When Silence is Not an Option
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Speaking Up
Speaking Up
Texts: Luke 12:49–56; Isaiah 5:1–7
I’d prefer a nice, safe parable.
A little sheep wandering off and the shepherd going to find it.
A lost coin discovered under the couch cushions.
But this Sunday Jesus is difficult.
49 “I came to bring fire to the earth, and how I wish it were already kindled!
51 Do you think that I have come to bring peace to the earth? No, I tell you, but rather division!
Gentle Jesus meek and mild, blessing the children, telling us to love one another, reminding us not to worry too much. I love that.
We don’t much like Jesus telling us that his presence will bring conflict.
And then we turn back to Isaiah and hear him singing a love song for God’s vineyard.
Lovely, poetic language.
You think this is going to be one of those sweet psalms of creation. But no.
By the time Isaiah is done singing, you realize it’s less a love song than a courtroom indictment.
God expected the vineyard—God’s chosen people—to yield good grapes.
Instead, they produced wild, bitter fruit.
7 For the vineyard of the Lord of hosts is the house of Israel, and the people of Judah are his pleasant planting; he expected justice, but saw bloodshed; righteousness, but heard a cry!
God expected justice and righteousness;
what God got was bloodshed and cries of anguish.
Jesus and Isaiah—what a pair to preach on.
Neither is particularly interested in making us comfortable.
Will Willimon tells a story of greeting a family after the service and the father said:
I brought my family to church to calm them down and now you’ve riled them up.
Gospel Conflict
Gospel Conflict
Jesus says, “I came to bring fire.” We don’t like to hear that, but maybe we need to.
We live in a world that would prefer Christians to keep quiet. Smile politely.
Say our prayers.
But whatever you do, don’t rock the boat.
And that is not just Christians vs the world - that is often - maybe more often - Christians vs Christians.
And if we’re honest, many of us are only too happy to oblige. Conflict frightens us.
We’re shy about speaking up, especially when we know what we say will offend someone.
We want harmony. We want people to like us. We want peace—though too often
…what we mean by peace is simply the absence of conflict.
But here is Jesus, standing in front of us, telling us that peace without truth is not peace at all.
Isaiah puts it even more bluntly.
God looked at Israel—the vineyard God planted with such care—and expected to see justice.
Instead, God saw bloodshed.
God expected righteousness.
Instead, God heard cries of distress. And Isaiah does the scandalous thing:
…he speaks this word of judgment against his own people.
He tells Israel that they have failed their God.
Speaking Out
Speaking Out
Now let’s be clear. Speaking truth to power is never easy. It wasn’t for Isaiah. It wasn’t for Jesus. It isn’t for us.
Isaiah risked being called unpatriotic, a traitor even, for daring to say that God’s own people had become corrupt.
7 …he expected justice, but saw bloodshed; righteousness, but heard a cry!
Jesus, for his part, wound up nailed to a cross because he spoke and lived truth.
The lies of the religious and political powers of his day.
And we — we risk something too.
Bring up the war in Gaza when you’re out with your friends.
Say out loud that innocent people are starving in a conflict we all watch from a safe distance, and someone will accuse you of taking sides.
Suggest that perhaps Israel—like any nation—must be held accountable when it sheds blood unjustly, and you’ll quickly learn what division feels like.
But how can we read Isaiah and not feel compelled to say something?
How can we listen to Jesus and think our job is to stay silent?
God’s Uncomfortable Word
God’s Uncomfortable Word
The prophetic word of God will not let us rest easy in the comfort of our silence.
We would love a gospel that tells us everything is fine, that we just need to be nice, and one day God will sort out the details.
But Jesus says no: he brings fire, division, conflict—not because he enjoys chaos, but because God’s truth is disruptive.
52 From now on five in one household will be divided, three against two and two against three;
God’s truth unsettles our lies.
God’s truth exposes injustice.
When a child goes to bed hungry in Gaza
—or Khayelitsha, Dunoon, Joe Slovoe…
—while others argue politics, that is not peace.
When blood is shed and cries of anguish rise from the streets, and we say nothing, that is not righteousness.
That is avoidance. That is cowardice.
And Jesus says, “I came to set a fire under you.”
The Vineyard and the Judge
The Vineyard and the Judge
Isaiah’s vineyard song is a reminder that we are not spectators.
1 Let me sing for my beloved my love-song concerning his vineyard: My beloved had a vineyard on a very fertile hill.
We are the vineyard.
God has invested care, love, protection, and nurture in us. God expects fruit—justice and righteousness.
But what fruit do we bear?
3 And now, inhabitants of Jerusalem and people of Judah, judge between me and my vineyard.
Do our churches produce the sweet grapes of compassion, mercy, justice?
Or do we produce wild grapes—silence in the face of suffering, polite avoidance of uncomfortable truths,
complicity with systems that oppress the vulnerable?
We Methodists like to think of ourselves as reasonable,
We’re moderate, decent folk.
But Isaiah won’t let us hide behind moderation. Jesus won’t let us hide behind niceness.
The gospel demands fruit.
And producing fruit is hard work.
2 He dug it and cleared it of stones, and planted it with choice vines; he built a watchtower in the midst of it, and hewed out a wine vat in it; he expected it to yield grapes, but it yielded wild grapes.
Speaking the Truth in Love
Speaking the Truth in Love
Of course, someone will say, “But shouldn’t we speak the truth in love?” Yes—absolutely…
15 But speaking the truth in love, we must grow up in every way into him who is the head, into Christ,
Love doesn’t mean silence.
