{"id":3071,"date":"2026-08-24T05:00:00","date_gmt":"2026-08-24T12:00:00","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/bloomministries.org\/faith\/?p=3071"},"modified":"2026-08-23T07:37:40","modified_gmt":"2026-08-23T14:37:40","slug":"stood-in-a-plain-place","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/bloomministries.org\/faith\/stood-in-a-plain-place\/","title":{"rendered":"Daily Offering: August 24, 2026 | Stood in a Plain Place"},"content":{"rendered":"\n

Opening Address<\/h2>\n\n\n\n

And coming down with them, he stood in a plain place.<\/em> Luke gives us one clause, eight words long, and the whole feast turns on it. He came down. He stood in a plain place.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Beloved, grace and peace to you this Monday morning, whatever you are carrying into the week. Bloom asks nothing of you at the door, because there is no door.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Sit with us a while, in the spirit of a low Mass, Word and prayer and offering, and nothing pretending to be more.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Today the Church keeps the feast of St. Bartholomew, Apostle, second class, red vestments. There is no commemoration attached to the day. The Monday after the Thirteenth Sunday after Pentecost stands quietly behind it, and the Apostle’s own Mass is what we pray.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Hold that clause from the Gospel all morning. Before a single person was healed, he stood in a plain place, and Luke thought that was worth writing down. He stood in a plain place, and everything this feast teaches happens after that.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Introit<\/h2>\n\n\n\n

Psalm 138<\/a>:17; Psalm 138:1-2<\/h3>\n\n\n\n

But to me thy friends, O God, are made exceedingly honourable: their principality is exceedingly strengthened.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Ps.<\/em> Lord, thou hast proved me, and known me: thou hast known my sitting down, and my rising up. Glory be to the Father, and to the Son, and to the Holy Ghost. As it was in the beginning, is now, and ever shall be, world without end. Amen.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Collect<\/h2>\n\n\n\n

Almighty and everlasting God, Who didst give unto us the holy and devout joy of this day, whereon we keep the feast of Thy blessed Apostle Bartholomew: grant unto Thy Church, we beseech Thee, both to love that which he believed and to preach that which he taught. Through our Lord Jesus Christ, Thy Son, Who liveth and reigneth with Thee in the unity of the Holy Ghost, God, world without end. Amen.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Epistle<\/h2>\n\n\n\n

1 Corinthians 12<\/a>:27-31<\/h3>\n\n\n\n

Brethren: Now you are the body of Christ, and members of member. And God indeed hath set some in the church; first apostles, secondly prophets, thirdly doctors; after that miracles; then the graces of healing, helps, governments, kinds of tongues, interpretations of speeches.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Are all apostles? Are all prophets? Are all doctors? Are all workers of miracles? Have all the grace of healing? Do all speak with tongues? Do all interpret? But be zealous for the better gifts.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Gradual<\/h2>\n\n\n\n

Psalm 44<\/a>:17-18<\/h3>\n\n\n\n

Thou shalt make them princes over all the earth: they shall remember thy name, O Lord.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

V.<\/em> Instead of thy fathers, sons are born to thee: therefore shall people praise thee for ever.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Alleluia, alleluia. V.<\/em> The glorious choir of the Apostles praiseth thee, O Lord. Alleluia.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Gospel<\/h2>\n\n\n\n

Luke 6<\/a>:12-19<\/h3>\n\n\n\n

And it came to pass in those days, that he went out into a mountain to pray, and he passed the whole night in the prayer of God. And when day was come, he called unto him his disciples; and he chose twelve of them (whom also he named apostles). Simon, whom he surnamed Peter, and Andrew his brother, James and John, Philip and Bartholomew, Matthew and Thomas, James the son of Alpheus, and Simon who is called Zelotes, and Jude, the brother of James, and Judas Iscariot, who was the traitor.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

And coming down with them, he stood in a plain place, and the company of his disciples, and a very great multitude of people from all Judea and Jerusalem, and the sea coast both of Tyre and Sidon, who were come to hear him, and to be healed of their diseases. And they that were troubled with unclean spirits, were cured. And all the multitude sought to touch him, for virtue went out from him, and healed all.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

The Offering<\/h2>\n\n\n\n

He stood in a plain place.<\/strong> Four words in the middle of a long Gospel sentence, and I want to spend the morning refusing to walk past them.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Look at what comes immediately before. Jesus goes up a mountain, alone, and prays the entire night. At daybreak he calls the disciples and picks out twelve, and Luke names all twelve in order, which is the single most hierarchical act anywhere in the Gospels.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

