Homily for August 19 20th Sunday of the Year

Gospel
Lk 12:49-53

Jesus said to his disciples:
“I have come to set the earth on fire,
and how I wish it were already blazing! 
There is a baptism with which I must be baptized,
and how great is my anguish until it is accomplished! 
Do you think that I have come to establish peace on the earth? 
No, I tell you, but rather division. 
From now on a household of five will be divided,
three against two and two against three;
a father will be divided against his son
and a son against his father,
a mother against her daughter
and a daughter against her mother,
a mother-in-law against her daughter-in-law
and a daughter-in-law against her mother-in-law.”
I hope you'll bear with me this morning as I pull many different things together. Dwight and Audrey are celebrating their 40th wedding anniversary today, and so we're going to renew their vows. I let them pick the first two readings because of their anniversary, and if you noticed that the Gospel doesn't fit, you're right. So now I'm going to try to make them fit together, so bear with me.
First, I want to say a word about the first reading from Tobit. The book of Tobit is a beautiful book. In that story there is a woman named Sarah, who's been married seven times. And each time, the bridegroom drops dead the night of the wedding. So the word is out that she is jinxed. The archangel Raphael put the young man, Tobias, up to asking for her hand in marriage.
Tobias says, "No, I've heard about her."
Raphael says, “It’ll be okay.” So he asks her father for her hand in marriage. The father says, "She's yours. Even if I promised her to somebody else, I have to give her to you." And then he says, "Quick, go dig a grave."
The first reading is the prayer that the archangel Raphael tells the young man Tobias to say in their honeymoon chamber, and it works. They wake up in the morning, and they're alive! So the book of Tobit becomes a story of a marriage made in heaven.
Now, to the Gospel reading. I think the connection of that beautiful second reading about love being patient and kind is obvious. In the Gospel, when I read that, I thought, "What question does that Gospel answer?" I want to give just some pragmatic reflections.
The question that came to me was, "How do you keep fire in you when your convictions and your enthusiasms are not always appreciated, and when they bring you into conflict with others?
Do you know what I mean? To have fire and passion in your heart is a mixed blessing. When you have passion about something, it gives you life and energy, and it makes life worth living. But it also brings you heartache, and it brings you conflict with others.
If I do the flip side of that -- how many of you have encountered this situation? -- sometimes people who have passion for different causes are a real pain you know where. Do you know what I mean? But the community needs their witness.
How many of you here have ever felt that you were in a situation where, to keep peace you had to keep your mouth shut, or to keep peace, you had to be unfaithful to your commitment or your passion? Or where to keep peace and avoid conflict, you had to somehow compromise your own integrity? Have you ever felt that?
The good news of the Gospel is that you don't have to do that. That's not what God asks us to do. Jesus said, "Yes, I am on fire! I have conviction! I have commitment. I haven't come just for peace that is merely the absence of tension or conflict. I know my message might cause conflict and division, and so be it." That can be good news, the freedom to maintain our integrity, even if it brings us into conflict. And yet, I think there's another side to that.
This weekend -- I've been with our deacon candidates all weekend on a retreat. And part of the theme of the retreat has been this: To remind them that the diaconate is a gift to the church. But not everybody is going to be eager to receive that gift, and they won't always be appreciated. So what do they do when that happens? One of the things we've been reminding them is, “It's not about you. It's not about what you want, but it's about a bigger picture.”
Have you ever felt like telling somebody that, when they inappropriately stand for convictions, or they make a big deal out of something that isn't really a big deal? And you want to tell them, "Look, this isn't about you. There's something bigger involved."
Well, I think, in a way, that applies to this gift of marriage, as well. Marriage is a beautiful gift to God's church. That's why we celebrate it here. And it's why we can celebrate an anniversary. And yet -- well, today Dwight and Audrey celebrate their 40th anniversary but I can say to them that it isn’t about you. How many times, when you're married, do you have to say that? "It's not about me; it's not about my goals; it's not about my happiness and my fulfillment. It's about something bigger than both of us, and we have to apprentice ourselves to it." If the only reason for getting married is about me, my happiness, my fulfillment, then there is no reason to stay married when I don’t feel happy. But marriage is something bigger. It is a gift to the Church. It is a sign of God’s love. It isn’t just about the two people. It’s about God’s love in the world.
As our life together in the church, it's not about us. It's about something bigger. And so, yes, we're called to keep that fire in our heart, even when it's inconvenient, even when it causes conflict, even when it brings us pain. But at the same time, we're called to realize it's not about us. It's about something bigger and deeper and richer. And our life together, our faith, what we celebrate, is all God's gift to the church.
And so, as we come together today with our many passions, our many histories, let's ask God to keep the fire in our hearts, but help us also realize it's not about us, it's about God and what God seeks to do in our midst.
I wish I could reduce it all to a simple formula. But I can’t. The question of how we preserve fire in our hearts and integrity in our lives in the midst of conflict and divisions is one we all struggle with. We can try to support each other in that struggle. We can build communities in which we talk about it, help each other find the way and support each other.
Let’s pray that this be true of us.