Readings: 1 Kings 19:4-8; Ephesian 4:30-5:2; John 6:41-51
This past Friday the Church celebrated
the Feast of St. Lawrence,
a deacon of the Roman Church
in the middle of the third century,
who was killed during the persecution
launched by the Emperor Valerian
by being tied to a grill and roasted to death.
He is probably best known
for allegedly having said, in the midst of his torture,
“turn me over; I’m done on this side.”
As a result, he is the patron saint
of both cooks and comedians.
Less widely known,
though historically better attested,
is the story of how,
when he was arrested,
he was given three day
to turn over the treasure
of the Roman Church to the emperor.
As the chief deacon of Rome,
Lawrence had charge
of the Church’s financial resources,
as well as for providing care
for the poor and the sick of the city.
But rather than let the Emperor be further enriched
by his persecution of the Church,
Lawrence went and distributed
the resources of the Church
to the poor of the city of Rome.
He then brought a group of the poor
before the imperial officials,
saying, “These are the treasure of the Church.”
It was perhaps because of this insolence
that the emperor decreed
that he die a particularly painful death.
About a century and a half after his death in Rome,
Lawrence was remembered by St. Augustine
in a sermon preached in northern Africa.
Augustine connected Lawrence’s liturgical role as deacon,
distributing the chalice at communion,
with his role as martyr, witnessing to Christ:
“[In the city of Rome] he ministered
the sacred blood of Christ;
there for the sake of Christ’s name
he poured out his own blood” (Sermon 304).
In our Gospel reading today,
Jesus speaks of the Eucharist
as his gift of himself for our sakes,
so that we might have life:
“the bread that I will give
is my flesh for the life of the world.”
For us and for our salvation,
Jesus holds nothing back;
he gives himself wholly to God
so that he can give himself wholly to us.
Lawrence knew that to receive
the body and blood of Christ in the Eucharist
is to receive his act of self-giving into ourselves
and to be transformed.
Augustine says, “Just as he had partaken of a gift of self
at the table of the Lord,
so he prepared to offer such a gift.
In his life he loved Christ;
in his death he followed in his footsteps” (Sermon 304).
Paul, in our second reading, underscores this same message:
“be imitators of God, as beloved children,
and live in love, as Christ loved us
and handed himself over for us
as a sacrificial offering to God for a fragrant aroma.”
We are all called to imitate Christ’s self-giving:
perhaps not like Lawrence,
being violently consumed by material fire
(though we should never forget that to this day
there are Christians around the world
who are laying down their lives for their faith),
but assuredly we must let ourselves be consumed
by the spiritual fire of love,
the fire that that burns away, in Paul’s words,
“all bitterness, fury, anger, shouting, and reviling”
and makes us “kind to one another,
compassionate, forgiving one another”
just as God has forgiven us in Christ.
Another deacon of the ancient Church,
Ephraem the Syrian,
wrote of the Eucharist:
“In your bread hides the Spirit
who cannot be consumed;
in your wine is the fire
that cannot be swallowed.
The Spirit in your bread,
fire in your wine:
behold a wonder heard from our lips.”
When at communion we say “amen”
to the words “The body of Christ,”
we are not simply saying that we believe
that Christ is truly present
under the appearances of bread and wine,
but we are saying “amen”—so be it—
to his entire life of self-sacrificial love;
we say “amen” to taking his spiritual fire
into our very selves
so that we can burn as beacons of love,
a love that is willing to surrender itself entirely
for God and our neighbor.
But all this sounds very idealistic
in the face of the present reality of our Church.
The past few weeks have revealed, once again,
the deep sickness of abuse and secrecy in the Church.
The recent revelations concerning
Cardinal Theodore McCarrick,
the retired Archbishop of Washington DC,
and his decades-long predatory sexual behavior
directed at priests, seminarians, and children,
is one more straw on the poor camel’s back,
one more case of the abuse of power in the Church,
one more case of we clergy closing ranks and covering up,
one more case of choosing the strong and the well-positioned
over the weak and the vulnerable.
And you, the people of God,
might feel that the time has come
to do what many have done already:
to just walk away and be done with it—
to be done with the abuse and the lies
and the broken promises.
I would be hard put to tell you
that you shouldn’t go.
But I will tell you this:
the Church is Ted McCarrick,
but it is also Lawrence of Rome.
The Church is filled with leaders
in whom the fire of spiritual love has grown cold
and been replaced with a passion for pleasure and power,
but it also has saints on fire with the love of Jesus,
who know that the Church’s true treasure
is found in the poor and the weak,
the outcast and the forgotten.
The body of Christ is infected
with a disease of abuse and deceit,
which can only be healed if we let a fever burn within it,
the fever of the love that burns in the heart of Jesus,
that burned in Lawrence,
that burns in us now through God’s Spirit;
the fever of a love that seeks justice for victims
and that holds the powerful accountable,
the fever of a love that can feel at times like rage
but burns with an intensity greater
than any bitterness, fury, and anger that we can muster.
I cannot ask you to stay by ignoring
the Ted McCarrick’s of the Church.
But I will ask you to stay
because of the Spirit in the bread
and the fire in the wine;
I will ask you to stay
because at the Lord’s table
where Lawrence’s soul caught fire
our hearts too can come to burn
with the love of Jesus,
the love that is the fever
that can purify and heal the Church.
I will ask you to stay because it is your Church.
Don’t let anyone take it from you.
