St. Lawrence, Deacon and Martyr

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.