Being Forgotten

Once a term, in the Old Library of this church, a group of people meet to eat cake and talk about death. This is neither a coven nor an organised crime syndicate, but rather a Death Café, a movement founded to enable conversation about this last taboo subject. We meet to discuss death openly and without fear or prejudice – our own deaths to come, the past or coming deaths of others, and the whole existential topic. And did I mention the cake?

One question that has sometimes come up in these discussions is this: how would you like to be remembered? This can mean, how would you like to be memorialised, what would you like to have on your tombstone (if you want one at all)? Or, alternatively, what are the adjectives you would your family and friends to use about you when delivering eulogies? Or, on a larger scale, what would you like to leave as your legacy to the world?

These questions may feel a little self-indulgent. After all, the great and unstoppable reality of death is that it is a final relinquishing of control. We do not get to have the ultimate say over how we are remembered. That is not for us. Of course, this question is really just intended to provoke a meditation on life as we live it now, to prompt reflection and possibly alterations in the way we are living. But if this question feels a little self-indulgent to you, why not try this one out for size instead: how would you like to be forgotten?

Because you may have noticed something quite distinctive about the readings assigned for the feast of St Bartholomew. They don’t mention the man. Not one mention of his name. Usually, if the lectionary compilers can, they give us the story of a disciple’s calling on their feast day, or if they disciple in question features in a particularly characteristic way in the gospels, this is reflected in the Eucharistic lectionary. Peter is the fallible rock on which the church is built, Andrew the consummate intercessor, always bringing people forward to Jesus’ attention. James and John are the headstrong brothers, Matthew the corrupt bureaucrat made good. And if no such narrative can be found, then out comes a nice passage in which Jesus commissions the disciples and they all get named, truly the participation trophy of sainthood. 

But not so for Bartholomew, even though he does feature in such lists in the Synoptic Gospels. In fact, biographical details from the Bible are very scant. As with many of the disciples, we don’t even really know his name. His Aramaic name means Son of Tolmai, or possibly Son of the Furrows, suggesting an agricultural background. He’s also commonly identified with Nathanael, who features at the beginning and end of John’s gospel, in which we read a brief and somewhat sarcastic exchange of remarks between him and Jesus. He is mentioned once in the Acts of the Apostles, following the Ascension of Jesus. And that’s it for the Biblical witness. That’s all there is. This man, whose life, death and witness we celebrate today, who was one of the twelve closest and commissioned followers of Christ, is mentioned all of six times in the Bible. Two of them under different names. Following that, we have post-biblical traditions, some of them moving, some of them mysterious, some of them improbable, some of them gory.

So I ask again, how would you like to be forgotten? How much can you bear the thought of being forgotten when your life is over? I find this almost unbearable to contemplate, and yet it is another aspect of that great and unstoppable reality of death. What is remembered of us after death is so swiftly eroded, the details lost or corrupted within a few short generations. Our best intentions and supreme endeavours to make a difference in the world in the course of our short mortal lives seem doomed to failure and oblivion.

So what’s left? Well, let us return to the readings for today, even though Bartholomew’s name doesn’t feature. The good news of these two readings is twofold. Firstly, our reading from First Corinthians. Paul is writing to a community that seems to be status obsessed. Much of his first letter is phrased specifically to take them down a peg or two, and especially to remind them that, in human terms, Jesus was the greatest of all the failures. He’s labouring a similar point now. The people to whom the Corinthian community look up to most, these are the ones whom the world despises. They’re a disgrace to their respectable families. They have to live outside the law and endure backbreaking work to keep themselves fed and clothed. These are not people who might expect to leave a lasting legacy in the world. These are, as he says, the rubbish of the world. Yet they are known, and loved by God. Their legacy is not stored in a human currency, but in a heavenly one. This teaches us that our worth is not measured in the so-called difference we can make in the world. Every human life is held to be of uncountable value by God.

If this is the case, what are we to do with our ‘one wild and precious life’ as the poet Mary Oliver describes it? If we’re loved by God regardless of what we do, and if nothing we do can really be of everlasting significance on Earth, what is there to guide us? Our Gospel reading has another, fairly clear suggestion. Humility, service, following in the footsteps of Christ and the disciples. Self-abnegation, the putting-off of the self, the quieting of the ego. I’m aware of a great need for caution here. Self-abnegation has been used against marginalised people throughout history, especially by Christians, to keep them in their place and to extract forced labour of service. This is not the kind that I am talking about. The putting off of the self described in our reading in Luke’s gospel today is one that has to be chosen freely, wholeheartedly and as individuals. It’s the kind of free choice that Bartholomew and the disciples were able to make: not because they had to, but because that is where they knew their path would take them. In the end, not a bad thing to be remembered for. Amen.