Following Jesus (or “Ryker, Welcome into the Church!”

Fourteenth Sunday after Pentecost (Twenty-Second in Ordinary Time)
All Saints Lutheran Church, Rio Rancho, NM
Sunday, August 30, 2026

MATTHEW 16.21-28

21 Ἀπὸ τότε ἤρξατο ὁ Ἰησοῦς δεικνύειν τοῖς μαθηταῖς αὐτοῦ ὅτι δεῖ αὐτὸν εἰς Ἱεροσόλυμα ἀπελθεῖν καὶ πολλὰ παθεῖν ἀπὸ τῶν πρεσβυτέρων καὶ ἀρχιερέων καὶ γραμματέων καὶ ἀποκτανθῆναι καὶ τῇ τρίτῃ ἡμέρᾳ ἐγερθῆναι.22 καὶ προσλαβόμενος αὐτὸν ὁ Πέτρος ἤρξατο ἐπιτιμᾶν αὐτῷ λέγων, Ἵλεώς σοι, κύριε· οὐ μὴ ἔσται σοι τοῦτο.23 ὁ δὲ στραφεὶς εἶπεν τῷ Πέτρῳ, Ὕπαγε ὀπίσω μου, Σατανᾶ· σκάνδαλον εἶ ἐμοῦ, ὅτι οὐ φρονεῖς τὰ τοῦ θεοῦ ἀλλὰ τὰ τῶν ἀνθρώπων.24 Τότε ὁ Ἰησοῦς εἶπεν τοῖς μαθηταῖς αὐτοῦ, Εἴ τις θέλει ὀπίσω μου ἐλθεῖν, ἀπαρνησάσθω ἑαυτὸν καὶ ἀράτω τὸν σταυρὸν αὐτοῦ καὶ ἀκολουθείτω μοι.25 ὃς γὰρ ἐὰν θέλῃ τὴν ψυχὴν αὐτοῦ σῶσαι ἀπολέσει αὐτήν· ὃς δ’ ἂν ἀπολέσῃ τὴν ψυχὴν αὐτοῦ ἕνεκεν ἐμοῦ εὑρήσει αὐτήν.26 τί γὰρ ὠφεληθήσεται ἄνθρωπος ἐὰν τὸν κόσμον ὅλον κερδήσῃ τὴν δὲ ψυχὴν αὐτοῦ ζημιωθῇ; ἢ τί δώσει ἄνθρωπος ἀντάλλαγμα τῆς ψυχῆς αὐτοῦ;27 μέλλει γὰρ ὁ υἱὸς τοῦ ἀνθρώπου ἔρχεσθαι ἐν τῇ δόξῃ τοῦ πατρὸς αὐτοῦ μετὰ τῶν ἀγγέλων αὐτοῦ, καὶ τότε ἀποδώσει ἑκάστῳ κατὰ τὴν πρᾶξιν αὐτοῦ.28 ἀμὴν λέγω ὑμῖν ὅτι εἰσίν τινες τῶν ὧδε ἑστώτων οἵτινες οὐ μὴ γεύσωνται θανάτου ἕως ἂν ἴδωσιν τὸν υἱὸν τοῦ ἀνθρώπου ἐρχόμενον ἐν τῇ βασιλείᾳ αὐτοῦ.

21 From that time on, Jesus began to show his disciples that he must go to Jerusalem and undergo great suffering at the hands of the elders and chief priests and scribes and be killed and on the third day be raised. 22 And Peter took him aside and began to rebuke him, saying, “God forbid it, Lord! This must never happen to you.” 23 But he turned and said to Peter, “Get behind me, Satan! You are a hindrance to me, for you are setting your mind not on divine things but on human things.”

24 Then Jesus told his disciples, “If any wish to come after me, let them deny themselves and take up their cross and follow me. 25 For those who want to save their life will lose it, and those who lose their life for my sake will find it. 26 For what will it profit them if they gain the whole world but forfeit their life? Or what will they give in return for their life?

27 “For the Son of Man is to come with his angels in the glory of his Father, and then he will repay everyone for what has been done. 28 Truly I tell you, there are some standing here who will not taste death before they see the Son of Man coming in his kingdom.”

+ In nomine Domini. Amen.

A Half-Century ago when I was a new Pastor, recently Ordained, and called to be the Associate Pastor at St. Luke’s in Albuquerque — it was my turn to preach the Sermon. The Office Secretary came to my desk on Wednesday morning before and asked me: “Does your Sermon have a name?”

“Name?” I answered, “Sure, I call it Sermon.”

“No,” she continued a bit irritated, “I mean, the title, the name of the Sermon.”

She continued, “We need it for the bulletin and we are printing the bulletin tomorrow.”

Now, one of the things you realize as a Pastor is that there are very few things over which you have control in the Church — I could rapidly see this was one of them.

I said, “How about this: God’s Mighty Word Preached with Power and Conviction?

“Seriously?” she looked at me with suspicion.

“Yes, let’s call it that.”

And so it was. And if you ever go over to St. Luke’s and rummage through some ancient files, you just might find that particular Sermon for that particular Sunday in July of 1972.

I don’t remember at all what I said in the Sermon, but I do recall it went fairly well, no one fainted and the church moved on for another couple of weeks —

Which brought the Secretary to my office door again on the Wednesday of that week, with:

“You are preaching again this Sunday.”

“I am indeed.” I answered.

