by Trevor Sannes, Seminarian
Click here to watch the sermon recording on YouTube.
Jeremiah 15:15-21: Psalm 26:1-8; Romans 12:9-21; Matthew 16:21-28
Life gives us roads that look easy and roads that look hard, maybe even costly. And most of us, if we’re honest, tend to choose the road that feels easy, the safest.
Sometimes that choice is small — like biting your tongue instead of telling the truth because you don’t want conflict.
Sometimes it’s bigger — like staying silent when someone is being treated unfairly because speaking up might cost you something. When I was in high school, there was a student who was harassed constantly by a group of guys. I remember feeling bad for him and wanting to speak up, but I also feared the group would turn on me. And I saw them do exactly that to anyone who tried to intervene.
We know these moments. We know the pull toward the easy road.
Peter knows it too.
Just a few verses before today’s Gospel, he makes his bold confession: “You are the Messiah, the Son of the living God.” It’s a mountaintop moment — clarity, confidence, everything coming together.
And then today… the road suddenly turns.
Jesus tells the disciples plainly what lies ahead: suffering, rejection, death, and resurrection. No parables. No metaphors. Just the truth about the road he is choosing — and the road his followers will walk with him.
Peter cannot bear it. He pulls Jesus aside and tries to steer him toward an easier path: “God forbid it, Lord. This must never happen to you.”
But Jesus refuses the easy road.
And he refuses it not only for himself — but for us.
Peter wants to protect Jesus. But he also wants to protect himself. Because if Jesus is going down a road of suffering, then the people following him will have to walk that road too. And Peter doesn’t want that. None of us do.
Jesus responds with words that land like a punch: “Get behind me, Satan.”
He’s not calling Peter evil. He’s naming the temptation Peter represents — the temptation to choose a Messiah without a cross, a discipleship without sacrifice, a faith that never costs us anything.
Jesus refuses that path.
He tells Peter — and all of us — what discipleship really looks like: “If any want to become my followers, let them deny themselves and take up their cross and follow me.”
This is not easy. Jesus doesn’t pretend it is. He doesn’t soften it. He doesn’t apologize for it. He simply tells the truth.
Following him will require something of us.
Jeremiah knew something about refusing the easy road. In today’s reading he cries out to God, exhausted and isolated, yet still clinging to the call placed on him. Faithfulness cost him something — just as it will cost the disciples something.
Paul echoes this in Romans when he urges us to “let love be genuine,” to “outdo one another in showing honor,” and to “bless those who persecute you.” Genuine love stretches us. Mercy costs us. Courage asks more of us than we planned to give. The holy road has never been the comfortable one.
When Jesus talks about taking up a cross, he’s not talking about inconvenience. He’s not talking about the small frustrations we sometimes call “our cross to bear” — like folding laundry, unloading the dishwasher, or taking out the trash.
He’s talking about the places where we surrender our pride, our ego, our need to be right, our desire to control outcomes. He’s talking about the places where love costs us something. The places where forgiveness stretches us. The places where compassion asks more of us than we planned to give.
Following Jesus is not easy because Jesus leads us into the parts of life where our old selves cannot survive.
He leads us into honesty. He leads us into humility. He leads us into mercy. He leads us into courage. He leads us into vulnerability.
And those things are not easy.
Jesus says, “Those who want to save their life will lose it, and those who lose their life for my sake will find it.”
That’s not a threat. It’s a description of reality.
When we cling tightly to ourselves — our comfort, our control, our image — we lose the deeper life God wants to give us. But when we loosen our grip, when we trust Jesus enough to follow him even when the road is hard, we discover a life we couldn’t have created on our own.
A life shaped by grace. A life shaped by love. A life shaped by resurrection.
So yes — following Jesus is not easy. But here’s the part we cannot miss: Jesus never asks us to carry anything he hasn’t carried first.
He walks ahead of us. He shoulders the cross before we do. He enters suffering before we do. And he rises from the dead so that we will, too.
The hard road is not the hopeless road. It’s the holy road. It’s the road where God is most present.
And when we follow Jesus — truly follow him — we find that the cross we carry becomes the doorway to new life.
So today, as we hear Jesus say, “Take up your cross and follow me,” let’s not hear it as a burden. Let’s hear it as an invitation. An invitation to trust him. An invitation to walk with him. An invitation to discover the life that only he can give.
I also want to offer a personal invitation to each of you to join a training on public discipleship that six members of our parish will be leading. We’re calling it Love Out Loud. There have been several articles in the Evangelist where you can learn more — and I encourage you to read them if you haven’t already. This will be a wonderful opportunity to explore how we can live out our call to follow Jesus in public, courageous, compassionate ways.
Following Jesus is not easy. But it is good. It is holy. And it leads us into the fullness of life God desires for us.
Amen.
