Matthew 16:21-26
The Rev. Dr. Robert S. Langworthy, preaching
August 30, 2026
A recent popular YouTube video shows Christians and Satanists talking with each other to clarify the core components of their opposing worldviews. One Satanist said he embraces Satanism because it emphasizes self-affirmation and independence and prioritizes assertion of rights over submission to obligations. By contrast, the Christians said they find self-fulfillment in self-denial, resurrection in renunciation of independence, self-advancement in self-abandonment to Christ.
Right before the events in today’s scripture, Peter declared Jesus to be “the Messiah, the Son of the living God”. “From that time on”, this text says, Jesus gave repeated declarations of how He “must” endure great suffering, be killed, and “on the third day” be raised. It’s worth noting that his disciples picked up on His message about suffering and death, but showed no sign of having heard Him speak of resurrection. Maybe they heard his mention of being “raised” on the third day as just another pious platitude about everyone’s resurrection at Judgment Day – and thus gave it no further thought.
Peter was very upset with Jesus’ talk of suffering and dying. Peter didn’t ask Jesus why He said He “must” undergo such tribulation, but he did “rebuke” Jesus for thinking like that. In response Jesus rebuked Peter for his “human” thinking and Satan-like tempting of Him to take the easy way out. Jesus told Peter to “get behind” Him – that is, to remember that Peter was the student and Jesus the teacher, and that Peter needed to follow Jesus and learn from His example about the necessity of making sacrifices in love’s service. Jesus then declared, “If anyone wants to become my follower, let them deny themselves and take up their cross.”
To deny ourselves is not primarily to deny ourselves things, but to deny ourselves the position of being our central concern. It is to put our interests and wishes in the background and to be willing to give up advantages and benefits to better love God and neighbor. Jesus didn’t see such self-denial as giving up what we most want, but as our giving ourselves over to whom we most want. It is to be caught up in the affairs of Someone bigger and more significant than ourselves.
The Boys in the Boat, a book by David James Brown later made into a movie, tells the story of rowing athletes from the state of Washington who defeated the elite rowers of the Ivy League and went on to win Olympic gold. Their victories came from a teamwork that made their whole greater than the sum of their parts. By their teamwork they achieved what is called “the swing”. In the swing, all eight oarsmen row in such perfect unison that no action by any one of them is out of synch with any other one of them. All at once, sixteen arms pull, sixteen knees fold and unfold, eight backs bend forward and lean back – each action mirrored exactly by each oarsman, from one end of the boat to the other. Only then does the boat reach maximum speed. Only then does it feel as if the boat is a part of each one of them, but moving as if on its own. Only then does the pain in the effort give way to exultation.
Only in this losing of some things is there the gain of everything. The rowing crew’s mentor, George Pocock, described “the spiritual value of rowing” as “the losing of self entirely in the cooperative effort of the crew as a whole”. In a “strange wonder”, he said, “at the very moment you’re most sacrificing yourself for others, you’re also most fully yourself and most fully alive.”
That’s how it is in following Jesus. We subordinate our self-preoccupation to a larger, shared concern and become a part of something greater than any of us; and, in so doing, we multiply the quality of our life infinitely – and eventually eternally.
To follow Jesus, we must deny ourselves. We must also take up our cross. To bear our cross is not to endure some burden or trouble common to human life, but to embrace the means by which we die to our old life of freedom from the duty to serve God and neighbor. To bear our cross is to carry the hangman’s noose by which our old self is executed. It is to abandon ourselves to loving as God wants us to, and thereby to kill off our self-centeredness and our cold, indifferent, do-nothing attitude to the plight of others. Caring like that involves sacrifice, but never loss in the long run!
Following Jesus fulfills us both by the liberation it gives and by the dedication it inspires. It liberates us from meaninglessness, impotence and guilt for a life of purpose, deep soul satisfaction and heavenly empowerment for making a difference for good. It releases us from old constraints and launches us into dedicated action to bring more equity, kindness and righteousness into this benighted world of ours.
This life of liberation and dedication is, however, a costly one! We have to die to self-rule and independence. We have to relinquish the steering wheel and let Jesus drive. We have to give up control over our destination, the route we take and the speed at which we travel. We have to engage in a renunciation of being in charge.
Before, we may have kept Jesus in the passenger seat as a handy travel companion in case of an emergency – such as a medical or money crisis. But if we let Jesus take the wheel, we let Him take control of everything. For example, our money then becomes His; and He calls the shots about our giving, even if we’re not feeling generous or financially secure. Likewise, our mouth becomes His, and we don’t get to gossip, flatter, deceive, intimidate, manipulate, or exaggerate; and we don’t get to hold our tongue when He tells us to put in a good word for Him.
Everything we have belongs to Him if we have renounced being the Owner of our own life. Yet, by that renunciation, our life is elevated, enlarged and energized with a strength beyond our own.
We don’t accomplish this reorientation of our life from self-reliant self-advancement to Jesus-reliant self-abandonment in a single moment. It’s a lifelong process achieved over a lifetime, and not one realized by a single dramatic act of blazing glory. For most of us, it comes about by a lot of little acts repeated over the long haul.
Fred Craddock says it’s not as if God gives us a $1,000 bill and says, “This represents your life. If you decide to give it back to me, your life is new forever.” Rather it’s as if God gives us that $1,000 bill and says, “I want you to take this to the bank and exchange it for rolls of quarters. Then I want you to spend it, 25 cents here, 50 cents there, over the course of your life to do justice, extend compassion and bear witness to Jesus.
The renunciation involved in Christian discipleship is fulfilled in feeding a teenager and hanging out with them to be a sounding board should they want one, visiting a senior citizen and helping them to rehearse and process their past, speaking up against prejudice and hatred when we might get blow-back, sacrificing what we’d loved to have in order to give more to the have-nots.
It is losing our present life to find a higher life. It is the renunciation that leads to resurrection.
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