Year A: Proper 17 | Matthew 16:21-28
St. Andrew’s Episcopal Church
August 30, 2026
the Rev. Jonathan Hanneman
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“If any want to become my followers, let them deny themselves and take up their cross and follow me.” – Matthew 16:24[1]
We see crosses all the time: on churches and jewelry; on bumper stickers, flags, and t-shirts. They slip into our colloquialisms and conversations, whether we encourage someone to cross their fingers for good luck or reference a difficulty as “my cross to bear.” And what with the Zia[2] being New Mexico’s state symbol and our city’s name literally meaning “the crosses,” they’re kind of hard to avoid on signs and other branding around here. I even have one tattooed on my wrist.
Being churchgoers, chances are you can tell me at least a little of the history behind crosses. Back under the Roman Empire the government would use wooden versions to torture or kill people. Jesus was famously nailed to one during his execution. You might even know that it was illegal to crucify a Roman citizen; only “foreigners”—the many conquered or occupied people groups who had long inhabited the Mediterranean basin—needed to fear them. Soon after the Church began to coalesce, Jesus’ followers started adopting the cross as a sort of code—an easily overlooked mark that only those in the know would recognize or even notice. Eventually, during his military campaign to become Emperor, Constantine painted a modified form of a cross on his shield, and in less than seventy years from that point, Christianity went from being a sometimes-oppressed breakaway branch of Judaism to the sole official religion of the Roman Empire. Along with that, what had been an icon of pain and suffering became a world emblem associated with dominance, conquest, and victory. The cross became visual code for the Pax Romana, conflating submission to human government with God’s mission and authority for the past 1600 years.
Jumping to our own day, that governmental alignment has loosened, but as Christian Nationalism demonstrates, it’s far from gone. For those who can disassociate the two, even though we might know in our heads that the cross was initially a bad thing, it’s hard to think of it as much more than just a symbol for Church or Christianity. People wear it almost like a sort of talisman. It hangs not only at the front of congregations like ours but probably from half of the rearview mirrors in the state. People flash homemade posters of it at sporting events and all too frequently try to associate it with their personal and political causes.[3] It’s hard to pin down what the cross means anymore—for some it’s a proclamation of power; for others it encapsulates the experience of exclusion and oppression; while for many it’s just a sort of vague suggestion of something religious.
Unfortunately, when we hear Jesus say his followers need to “take up their cross,” we Christians have a tendency to take it as an equally vague suggestion. We’ll occasionally sense or brush up against the deep discomfort buried in its past, but most of the time we associate “taking up our cross” with enduring an annoyance or having to do something we don’t particularly enjoy. It’s become jargon we use to make our inconveniences sound like martyrdom.
But Jesus isn’t talking about having to walk to the gas station because we forgot to fill up the tank or being forced to sit through an unusually long church service or making it through lunch with that person you can’t stand without saying anything openly rude. Taking up your cross has nothing to do with your financial status or family history. Honestly, it’s a stretch when we apply it to most of the illnesses or life tragedies we tend toss under its umbrella. In reality, taking up your cross can never be something that happens to you. It isn’t an accident of time and place, nor is it a random difficulty you suddenly find yourself facing. No, taking up your cross is a choice—an intentional choice, and a hard one.
Our Gospel reading opens with Jesus repeatedly trying to prepare his disciples for what’s going to happen once they reach Jerusalem. After last week’s declaration of Jesus as the Messiah, Peter and the others seem to be riding high, dreaming about the powerful positions they’ll receive when Jesus finally clears out all the bad guys and successfully establishes God’s Kingdom on earth. But that’s not how things are going to work out, and Jesus is trying to redirect their expectations. Having just told off Peter, I imagine he’s a bit exasperated when he finally makes his statement, “If any want to become my followers, let them deny themselves and take up their cross and follow me.”
As with taking up our cross, we tend to distort other parts of what Jesus says here, too. We pat ourselves on the back about how we deny ourselves when we choose not to express our irritation or if we successfully avoid eating that all-too-tempting piece of cake, but those are just matters of self-control. As Jesus uses it here, to “deny” oneself is more along the lines of rejecting or even renouncing. If you’re going to deny yourself the way Jesus is talking about, you’re actively setting aside anything even distantly connected to self-interest. You are choosing to disassociate from any advantages, comforts, or conveniences you might hold dear. You’ve determined to give yourself away without expectation of anything in return. You’re declaring that you will seek the good of those around you, even if it means enduring trouble or facing disaster for yourself.
One detail I find interesting here is that this scene takes place immediately before the Transfiguration, a feast the Church observes on Thursday of this week. Set within the context of Roman adoption, that suggests this recognition of and emphasis upon self-loss or self-denial is the final lesson the Father has set within the Son’s training period. Just as the Canaanite woman recently opened Jesus’ eyes to a mission broader than his Hebrew heritage had taught him to expect, the heir that the Voice appointed at baptism finally understands and can communicate the true nature of the family of God. The Father is not the top-down Sky God we so frequently mistake them to be; rather, they are the Source and Provider, one that uplifts, supports, and carries the full weight of responsibility for the family despite any cost to God’s own self.
That is what Jesus is calling us to in taking up our cross. The cross is not an inconvenience or an annoyance. It cannot offer us authority or power; that, in fact, is the opposite of the role set before us, the antithesis of the true nature of God and God’s family. Taking up your cross is electing to enter a state of death while still alive, to follow, wherever it may lead, a path that may just be paved with pain, rejection, and humiliation. It’s a determination to follow Jesus’ example of commitment to God and neighbor, to uphold the dignity and value of those around us even as our road wanders lanes of distress, degradation, and death.
The cross is death, though not eternal. It’s the embodiment of and reality behind the statement, “the only way out is through.” The cross is the incarnation of God’s true Nature, the culmination of what it is to be God’s Image. The cross is the path we choose to take, individually and together, that, despite its very real weight and darkness, does, someday and somehow, lead to light.
“If any want to become my followers, let them deny themselves and take up their cross and follow me.”
[1] All Bible quotations are from the NRSVue unless otherwise noted.
[2] An ancient Native American symbol that takes the shape of a modified cross.
[3] Which is an open violation of the Third Commandment.