He has just made a list. Lists rank. And the very next thing he does is come down off the height. He stood in a plain place with everybody else.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\"Stood
Stood in a plain place: the climb is real, and it ends on the flat with everyone else.<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n\n\n\n

This is not the Sermon on the Mount. Luke has him teach from level ground, which is why this passage and everything after it is called the Sermon on the Plain. He stood in a plain place, and that is the pulpit Luke gives him.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

The detail is not scenery. A teacher on a slope is above his hearers, and a teacher on the flat is not, and Luke chose the second one on purpose. He stood in a plain place, and the crowd could reach him.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Then watch what happens once he is down there. All the multitude sought to touch him, for virtue went out from him, and healed all.<\/em> The healing does not travel down from a height. It happens at arm’s length, on the same ground, from a man who stood in a plain place and let people put their hands on him.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Now the Epistle, because Paul is working the same problem from the other end.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Now you are the body of Christ, and members of member.<\/em> Then he does something that sounds, at first hearing, like the opposite of level ground. God indeed hath set some in the church; first apostles, secondly prophets, thirdly doctors.<\/em><\/p>\n\n\n\n

First, secondly, thirdly. Paul has produced a ranked list, exactly the way Luke produced a ranked list of twelve names, and then Paul does exactly what Jesus does. He comes down.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Are all apostles? Are all prophets? Are all doctors? Are all workers of miracles?<\/em> Six questions in a row, and every one of them expects the answer no. Paul is not scolding the church for failing to be all apostles. He is establishing that the answer no is the normal, intended, unembarrassing condition of most of the body.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

That is the Epistle doing what Luke’s Christ did when he stood in a plain place. The ranking gets stated and then immediately made useless, because a hand that asks why it is not an eye has misunderstood what a body is.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

And this is the feast of Bartholomew, which is the exact right day for it. Ask yourself what you actually know about him.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

He is named in three Gospel lists and in Acts, always paired with Philip, and that is the whole of it. He speaks no recorded word in the Synoptics. He performs no recorded act. Beyond his listing among the Apostles, the encyclopedia says so plainly<\/a>, the New Testament contains no certain information about him at all.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

The traditions that grew up later are enormous and thin at once. Preaching in India, in Armenia, in Persia. Flayed alive and crucified head downward, which is the image Michelangelo painted and which the encyclopedia calls equally uncertain.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Even the popular identification of Bartholomew with Nathanael in John’s Gospel is offered as a theory with, in the encyclopedia’s own phrase, a weak link in it. So here is an Apostle of the second class, red vestments, a full proper Mass, and a biography that honestly comes to a few lines.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

He is on the list. He is ninth or eleventh depending on which Gospel you open, and the list is what the Church has of him, and it kept the feast anyway for nineteen centuries. Bartholomew stood in a plain place that morning with eleven others, and that is very nearly the whole record.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Which is Paul’s argument, wearing sandals. The body does not run on the eminence of its members. He stood in a plain place with twelve men, most of whom we know almost nothing about, and the Church still stands.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Now I want to name the teaching that today’s texts are strong enough to take apart.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

The teaching is that a person’s worth is their function. It is rarely stated in those words. It arrives as a question, asked warmly, about what you do, what you contribute, whether you are pulling your weight, what you bring to the table.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

And the arithmetic underneath it is brutal, because a worth made of function is a worth that can be lost. Get sick and it drops. Get tired and it drops. Get old, or get injured, or run out of the particular capacity that was being counted, and the ledger runs to zero. The man who stood in a plain place kept no such ledger.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Disabled people and chronically ill people live under that ledger constantly, in churches as much as anywhere, and today’s Epistle was written against it. Are all workers of miracles? Have all the grace of healing?<\/em> No, and Paul does not treat that no as a deficiency to be fixed.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Twelve days ago this same pulpit sat with a different piece of the same wound, where wise and foolish alike went to sleep<\/a> and five still went in. That day was about rest, and whether a body that cannot stay awake has failed. Today is a narrower claim and a harder one: not that your limits are forgiven, but that the ranking itself was never load-bearing, because he stood in a plain place before anyone was ranked at all.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Hear the Introit again with that in mind. But to me thy friends, O God, are made exceedingly honourable: their principality is exceedingly strengthened.<\/em> Friends, not staff. The honour in that verse is not attached to output.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

And the Gradual promises princes. Thou shalt make them princes over all the earth.<\/em> The only princes this day recognizes are twelve men on flat ground, one of whom is Bartholomew, about whom almost nothing survives.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\"Stood
Stood in a plain place: nobody was served across a line, because the line was gone.<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n\n\n\n

