Grace, mercy, and peace to you from God our Father and our Lord and Savior, Jesus Christ. “Then Jesus told his disciples, ‘If anyone would come after me, let him deny himself and take up his cross and follow me. For whoever would save his life will lose it, but whoever loses his life for my sake will find it’” (Matt. 16:24-25, ESV).[1] Jesus speaks these words in today’s Gospel reading, which comes immediately after last week’s lesson, in which Simon Peter boldly confessed Jesus to be “the Christ, the Son of the living God” (Matt. 16:16), for which Jesus blessed him, gave him the new name Peter, and promised to build his Church on the rock of Peter’s confession of faith. But at the end of the encounter, Jesus strictly warned the disciples not to tell anyone he was the Christ (or Messiah). The reason for this, we discovered, was that the disciples didn’t yet understand what it would mean for Jesus to be the Christ. Today we find out:

“From that time Jesus began to show his disciples that he must go to Jerusalem and suffer many things from the elders and the chief priests and scribes, and be killed, and on the third day be raised” (Matt. 16:21).

This is Jesus’ first “passion prediction,” as we call it—his first prophecy of his suffering, death, and resurrection. By the time we get to the upper room on the night of his arrest, he will have made three such predictions, giving more detail each time.

Jesus told his disciples “he must… suffer… and be killed, and on the third day be raised.” It was necessary (dei`) for Jesus to die. It’s what he came to do. He was born to die for the sins of the world, including yours and mine, so that we could be forgiven, set free, and live forever with him. Not only was Jesus’ death unavoidable. “It was necessary.” That’s what it meant for him to be the Christ. Jesus the Messiah did not come as a conquering king, but as the Suffering Servant.

But Peter didn’t want to hear about that. He didn’t like what Jesus was saying. So he took Jesus aside and rebuked him! Peter actually took Jesus to task and declared, “Far be it from you, Lord! This shall never happen to you” (Matt. 16:22). In Greek, Peter’s words are actually an appeal for God’s mercy: “May God be merciful to you, Lord!” But Peter wants God’s mercy to spare Jesus from the cross. Jesus came so that God’s mercy would instead be poured out upon sinners. That’s why he had to die.

Peter was trying to stop Jesus from fulfilling his purpose. He was getting in the way of Christ’s goal. My friend, Pastor Robert Harmon, likes to call this the time that Peter tried to save the Church from Jesus! Can you imagine?! Peter was totally out of line.

And Jesus told him that. “Get behind me, Satan! You are a hindrance to me. For you are not setting your mind on the things of God, but on the things of man” (v. 23).

“Get behind me, Satan”? Jesus called Peter “Satan”? Jesus equated his number one apostle with the prince of demons? How can that be? I know that Peter was out of line, but Jesus seems to go a little overboard in his rebuke, don’t you think?

It’s hard to hear in English, but in Greek, Jesus speaks to Peter almost the exact same words he spoke after his temptation by the devil in the wilderness. It’s the same verb (u{page). “Be gone, Satan!” (Matt. 4:10). Get away from me! “Get behind me, Satan!” Jesus’ response to Peter shows that he regards Peter’s words as a temptation straight from the pit of hell. The words Peter speaks are the words of the devil himself. Through Peter, Satan is trying to derail Jesus, to get him off course, to interrupt and, if possible, disrupt Jesus’ Messianic mission.

And Jesus will have none of it. He tells Peter, “You are a hindrance to me.” The Greek word, skavndalon, means “stumbling block.” It can also mean a trap or snare for catching animals. It’s where we get the English word scandal from. Peter is setting a trap for Jesus, but he will not take the bait.

Peter would probably say that his words come from a good place. His intentions are good. He’s only looking out for Jesus and what’s best for his beloved Rabbi. But Jesus warns him, “you are not setting your mind on the things of God, but on the things of man” (v. 23). Peter isn’t speaking by the power of the Holy Spirit, but from his own sinful flesh, which always seeks comfort, pleasure, and the path of least resistance.

But Jesus knows Peter isn’t the problem. All of us struggle to see the sense of a suffering Messiah, a dying Christ. That is why Jesus turns to his disciples and says, “If anyone would come after me, let him deny himself, and take up his cross and follow me. For whoever would save his life will lose it, but whoever loses his life for my sake will find it” (vv. 24-25). If we want to follow Jesus—if we want to be his disciples—then we must deny ourselves and take up our cross. Neither of those is easy to do.

Americans, in particular, aren’t very good at denying ourselves. We’re consumers. If we want something, we buy it. If we see something that looks good, we eat it. If we want to do something, we do it. We’re accustomed to having our wants satisfied—but Jesus says that discipleship begins by denying ourselves.

