Eve of the Commemoration of St. Lawrence, Deacon and Martyr
St. Mary's Episcopal Church
The Rev'd Charles Everson
August 8, 2017
If someone
held you at gunpoint and told you to produce the treasures of St. Mary’s, what
would you give them? Would it be the
golden candlesticks, or maybe the organ, or the stained glass windows?
In the year
258, there was a persecution attacking the church at Rome. One of the persecutors demanded that
Lawrence, a local archdeacon, bring him the Church’s treasures. Lawrence responded by pointing to a crowd of
poor people, saying, “These are the treasures of the Church.”
Deacon
Lawrence had different priorities than his persecutors did. For him, the poor were much more valuable
than Rome’s most expensive golden patens and chalices. Those of us who have chosen to follow Christ
have chosen to have different priorities than the world does. For us, the first shall be last and the last shall be
first. For us, as Jesus says to us in
the Gospel today, “Unless a grain of wheat falls into the earth and dies, it
remains just a single grain; but if it dies, it bears much fruit.” For us too, in order to live, we must die.
This is the
great paradox of the Christian life. We
are called to deny ourselves and take up our cross daily and follow Jesus. We are called to endure with Christ the pain
and suffering of a horrible death on the cross, but then we are promised that
we will rise to new life with him in resurrection. We are called to order our values and
priorities in the topsy turvy way of the Kingdom of God.
As you
reflect on where you are in your journey, where is the Lord asking you to
rearrange your priorities? What thing do
you value that the Lord may be asking you to move a few steps down the priority
list? In your life, what represents the golden
candlesticks or the organ or the stained glass window? What represents the poor?
Today we
remember St. Lawrence, deacon and martyr.
May we, like him, choose to live in a world where the first shall be
last and the last shall be first and all things find their meaning in the death
and resurrection of our Lord.
St.
Lawrence, pray for us. Amen.