Love doesn’t mean keeping the peace at all costs.
Love means refusing to let lies go unchallenged.
Love means giving voice to those whose cries have gone unheard.
Our truth-telling must be motivated not by self-righteousness, but by compassion, by the desire for the other’s healing and salvation.
We speak with love.
We speak humbly.
We acknowledge our limited understanding.
But we speak.
And our speaking might cause division.
53 they will be divided: father against son and son against father, mother against daughter and daughter against mother, mother-in-law against her daughter-in-law and daughter-in-law against mother-in-law.”
Sometimes - when we speak up - others might not like it.
God’s Word, Not Just Our Opinion
God’s Word, Not Just Our Opinion
Here’s something else: when we speak prophetically, we must remember that it’s not just about our opinions.
Our opinions come and go. They are shaped by culture, politics, prejudice, personal experience.
But the prophetic word is grounded in God’s truth.
Isaiah didn’t say, “Well, in my opinion, Israel has a corruption problem.”
No—he said, “Thus says the Lord.”
Jesus didn’t say, “I’ve been thinking peace might be overrated.”
No—he declared that God’s reign will disrupt false peace and expose false righteousness.
How did Jesus offend people?
***
Perhaps these words are inspiring you to go tell someone what you think about their opinions…
But Jesus wasy off offending wasn’t self-righteous. He didn’t come wagging a finger at everyone else’s sins while excusing his own.
He embodied the truth he spoke.
His words were backed by the cross.
Jesus loved the poor enough to tell the truth to the rich.
Jesus loved the broken enough to risk breaking the rules.
Jesus loved God enough to challenge every cheap imitation of holiness.
So when we speak today about injustice.
When we speak about grace.
Our authority is not our own brilliance or political savvy. Our self righteousness.
Our authority is God’s word: the God who expected justice, the God who demands righteousness, but not the sort of egotistical righteousness we expect.
Jesus IS the Word of God. And Jesus challenges us to love the way he loved.
Loving the poor enough to challenge the rich.
The broken enough to break the rules.
Loved God enough to challenge cheap imitations of holiness.
Practical Courage
Practical Courage
So how do we do it? How do we have hard conversations with ourselve and with others, without destroying one another?
Courage
Humility
Curiosity
Holy Spirit
Pray for Courage
Pray for Courage
Most of us don’t need the courage of the early Christians to face lions in the Colosseum.
But fear and insecurity is the thing that always escalates our conflicts - Jesus says that he has come to cause some division but he also says - Blessed are the peacemakers.
9 “Blessed are the peacemakers, for they will be called children of God.
We need courage to speak prophetically - without losing our grip on our own stability. With prayer we learn to speak with God’s help.
7 for God did not give us a spirit of cowardice, but rather a spirit of power and of love and of self-discipline.
We need courage to face awkward silence at the dinner table.
We need courage enough to face the complications in our friendships.
But we also need the courage sometimes to face the fact that we are not always right - and thats where some humility comes in.
Courage
Humility
Curiosity
Holy Spirit
Pray for Humility
Pray for Humility
Snoopy is writing a book of Theology in Charlie Brown.
Second, we practice humility. We say, “This is how I hear God’s word. This is what I believe God is saying.”
We acknowledge that we might be wrong — but we cannot be silent.
Our specific Methodist tradition makes room for people with different opinions. We realise that nobody knows everything.
So we are able to say - hey I think this is wrong / this is right - lets pray about this together.
And that brings me to the third thing we need - partnered with humility - curiosity:
Courage
Humility
Curiosity
Holy Spirit
Curiosity
Curiosity
Speaking prophetically is not shouting others down.
2 He will not cry or lift up his voice, or make it heard in the street; 3 a bruised reed he will not break, and a dimly burning wick he will not quench; he will faithfully bring forth justice.
It is creating space for real conversation, grounded in God’s truth, where we dare to name the cries of suffering we would rather not hear. Where we face the love that God places in our hearts and call for change.
And in all of this we need the help of God the Holy Spirit.
Courage
Humility
Curiosity
Holy Spirit
Holy Spirit
Holy Spirit
Jesus promised division, yes
— but he also promised that his Spirit would be with us.
The Spirit gives us words we cannot find on our own.
The Spirit gives us strength to endure conflict. The Spirit turns our faltering speech into God’s living word.
A Difficult Church?
A Difficult Church?
I think sometimes the church imagines its job is to smooth things over, to keep everybody happy.
But friends, that is not our calling.
Our calling is to be faithful.
Our calling is to be the vineyard that produces good fruit—justice, righteousness, compassion.
When the world says,
“Keep quiet,”
the church must say, “We cannot be silent.”
When the world says,
“Don’t take sides,”
the church must say, “We are on the side of the poor, the hungry, the oppressed, because that is where Christ is.”
When the world says, “Peace, peace,” while blood runs in the streets, the church must say, with the prophet Jeremiah,
14 They have treated the wound of my people carelessly, saying, “Peace, peace,” when there is no peace.
Fire and Fruit
Fire and Fruit
So yes—Jesus brings fire. Yes—Isaiah’s vineyard song ends with judgment. But the purpose of fire is not destruction; it is purification.
The purpose of judgment is not condemnation; it is to call us back to God.
God still longs for a vineyard that produces sweet fruit. God still longs for a people who will bear witness to justice and righteousness.
God still longs for a church unafraid to speak.
And maybe, just maybe, God is longing for you—yes, you—to find your voice.
