All In For The Lord
I have come to set the earth on fire,
and how I wish it were already a blazing.
I have come to not unite but bring division.
Recently, I was visiting with a friend of mine
who is a Dallas Cowboys fan.
Well, I really should say he is a Dallas Cowboys nut,
because he has so much stuff.
It is all over the house.
He has cushions and coasters
and the walls are full of jerseys and helmets.
Everywhere you look, there is a lot of stuff.
Part of me wants to say,
“Do you have a part time investment in the team?”
But he is just an avid, avid fan.
But we cannot really talk football, truth be told,
because I am obviously a San Francisco 49’s fan.
As soon as we get into any discussion,
you can just start to see the sparks.
It is only a matter of time when fire will ignite.
But anyway, we tease each other a lot,
but we would not really fight because he is not that way.
He loves it but it is still just a sport for him, and it is for me
But I have gone to other people's homes,
and believe me, it is not just a sport.
It is a religion.
I have a friend who is a LA Dodgers fan.
Oh, my gosh.
You cannot mention Giants!
You can not even say the word “a giant” of something.
What? What did you say?
We do take our our sports very seriously here in the US,
and we do get into arguments.
I know there are some families
that are really divided over their sports.
Now, look, we know politics divides us.
Let's not go there as we are tired of hearing about that.
But sports has a way of dividing us, too.
It can really get, contentious in some households
where they can argue over it for hours.
It is a sport, but I think it is more like religion.
You have to admire at least this much,
that when somebody is all in on their sport,
whatever team that is, they are all in.
Like my friend who is a Dallas Cowboys fan, he is all in.
Like there is no option for any else.
There is no maybe 49’s could be a good team. No.
It is all about the Cowboys. Right?
It is that sense of “all in” that Jesus is talking about today's gospel.
That he wants to set our hearts on fire.
No, it is not about sports.
He wants us to set our hearts on fire about God
and about his message of love for this world.
And he says that I wish the whole earth was ablaze
with a sense of passion that we could understand
what he is trying to say.
Now, Jesus is not Pollyanna.
He knows that if you do
become that on fire for the Lord,
it is going to cause division
because when you are all that on fire.
Now, it can not be just in thought or just in word.
What he is talking about is in action. Right?
That you are on fire about how we think of the world, and our actions follow that.
And when we are on that fire for the Lord, other people do think you are naughty.
They really do.
I mean, the challenge is is that people find that hard to take.
They want a lot more room for their own values.
For example, when we are all in on
the right to life for a child in the womb,
that can be divisive because people do not agree on that.
It offends people.
When we are all in on defending
people from the death penalty,
people disagree on that.
People believe that there are certain crimes
that deserve death and nothing short of it,
and the more gruesome death, the better,
because they are they need to be punished, need to be.
Or if we are all in, if we believe in Christ Jesus
and the message that we are all individuals
that are loved by God, created by God and loved by God,
and we advocate for those who are on the margins.
Like those who are refugees and immigrants
who find no place in the home, and we advocate for them.
That causes division because there are those who say no,
it is all about us and ours, and we are not one world.
We are individual nations, and that causes division.
When we reach out to those
who are struggling with mental illness,
and we advocate for them.
On that wide spectrum of different struggles,
people start to call us nuts
because we think that they have equal value, and they do.
You see, that is the struggle for us.
And when we advocate for people who are other margins
like the LGBTQ or the divorced,
or you name those other margins,
then when we are all in on those,
then it is divisive, my friends,
or it can be, and it usually is.
We have witnesses in today's readings.
The first reading is the prophet Jeremiah who spoke up,
and he was thrown into a cistern, left to die
because he was too hard to hear, divisive.
And the letter to the Hebrews assures us a whole list,
a cloud of witnesses that have listed off
and fought the right for love in the world,
and they were often martyred or killed for.
Our whole list of saints all have, at one point or another,
fought for a cause that everyone else thought was crazy
because their heart was on fire for the Lord.
You and I are called to be on fire like that.
I get we come here every Sunday
and it is wonderful that we do,
but this is just the start of it, my friends,
because if this is where we come and we finish,
it is not enough.
This is not where we come on fire.
This is where we start the fire.
This is where we light it again, rekindle,
and set our hearts on fire to go out into the world
and to proclaim by our actions that we are on fire.
That is what we are called to do.
Now, I understand just like Jesus,
that is gonna cause a division,
but let's be honest and authentic to ourselves.
We come here to start it,
and the only way that we are going to be able to
continue that fire, to have this deep relationship with Christ
where that conviction, that passion comes from within our hearts.
And then we are authentic.
It is not an effort. Why?
It is because it is who we are,
and we act from who we are,
whether it is speaking up for a homeless
or a LGBT or immigrant or whether we just feed the homeless,
where we build a home for the broken and wounded.
My friends, it is great we come here,
but we must set our hearts on fire for the Lord.
That is what the Lord wants from us.
I have come to set the earth on fire,
and how I wish it were already a blazing.
I have come to not unite but bring division.