There is a story sometimes told of a parish that ran a winter meal on Thursday nights. The volunteers stood behind a long serving table with the food on their side, and the people who came in for the meal sat at round tables on the other side of the room, and everyone was kind, and the line between the two halves of that room never moved for six years.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

One winter a volunteer got the flu and the schedule collapsed, and a man who had been sleeping in his car all season came early and started setting up because he knew where everything was kept. When the others arrived he was already carrying chairs.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Somebody made a decision that night that nobody wrote down. They pushed the folding tables together into one long table, put the coffee in the middle instead of at the end, and everybody sat down at the same table and ate the same food at the same time.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

The meal did not get better. The food was identical and the room was still shabby and the man was still sleeping in his car in March. What changed was that for two hours on a Thursday the room stood in a plain place, and several people said later that it was the first time they had been asked their name instead of their situation.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

That is a small story, and I tell it because the Gospel’s own claim is small in exactly the same way. He stood in a plain place. Not a program, not a policy, not a reform. A change in where a person is standing relative to the people he came for.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Yesterday we sat with the one who turned back on the road, and that man was healed while he was walking away<\/a>, at ground level, in the middle of nowhere. Today the location gets stated outright. He came down, and he stood in a plain place, and the power went out of him there.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Notice that the descent costs him nothing he needed. He stood in a plain place and lost none of it. He does not lose authority by standing on the flat. He does not become less by being reachable, which is a fear most institutions carry and most of them never examine.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

The night of prayer was real, and the mountain was real, and the choosing was real. Then he came down. The height was for the deciding, and then he stood in a plain place for the people, and he did not confuse the two.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

I would put that to any church, including this one. Where is the coffee urn, and who stands behind the table, and has anyone tried moving it.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

But be zealous for the better gifts.<\/em> That is where the Epistle stops today, and it is the one instruction Paul leaves standing after he has flattened the ranking.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

He does not say be content with your place. He says want the better gifts, which turns out to mean the ones that build somebody else up rather than the ones that get you noticed. Ambition survives here. It just changes what it is aiming at.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

On Wednesday we prayed with a household assembled out of unlike people<\/a>, and the Epistle today explains why such a household holds. A body made of identical parts is not a body. It is a pile.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Then there is the antiphon sung at Communion in this Mass, from Matthew 19<\/a>. You who have followed me shall sit on seats, judging the twelve tribes of Israel.<\/em> Thrones are promised, and the promise is put in the future, and Saturday we sat with a throne with the furniture of judgment carried out of it<\/a>.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Keep the order straight, because the order is the teaching. The thrones come later. Today he stood in a plain place, and the seats can wait.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

For anyone here who holds none of the theology, this translates with nothing lost at all. Any group that measures its members by usefulness will eventually discard the ones who stop being useful, and it will do it gently, and it will call the discarding something else.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

The test is physical and you can run it in any room. Who is standing higher, who has to reach up, and would anything be lost if everyone stood in a plain place. Usually nothing is lost. Usually what goes is a line that was doing no work except telling people which side of it they were on.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

So take Bartholomew with you into the week. A name on a list, an Apostle with no recorded sentence, honoured in red for nineteen centuries, and it was enough.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

He stood in a plain place. Go stand in one.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Secret<\/h2>\n\n\n\n

We beseech Thee, O Lord, that we who keep the feast of Thy blessed Apostle Bartholomew may, by his help, obtain Thy blessings, since we offer Thee this sacrifice of praise in his honour. Through our Lord Jesus Christ, Thy Son, Who liveth and reigneth with Thee in the unity of the Holy Ghost, God, world without end. Amen.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

The Holding<\/h2>\n\n\n\n

(Benediction, two readings, one truth)<\/em><\/p>\n\n\n\n

For those who hold this in faith:<\/em><\/p>\n\n\n\n

Lord, You prayed all night on a mountain and then came down to where we could reach You. Bless everyone reading this who has been measured by what they can still do, and let them find that the measuring was never Yours.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Make Your Church a place that stood in a plain place, with the tables pushed together and the line taken out of the room. Give us zeal for the better gifts, and let the better gifts be the ones that hold somebody else up. Through Christ our Lord. Amen.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

For those still finding their footing:<\/em><\/p>\n\n\n\n

You are not worth what you produce. If that has been the arithmetic done on you, by a workplace or a family or a church, it was bad arithmetic, and you are allowed to stop running it on yourself.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Are all apostles? No. That was never the failure it was made to sound like. Find the room where everyone stood in a plain place, and if you cannot find one, push two tables together and start it.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

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Frequently Asked Questions<\/h2>\n\n\n
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