redeemer.

Today we are keeping the Feast of St Bartholomew, one of the most elusive of the apostles. His name is always listed among the Twelve, but little else is said of him. There are no recorded words, no sermons, no miracles in his name. He slips through the pages of the New Testament like a figure at the edge of the stage.

Was he Nathanael, the sceptical but sincere Israelite whom Jesus praised in John’s Gospel? Tradition has often thought so, but Scripture does not confirm it. All we really know is his name – and yet for two thousand years the Church has remembered him, carved him in stone, honoured his feast, and prayed in his name.

Bartholomew is, in every sense, the apostle of shadows. Hidden, half-known, easily overlooked, and yet enduring. And perhaps that is his gift to us.

In our readings this morning the apostles appear in two very different lights. In the Book of Acts, Luke shows them radiant with charisma: the sick are laid out in the streets in the hope that even Peter’s shadow might fall upon them and bring healing. The atmosphere is charged with wonder, expectation, and spectacle.

But in today’s Gospel Luke paints a starkly different picture. Here we find those same apostles caught in dispute, arguing over which of them should be considered the greatest. And into their rivalry Jesus speaks a word that overturns their assumptions: ‘The greatest among you must become like the youngest, and the leader like one who serves.’

Humility and service on the one hand; power and rivalry on the other. And there in the middle, we find Bartholomew, the apostle who’s always there but hidden, named but not noticed.

Luke’s image of Peter’s shadow is an arresting one for a shadow has no substance, it has no voice of its own, it holds no permanence. And yet Luke describes how people hoped Peter’s shadow might heal. What on earth was this power that he was describing?

At first, it does seem decidedly strange, even magical that Peter’s shadow might have the power to heal. But the power behind Peter’s shadow has nothing to do with Peter: shadows only exist when a stronger light is shining. They are not self-generated. Shadows are the evidence that light has fallen on something real. Peter’s shadow was cast not through his own power but was cast because the power of Christ’s light was shining through him.

Bartholomew’s life as an apostle mirrors that of Peter in that respect. Unlike Peter, he casts no great figure across the New Testament, and yet the light of Christ fell on him too, and his shadow has in been remembered for centuries.

But of course, not all shadows we see offer healing and hope. There are more sinister lights that cast shadows we know only too well. The brooding shadow of violence falling across war-torn streets. The shadow of displacement hanging over refugee camps. The shadow of poverty stretching across food banks and empty cupboards. The shadow of climate breakdown darkening fragile ecosystems. The shadows of loneliness in care homes, of despair in hospital corridors, of shame in places of addiction.

These shadows are heavy, oppressive, frightening. And yet even they remind us that shadows are never the whole story. For every shadow is cast by light. The question for us is whether we are positioning ourselves close enough to the true source of the everlasting and redemptive light – the light of Christ – so that that shadow may be cast as a sign of healing and hope.

The poetry of R. S. Thomas reflects so much on the shadows of this world and the shadow Christ’s light casts. In his poem The Coming, he imagines God showing the Son a broken shadowed world, scorched and scarred:

And God held in his hand

a small globe. Look, he said.

The Son looked. Far off,

as through water, he saw

a scorched land of fierce colour.

The light burned there; crusted buildings

cast their shadows; a bright serpent,

a river, uncoiled itself, radiant with slime.

On a bare hill a bare tree saddened the sky.

Many people held out their thin arms

to it, as though waiting for a vanished April to return to its crossed boughs.

The Son watched.

Let me go there, he said.”

Here, R.S. Thomas offers us a glimpse of the world as Christ saw it – blistered, fragile, full of longing and despair, full of brooding and oppressive shadows. And yet Christ’s response is not hesitation but resolve: “Let me go there.”

The Christ we follow does not seek earthly power or glory. He chooses the brooding shadows – the places of frailty, obscurity, pain and longing, to cast his light of healing and hope. And Bartholomew, the shadowy apostle, reflects for us that same light. His greatness is not found in fame but in faithfulness, not in being seen but in letting Christ’s light pass through him, quietly, without drawing attention to himself.

And that is the hope of this feast. For many of us, life can feel shadow-like too, ordinary, hidden, unseen. We may wonder what difference our small acts can make in a world so vast.

But Luke in his Book of Acts reveals that even a shadow can heal. What matters is not how brightly we shine, but whether we stand where Christ’s light falls. What matters is not recognition, but faithfulness. What matters is not the noise we make, but the shadow we cast in the light of Christ.

Bartholomew, whose feast we celebrate today – the apostle we hardly know – inhabits all that we learn within today’s readings. Luke in Acts reminds us that God works through shadows. Luke in his Gospel teaches us that greatness is found in service, not status. R.S. Thomas gives us a Christ who chooses the brooding shadows of the world.

So, us not shrink from the shadows, nor dismiss the hidden callings that go unnoticed. For it is in the shadowed places that the Church continually relearns its dependence on Christ’s light alone.

In Bartholomew’s witness we are being offered a pattern for our own discipleship: to choose faithfulness over fame, steadfastness over spectacle, so that Christ’s light may shine through us. And when Christ’s light casts its shadow – in the places where we work, where we rest, and where we have our very being – it will be where kthat shadow lands that the hope and healing of God will be revealed for all to see.

Amen.