I sometimes think that American Christians are ill-prepared for times of persecution. How will we face hunger or thirst when we can’t even skip lunch? How will we endure torture when we’re used to just popping pills for the slightest aches and pains? How will we confess the name of Christ when we are afraid to even mention Jesus to our friends and neighbors? As you can see, we have some work to do in the self-denial department.

And what does it mean to take up our cross? If someone struggles with chronic pain or illness, we might say, “He really has a cross to bear.” Or if a person has a particularly mean and nasty spouse, we say, “She’s certainly carrying her cross, isn’t she?” I wouldn’t wish either of those kinds of suffering on anyone, including my worst enemy. But that’s not the kind of cross Jesus is talking about when he says to take up our cross and follow him.

To paraphrase Dietrich Bonhoeffer, the cross is not ordinary human suffering.[2] The cross is the suffering that comes from being a disciple of Jesus. It’s Christian suffering. Taking up your cross means that you are willing to endure whatever it takes to follow Jesus, even if it means resisting temptation, letting insults roll off your back, or forgiving and blessing the people who persecute us and try to make our lives a living hell. That’s what it means to bear your cross.

In the ancient world, the cross was not a symbol or metaphor for merely human suffering. The cross was an ever-present reality of Roman cruelty. Crucifixion was a form of state-sponsored terror to subjugate conquered peoples. The cross was bloody, ugly, and horrific. It was so painful that it gave us the word excruciating (which literally means “from the cross”) in order to describe the worst possible pain and suffering.

So when Jesus tells us to deny ourselves, take up our cross, and follow him, he is not speaking in metaphor. He speaks plainly about the high cost of discipleship. Salvation is a free gift from God, but it wasn’t cheap for God. It cost God the life of his Son. And following Jesus may cost us more than we ever imagined.

Whenever we welcome somebody new into membership here at Epiphany, we ask them a series of questions that includes the following question: “Do you intend to continue in this confession and Church and to suffer all, even death, rather than fall away from it?”[3] In other words, would you rather die than stop being a Christian? Would you rather die than deny Jesus? It’s a serious question. I always tell our confirmation students to give heed before they answer. After all, you don’t want to lie in front of God, your family, and the entire congregation. To follow Christ is to carry our cross. And if that sounds frightening, it should. Because none of us is strong enough to carry that cross by ourselves.

The Good News is that Jesus does not call us to follow him anywhere that he himself is unwilling to go or has not already gone. Jesus carried his own cross from the palace of Pontius Pilate to the hill of Golgotha. There he bore our sin and shame to the cross. There he shed his blood to wash away our sins. There, with his dying breaths, he prayed for God to forgive us. And there he died for you. That was Jesus’ cross.

Ultimately, we cling only to the cross of Christ. Jesus says, “For what will it profit a man if he gains the whole world and forfeits his soul? Or what shall a man give in return for his soul?” Self-denial and cross-bearing are not easy to do. Yet giving up and giving in to the devil, the world, and our own sinful flesh is so much worse. Earlier, in the Missionary Discourse, Jesus told us, “So everyone who acknowledges me before men, I also will acknowledge before my Father who is in heaven, but whoever denies me before men, I also will deny before my Father who is in heaven” (Matt. 10:32-33). As Christians, we must deny ourselves so that we do not deny the Lord Jesus—not because our self-denial earns our salvation, but because we belong to the One who denied himself and gave himself for us.

Jesus denied himself and gave up everything for you: his body, his blood, his comfort, and his life. He took our place on the cross and died the death we deserve. He endured the punishment we would never be able to endure. He did it all for you.

Someday Christ will come again and put an end to all the suffering and persecution on this planet. “For the Son of Man is going to come with his angels in the glory of his Father, and then he will repay each person according to what he has done” (Matt. 16:27). When Jesus returns, will he find us at ease, or will he find us in his train, carrying our crosses until he carries us to glory? “Truly, I say to you, there are some standing here who will not taste death until they see the Son of Man coming in his kingdom” (Matt. 16:28). For the Christian, there is no life without death and no glory without a cross. That’s why it was necessary for Jesus to suffer, die, and rise again. That’s what it meant for him to be “the Christ, the Son of the living God.” In the name of Jesus. Amen.

[1] All Scripture references, unless otherwise indicated, are from The Holy Bible, English Standard Version.

[2] The Cost of Discipleship.

[3] Lutheran Service Book (St. Louis: Concordia Publishing House, 2006), 273.