Wingham United Church

June 21, 2026

Speaking the Inconvenient Truth

Jeremiah 20:7-13

Psalm 69:7-10, 16-18

Matthew 10:24-39

 

          When Jeremiah was first called upon by God to become a prophet, he was hesitant. He didn’t want the job. “But I’m only a boy!” he said, “I don’t know what to say” was his best excuse. He was too young. No one would listen to him. Prophecy was best suited for the elders, those whom people already respected and would listen to. People who possessed the gift of the gab, as they say.

          But God had picked Jeremiah and assured him he was the man for the job. God would give him the words to say. That is essentially the definition of a prophet, one who delivers a message from God to God’s people. A mailman, of sorts. Besides, for this job, faith was far more important than skill. God needed someone who would listen, then speak. You see, God doesn’t call the qualified; God qualifies the called.

          Jeremiah, however, had the misfortune of being called during a particularly dark period in the life of God’s people, a time when they had largely turned away from God and God’s commandments. They needed a wake-up call, and Jeremiah was sent to deliver it. It was not a popular message. Jeremiah couldn’t do his job and remain politically correct. He faced the same criticisms that anyone who speaks God’s truth frequently faces even in our own time. Then, as now, people tend to believe what they want to believe and have little patience for those who tell them something different. His shouts of “violence and destruction!” went largely ignored. He was ridiculed, discredited, isolated, and persecuted. Even his close friends conspired to either shut him up or get rid of him.

          So, on this particular day, Jeremiah has had enough and he lashes out in frustration. He accuses God of luring him into this mess, of coercing him to become something he never wanted in the first place. There are those who cringe at the opening few lines of this passage. How dare Jeremiah, or anyone, question God this way, let alone express anger at God? Some call it blasphemy.

I think it is just being honest. It’s also, perhaps, just part of being faithful. Many modern-day clergy have felt the same way. Few knew when they accepted the call all that goes along with life in ministry, and I doubt there are any who have not, on occasion, looked heavenward and asked God, “What did you get me into?” But, as we read on in our scripture, we notice that once Jeremiah has had his rant and blown off some steam, he remembers that, although his is a hard, challenging task, God is with him throughout, always there. And it is far better to have God on your side than to trust in the support of fickle friends. In the end, Jeremiah sings to the Lord and praises his God, despite the hardship and pain of being God’s truth-speaker.

Our psalm today follows a similar pattern. David expresses his anger at the cost of being a man after God’s own heart. He has become alienated, isolated, even his relatives have disowned him. When he follows the rules of Torah, he is insulted for it. He has become the topic of gossip at the city gates, the Ancient Near East equivalent of Tim Horton’s. Drunkards are even making up songs about him. He is utterly humiliated and alone, and all for doing what God had told him to do.

But … he is still faithful to God. He trusts that, at the appropriate time, he will be vindicated and delivered from those who have treated him so poorly because of his faith. He only asks that God give him the strength to hold out until that time comes.

          The plight of David and Jeremiah, and many, many others is a common one. No one likes the person who speaks the inconvenient truth, and people often get angry and deny the truth they speak, even when they know deep down inside that it is the truth. You don’t have to go far to see the evidence of this. People still deny the reality of climate change, not because they still don’t believe it exists, but because they are not willing to change their habits to address it.

Truth, it seems, has become a commodity that can be traded for a more convenient or inexpensive option. But it has always been thus. Jeremiah’s lament shows us that very little has changed. Yet, when he tries to keep silent and “mind his own business”, the truth burns within him and he cannot hold it in.

I think every preacher knows the feeling as well. The difficult, inconvenient truths we sometimes feel called to express are often not popular, rarely politically correct, and have, on far too many occasions, lead to job insecurity or even the end of a pastoral relationship. Clergy in our time are coached to be diplomatic and passive. People, we’re told, don’t want to come to church if it makes them feel bad about themselves. They need to be told what good Christians they are, even if it isn’t necessarily true.

It is easier to shoot the messenger than admit and address the truth of the message. Somehow the idea has come about that this is what Jesus would do – that Jesus was always gentle and passive, like those old paintings we often see hanging in Sunday School rooms. That is all nonsense, of course. Jesus was crucified specifically because he was not politically correct. He was executed because, as he states so clearly in our gospel reading today, he came not to bring peace to the earth, but to bring a sword.

Peace, of course, is the ultimate goal, but it can never happen until we admit the errors we have made and then stop making them. Our world needs prophets like Jeremiah who are willing to tell the truth regardless of the consequences, knowing that the reward will eventually be far greater than anything he gave up in the name of following God’s will.

Perhaps more than our need for prophets, though, is our need for more disciples, as defined by Jesus in Matthew’s gospel today. A disciple is a learner, or student. We are, therefore, called to be constantly learning from our teacher, the one the original disciples called Rabbi. When Jesus says that a disciple is not above the teacher, I believe he is telling us that we will never reach a point, at least in this lifetime, when we will have learned all he has to teach us. Being a disciple, then, is a lifelong journey.

Jesus also tells us, however, that the disciple should be ‘like’ the teacher, which I believe means that we are called to emulate him, to do the things he did, as closely as we are able, to love as he loved, and also to call out injustice and sin, as he did.

Although a disciple is not the same thing as an apostle, who is a messenger sent to declare the truth, or a prophet, who delivers a message straight from God, we are still commanded in this passage to listen to what Jesus tells us in the dark or whispers in our ear, then declare it from the rooftops in the light of day. What we learn from our teacher we are to share boldly. When the Spirit awakens us to an injustice, we must call it out and work to correct it. When Jesus points out our discrimination or racism, we must work to eliminate all but universal love for all God’s children and for all Creation. When we see the harm we are doing to that Creation, we must not only stop the harm we are doing, but do all we can to heal the wounds we have inflicted.

Jesus, however, does not want his disciples feeling, like Jeremiah, that they had been tricked into this task. He makes it plain, up front, that what he demands from us will not be easy. If we follow him faithfully, we may suffer many of the same consequences that David and Jeremiah lament.

For the sake of the Kingdom, and all who will come after us in this world, we must follow our call to be disciples of Christ without regard for whether it is the popular choice. In our world so filled with greed, lust, injustice, and oppression, the right choice will inevitably not be the popular one, but it is still the right one. Doing what is right and good is inconvenient and sometimes expensive. Otherwise, everyone would already be doing it. But the cost of ignoring the teachings of scripture and the Spirit will be far greater and longer lasting, both for us as individual souls and for the planet we leave our children and grandchildren.

The inconvenient truths we avoid today will be the issues that they must face tomorrow. When we pray the Lord’s Prayer, we pray that God’s Kingdom will come and God’s will be done on earth, as it is in heaven. We cannot pray for that to happen, then ignore God’s call to help it come to pass. The inconvenient truth is that God will not impose God’s will upon us. We must accept it and submit to it if we want our prayer to ever be answered. The good news is that, through it all, we do not do it alone. If we commit to working with God, to being true disciples of Christ, God works with us, in us, and through us.

The inconvenient truth is that Christ never said living faithfully would be easy or popular, he only assured us that it would be worth the cost. Long before Jesus walked among us, Jeremiah learned this difficult truth. So did David. So have many, many more before and since. We have a choice to make: a choice between ease, comfort, and popularity in this lifetime, or the eternal blessing of God’s grace for eternity.

Rev. Colin Snyder, MDiv