Jesus said, “If any want to become my followers, let them deny themselves and

take up their cross and follow me.”

The citizens of the Roman Empire were familiar with crosses. They were erected

outside the cities of the Roman Empire for the execution of criminals and

disobedient slaves. Crucifixion was the favored form of execution, because it was

so excruciating and humiliating. The display of crosses made a point. The leaders

of the empire were making sure everyone knew the terrible fate that awaited them

if they disobeyed their masters or rebelled against the emperor. (I’m relying here

on historian Tom Holland’s account in his 2019 book Dominion.)

Crucifixion was not a topic that educated Romans liked to think about—which

explains why, though this form of execution was widely used and accepted, there

are few written accounts of it by writers of the ancient world. Among the accounts

we have of crucifixion, four of them describe the execution of the same person.

The victim was a wandering preacher from an obscure town north of Jerusalem; he

was called Jesus of Nazareth. The four accounts of his crucifixion are found in the

four Gospels.

Those Gospel writers claimed that this crucified man was in truth God’s Son, and

that after he was crucified, God raised him from the dead. No claim could have

been more outrageous in the Roman world, or the Jewish world.

People in the Roman Empire could easily imagine that great men like the emperor,

Caesar Augustus, were divine. Caesar was often called a god or the Son of God.

That made some sense because Caesar wielded godlike power over vast territory,

and his career seemed a string of godlike triumphs. But that the son of God would

be one of those unfortunate people humiliated and nailed to a cross—that seemed

like a sick joke.

As you came to church on this beautiful late summer day, I suspect that crucifixion

was not what you were hoping to hear more about. And after all, we are a long way

from Good Friday.

But this little background helps us understand why Peter objects so strenuously

when Jesus talks about taking up the cross. And when Jesus predicts that he will

suffer and be killed in Jerusalem, it’s no wonder that Peter exclaims, “God forbid

it! This must never happen to you.” He means: Not you, of all people. The messiah

of God, crucified? God’s chosen one, crucified? What kind of sick joke is this?

Peter was scandalized. And the scandal of the cross of Christ never quite goes

away, no matter how many times we hear about it.

But over the years, as Christians have pondered the passion of Christ, the meaning

of the cross has seeped into people’s hearts and minds and created a new

perception of how and where God may be at work. Even those who don’t think of

themselves as Christians have been shaped by this Christian story.

If God’s own Son was rejected and crucified, and then raised from the dead, then

maybe the weak, the rejected, and the humiliated of the world are not despised by

God, as was commonly thought. Maybe victims are innocent. Maybe they are

people close to God’s heart.

After the cross of Christ, we can never get it out of our heads that the powers of

this world may get things terribly wrong. In God’s kingdom, Jesus said, the last

will be first and the first will be last. And Jesus lives out this truth in his life. By

his death and resurrection, Christ turns upside down our thinking about who are the

winners and who are the losers.

Jesus calls us to follow him in his upside-down life. He calls us to align ourselves

with him and with all those who suffer rejection and humiliation. Jesus asks us to

pick up a piece of his cross and bear some suffering or rejection for Jesus’ sake.

Take up your cross, Jesus says. You don’t have to go looking for a cross to take up.

Jesus himself does not go looking for a cross. But he accepted the cross when that

was necessary to be faithful.

You don’t have to go looking for a cross; the cross will find you—it will find you

in the workplace, or in marriage, or in your family, or in your community. Or even

at church.

That story is at the heart of Claire Keegan’s recent book Small Things Like These.

She tells the story of Bill Furlong, a man who delivers coal to his neighbors in a

small town in Ireland. Bill is a hard worker, and he is devoted to his wife and five

daughters.

One of his regular customers is the local convent of Catholic sisters who run a

program for unmarried mothers, most of them poor. The girls were seen as an

embarrassment by their families and were quietly placed with the sisters. On his

visits to the convent, Bill gets glimpses of how harshly these girls are treated; they

are basically held prisoner, cut off from family and the outside world. Their babies

are taken away from them—and where the babies are sent, the girls are never told.

Thousands of Irish girls were in fact treated this way in a network of church-run

programs known as the Magdalene Laundries.

On one of Bill’s visits to the convent, he passes some girls scrubbing the floors.

One girl grabs him and asks him to take her away. “At least take me as far as the

river,” she says. “All I want to do is drown myself. Can’t you do even that much?”

Bill moves past her, but he can’t get her words out of his mind.

On his next delivery of coal to the convent, he opens the coal shed and discovers a

young girl locked inside. She is barefoot and shivering from the December cold.

He gives her his jacket and leads her to the convent and knocks on the door.

They are greeted by the Mother Superior, who ushers Bill and the shivering girl

inside and serves them tea. The Mother Superior acts kindly, but she shrewdly

pressures the girl to say she must have been accidentally left behind in the coal

shed after a game of hide-and-seek. Bill doesn’t buy that explanation, but he says

nothing. As Bill prepares to leave, the Mother Superior hands him an envelope. It’s

a generous Christmas bonus. Bill knows it is meant to ensure his silence about

what he has seen.

While he goes about his day, Bill can’t stop thinking about what is going in the

convent. Bill’s wife and others in town tell him to mind his own business. Nothing

good can come from opposing the convent, they tell him. The sisters have a lot of

power, and they are backed by the forces of the church and the state and public

opinion. Bill’s wife and friends remind him that the nuns can deny his daughters a

place in the local Catholic school if he gets on their wrong side.

But Bill is nagged by a question: What if those were his daughters? “Was there any

point in being alive [he wonders] without helping one another? Was it possible to

carry through all the years . . . without once being brave enough to go against [the

powers of the world] and yet call yourself a Christian?”

That evening he goes to the convent, opens the door of the coal shed, and discovers

that the same girl has again been locked inside, barefoot and thinly dressed against

the cold. He puts his coat around her and leads her outside, and this time they walk

toward Bill’s home. He intends to make her part of his family, though he knows it

won’t be easy. His wife and his neighbors won’t be happy about this.

He knew the worst was ahead of him. But in another way the worst was behind

him—for how much worse it would have been for him to have done nothing, and

to have gained the world but lost his soul.

As Bill walks with the girl toward home, Keegan writes, he felt a kind of lightness;

he felt an “unrecognizable joy” and peace. He felt like the best part of himself was

emerging.

Jesus says that by giving our live away for the sake of the gospel we will find our

lives. The cross of Christ is God’s gift to us, so that we can find in this troubled

world a different kind of peace than the world gives. God promises to meet us at

the crosses that find us, and to fill our lives with his presence—with grace and

peace, and an unrecognizable joy. Today God is sending us the Holy Spirit to bring

out the best part of ourselves, through Christ our Lord.

Pentecost 14A August 30, 2026 Ascension Lutheran Church

Matthew 16:21–28