Guilsborough: St. Bartholemew’s Day, 24th August, 2008. 
“ Oh, make thy word a swift word, passing from the ear to the heart, from the heart to the life and conversation: that as the rain returns not empty, so neither may they word, but accomplish that for which it is given. Oh Lord, hear, Oh Lord, forgive! Oh Lord, hearken, and do so for thy blessed Son’s sake, in whose sweet name we pray. — George Herbert, 1593-1633
Does anyone have a birthday to-day?   Even if we didn’t much like history at school, I suspect that most of us have at least some interest in one part of  it – anniversaries of one kind or another.  I am aomg the many who take an interest birthday announcements in the newspaper, though I often wonder  how many of the selected celebrities I will have heard of and how they got on the list.   To-day, as my contribution to our surplus knowledge of anniversaries department, I notice that it is the 51st birthday of the actor and TV personality Stephen Fry; it is also the 76th birthday of Cardinal Cormac Murphy Oconnor, the Archbishop of Westminster.   Among those but born on this day are Max Beerbohm, the painter George Stubbs and the Emperor Napoleon’s mother.  
But in the Christian calendar we celebrate 24th August as St. Bartholemew’s Day, one of the lesser known of 12 Apostles of course whose name, I find, appears in the three synoptic gospels of Matthew, Mark and Luke but there is no record at all in the New Testament of what he may have done or said.   He is however recorded in Acts as witnessing the Ascension of Jesus together with Philip, indeed Philip and Batholemew as a pair  of friends appear several times in the Bible.  
Later in his life St. B. was said to have taken the gospel message to India and Armenia ( where he is Patron Saint to-day) and to Baku in Azerbaijan where he met gruesome martyrdom by being flayed alive and crucified upside down.  He is now the patron saint of among others plasterers, nervous diseases and ghoulishly in view of his  martyrdom, of tanners.  
Violence is never far, it is sad to have to say, from the history of our Christian church.  Whilst it is right to recall the missionary work and faith of St. Bartholemew and what he did for the prince of Peace, we also have a more baleful memory of  24th August  associated as it is with the Massacre of St. Bartholemew’s Day of 1572 when some 5000 French Protestants  Huguenots were murdered probably on the orders of the King’s Mother Catherine de Medici.   The Pope was delighted and ordered a Te Deum and a medal to be struck in commemoration of the suppression of these heretics.   
“ There never was” , the Prayer Book reminds us in the Preface,  “ anything by the wit of man so well devised, or so sure established, which in continuance of time hath not been corrupted” .  It was that corruption in the Roman Catholic Church that caused Martin Luther to nail his 95 theses to the cathedral door and that led to the Reformation, to Calvinism, the Huguenots and murder and war.   
But we in this country that benefited greatly from the exodus of Huguenots from France both in the 16th, and more especially the late 17th centuries, weavers and craftsmen of all kinds, soldiers and sailors. They made an enormous contribution to this country’s prosperity and were greatly welcomed by King Charles II in particular and his successors.   You can argue, then, that whilst God moves in a mysterious way the history of the Huguenots in Britain is a demonstration of the triumph of reason over bigotry and it began a movement that continues into our own day when this country has given shelter to the oppressed from around the world.  It’s hard to believe that in the mid-19th century for example the humanitarian and Christian beliefs of many in this country who sheltered refugees from Russia, France, Italy and Spain led to Britain being regarded, perversely,  by the authoritarian regimes of continental Europe as a sponsor of terrorism.    
We are also celebrating to-day, of course, the end of the 29th Olympiad of the modern era.  As we look at the extravaganza of the Closing Ceremony on our televisions we might recall with a twinge of embarrassment that the original Olympic Games were suppressed in 392AD by a Roman Emperor at the request of the Christian Church that regarded the Games as an expression of paganism.   True,  the modern Olympics were devised in 1896 as a celebration of human achievement and an expression of peaceful competition among nations and the brotherhood of man etc. – all entirely laudable sentiments.  But again one has to wonder whether that assertion in the Preface to the Prayer Book is in danger of being fulfilled.  “There never was anything by the wit of man …..”  The vast sums of public money, the rampant nationalism, jingoism even,  the performance enhancing drugs, the heavy commercial sponsorship have all changed, everyone seems agreed, the original, amateur, Olympic spirit.  What price now for the spirit of Chariots of Fire? 
Already we are worrying about whether or not we can match the Chinese organisation and slickness of presentation.  Personally I hope we don’t , and that we make our Olympiad to some extent a return to the spirit of former years.  I would like to see us celebrate Britain’s unique contribution to the world through the promotion of human rights and voluntary giving: the Anti-slavery Society ( and to-day is William Wilberforce’s birthday),  the YMCA, the Scout Movement, the Boys Brigade, St. John Ambulance, Amnesty International, Meals on Wheels, Oxfam,  Age Concern  etc. are all worldwide movements that we can be proud of and the Games will offer us an opportunity to bring that spirit of humanitarianism to the fore.  It’s hardly been a feature of the Beijing Games.  So we can make the London Olympics the chance for spiritual as well as material regeneration and plan our own parts in that. 
The Bible tells us that life is a race to be run. It teaches us about the virtues of perseverance in the life we lead on earth, of the need for preparation for the life to come and the rules by which we are to run our race.   As St. Paul puts it 
“ Know ye not that they which run a race run all,  but one receives the prize? So run that ye may obtain.  And every man that striveth for mastery is temperate in all things.  Now they do it to obtain a corruptible crown but we an incorruptible. I therefore run not as uncertainly: so fight I not as one that beateth the air”.
Some of us may feel at times like stragglers in the race of life.  Lets others get on with it: I’ll just jog along.   It’s easier to book a  Saga Holiday than do a stint at the soup kitchen.  Jesus taught us, however, to look out for the stragglers and pick them up along our road and we can of course do that in all kinds of ways.  First and foremost by showing others by our way of life, through what we do, what the Christian faith is all about.   “Here I stand I can do no other”,  was Martin Luther’s statement of faith.   Baden Powell did it; Bramwell Booth did it; William Wilberforce did it;  Elizabeth Fry did it.   OK: I accept that we are not likely to change the world in Guilsborough: but wasn’t it the Apostle Nathaniel who said “Can any good come out of Nazareth?”   So you never know.   
As we run our own races, then, let’s conscious of our own individual contribution to making our country a better place for the world to visit in 2012.  And by the way, as the person who standing up and saying that now, I do have in mind St, Paul’;s comment at the end of that passage from Corinthians about the need to pommel the body and subdue it  “lest after preaching to others I myself should be disqualified”. 
