We have become very fond of things that are reversible or with return options. We like hotel reservations with “free cancellation.” We buy something only after checking the return policy. We sign up for subscriptions with a free trial and sometimes cancel before the charge appears. We choose airline tickets that can be changed without penalty, because even our plans now come with escape clauses. We want options. We want an exit. We want to know, “If this goes badly, can I get my old life back?”
Then Jesus gives us perhaps the least refundable image in the Gospel: a grain of wheat falling into the earth. Once it goes in, there is no customer-service desk underground. The grain becomes fruitful precisely because it cannot remain what it was. It surrenders the possibility of going back, or returning to its original state. It goes to a point of no return.
And then the Church places Saint Lawrence beside that Gospel. Lawrence lived in Rome in 258, when Emperor Valerian ordered bishops, priests and deacons to be executed and Christian property confiscated. St. Cyprian of Carthage actually records the imperial order and the martyrdom of Pope Sixtus II on August 6. Lawrence followed four days later.
Imagine those four days. Lawrence knew his bishop had been killed. He knew deacons were specifically named in the decree. Every knock on the door must have sounded different. Every morning he woke up knowing that somewhere in Rome somebody was probably looking for him. There was still time to run. And yet Lawrence stayed.
Not because Christians are supposed to have a strange attraction to death. Lawrence had simply reached that place where protecting his life was no longer the most important thing in his life. Most of our martyrdoms are much smaller. Marriage eventually reaches moments when you cannot keep asking, “What am I getting out of this?” Children are wonderful, but nobody examining a newborn at 3:17 in the morning says, “What an excellent return on investment.” or Caring for an aging parent, or keeping a promise when it becomes inconvenient, these are little points of no return. So is the student who studies honestly when cheating would be easier, the employee who refuses the profitable shortcut, or the young person who chooses what is right even when it costs his or her popularity.
We want to love generously while retaining the receipt. Jesus says the grain that protects itself “remains just a grain of wheat.” That may be one of the saddest descriptions of a human life: completely preserved, carefully protected, and alone.
Lawrence had spent his ministry as a deacon caring for the poor and administering the Church’s charity. The ancient tradition remembered by Ambrose says that when authorities demanded the Church’s wealth, he pointed to the poor as its treasure. Long before Lawrence surrendered his body, he had learned to surrender possession, security and control.
Perhaps that is why he could face the final moment. Nobody suddenly becomes a grain of wheat on the day of martyrdom. We become one every time we give something to God and quietly stop asking for it back. And perhaps the great question of this feast is not, “Would I die for Christ?” It is much closer to home: What am I still refusing to plant because I am afraid I might not get it back?