There’s a book about Jesuit prayer practice—a personal favorite—called “Sleeping with Bread.” It takes its title from a WWII era story, when thousands of children were orphaned and left to starve. The fortunate ones were rescued and placed in refugee camps where they received food and good care. But still, many of these children could not sleep at night. They feared waking up to find themselves once again homeless and without food. Nothing seemed to reassure them. Finally, someone had the idea of giving each child a piece of bread to hold at bedtime. Holding their bread, these children could finally sleep in peace. All through the night the bread reminded them, “Today I ate and I will eat again tomorrow.”
Those of us who have been at church on recent Sundays have been hearing a lot about bread. We’ve been immersed in the sixth chapter of John for a few weeks, so we’ve been reminded of the feeding of the five thousand and Jesus’ self-disclosure as the bread of life. And today we just heard more from John about bread, or at least about the wheat whence it comes. Albeit from a much later part of the Gospel, wherein Jesus is teaching his disciples about his impending passion and death. “Very truly, I tell you, 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.”
We are supposed to take note that— in seed and in bread—God gives abundantly. But implicit in both of these Gospel accounts, and frankly in all of the biblical stories of bread, is a certain tension between giving up and multiplying and receiving. And also a tension between hunger and satisfaction and fullness. Like in the story of sleeping with bread, the Gospel record shows us that—while God longs to offer us fullness and life abundant—it comes at the cost of knowing how hungry we really are, and being willing to be satisfied in ways we had never imagined.
In 248, when the Roman Emperor Valerian commenced his systemic persecution of the nascent Christian church, Laurence—whom we commemorate today—was one of seven deacons who were martyred. But Laurence’s position was sensitive—he managed the treasury of the church and distributed alms to the poor—so he was given a few extra days into gather up the wealth of the church and turn it over to the prefect of Rome before being executed. So he spent three days distributing as much Church property to the poor as possible, and on the third day he presented himself to the Prefect with a small delegation. When ordered to give up the treasury of the Church, Laurence presented the poor, the crippled, the blind and the suffering, and said these were the true treasures of the Church.
Let me suggest that the witness of Laurence of Rome is bread for us to sleep with. Because one of the functions of saints in our church is to remind us that the bread of life, that is Jesus Christ himself, was there for our forebears yesterday, and is still here for us today. And this knowledge, like bread, not only feeds the deepest hunger of our souls, but also overcomes our fears and makes us strong. In giving his life to the emperor, Laurence revealed the ultimate powerlessness of the empire’s coercive tools. And in giving the poor to the Prefect he revealed the true riches of God. If we are willing to receive abundance on God’s terms, God will make us rich too. So go let us out to love the true treasures of the church and be the true treasures of the church. There’s a whole kingdom waiting for us.