“So, what are you going to call the Sermon this week?”

Thinking just for a moment I replied, “Well, let’s just use the same as it was two weeks ago, that worked pretty well.”

“You want to use God’s Mighty Word Preached with Power and Conviction‽”

“Yes, let’s do it.”

That was the last time my Sermon ever had a title — until a few years before I retired, and then for some mystical reason I began to name my Sermons. And, yes they were printed in the bulletin, and sometimes what happened in the Sermon actually had something do with the title.

Sometimes not.

All of this is to say that a Sermon is not really a speech, or a lecture, or a presentation. It looks like that, sounds like that I agree — but what a Sermon really is, is an event. It is one act in the drama of our worship together. Worship is not a concept, it is a verb. It is something we do “in the presence of God and one another.”

At this point I should tell you the name of this Sermon today, it is the name of our Sacred Drama, our Play. It is: “Following Jesus” or “Ryker, Welcome into the Church!”

Every drama has not only a story, but a cast of characters. Let’s see if we can name the cast this morning.

The Pastors, the Musicians, the Readers, the Assisting Ministers, the people who prepared the Altar, the people who greeted, the folks making coffee and assembling food for when the drama takes off into the common room, the members of the congregation, the visitors this morning (all of you) and a host of people seen and hidden each of whom have a part in the Play.

And there are those who appear in the Gospel Reading this morning: Their names are originally in Greek or Hebrew or both and so we should get to know them by those names:

Peter (in NT Greek πετρος) literally “rock”.

Jesus (in Greek Ιησους) which is the Greek transliteration of the Hebrew, Joshua (יְהוֹשֻׁעַ‎ Yehoshua) which at the time of Jesus’ birth was shortened to יֵשׁוּעַ (Yeshua) — meaning “God saves.”

And then there are “the disciples” “the followers of Jesus” — in the Greek μαθηταῖς meaning “those who learn from another by instruction or example.” We could call them “students.” μαθηταῖς (disciples) comes from the Greek word μανθανο, from which comes our English “mathematics”.

[I know I’m taking a chance here that you’ll tell all your friends after this morning that according to Pastor Larzelere, the disciples were nothing but religious mathematicians.]

The μαθηταις (disciples) are not only “followers” of Jesus, they are followers who are instructed and learn as they follow, one could say: they are “students.” It’s an ongoing thing, being a follower of Jesus is (again) not a concept, not so much a noun, as it is a verb — a continuing action, not once and done.

And then, of course, in the Story as in our Drama of Worship, the cast is not complete without: God (Creator, Sustainer, Spirit).

What happens is that God is not only the prime member of the cast, God is the one who lovingly invites all of us to play along.

When we read aloud the Gospel Story in worship, we are bringing that story to life — it is not just some ancient myth or tale, it lives when we read it, speak it, tell it, preach upon it, hear it. Not only do we take the Story into ourselves, we ourselves are taken into the Story.

Here it is in a few sentences: The Gospel Storyteller Matthew tell us that: Yeshua and his μαθηταῖς are making their way “to Jerusalem: which in Matthew’s Gospel is a sort of code for “the future suffering and crucifixion and Resurrection of Jesus.”

This may seem a little odd to us to have the end of the story ahead of time, but remember that the Gospels are not verbatims, they are not videos of the events — they are stories packed full of meaning and interpretation. Matthew is interpreting the story of Jesus, whose life will come to an end in Jerusalem — he is telling us what will happen and that Jesus somehow knows this and is trying to teach his students, his disciples about it.

Peter (πετρος) will not have it. He says “God forbid it, Lord!” That’s our translation we have in English. Matthew puts it this way in Greek: Ἵλεώς σοι, κύριε!

Ἵλεώς is an idiomatic word referring to God’s Mercy and Love. It’s more like Peter exclaiming “God have mercy!” “This must never happen to you!”

What else would we expect Peter to say. Of course he exclaims, “God have mercy! No, this won’t happen!”

Jesus responds (again in Matthew’s Greek words): Ὕπαγε ὀπίσω μου, Σατανᾶ· 

Literally, “Go away from me, get behind me, Satan!” Satan in the Greek of the Bible means “The Tempter.”

Then, “You are a hindrance (lit. the word in NT means “stumbling block”). Your are thinking like a human being, not like God.”

That’s rather heavy isn’t it?

What Jesus is trying to tell Peter (and us) is that he (and sometimes we) think only in human terms, and not in divine possibilities — we see only in the moment, not in eternity.

And then comes the really massive part of the Story — if you are going to be a follower of Jesus, then you must be prepared to take upon yourself your own struggles and that of those around you — you must be willing to give up to others — share your life with others and not keep it only to yourself. You have to let go, in order to have. You have to leave the safety of your own solitude and isolation and march out into the world of humanity and all its joys and sorrows. You have to engage in the sacred drama which begins in worship and pushes out through the doors of the Church into lives of brothers and sisters you know and brothers and sisters you have yet to meet and do it with the unconditional love that is given to you by the one you follow, Yeshua whose name means “God saves.”

Ryker, I hope you have been listening to all this. You seem to be enjoying the drama thus far; indeed this is a very dramatic day for you. Let me explain. The way you get into the world is that you are born (your Mother and Father will explain all that to you later on; they will even have pictures). They way you get into the Church (the community of those who are following Jesus) is through Holy Baptism. It is called a “Sacrament” a holy action we do in the Church. There are two which Jesus told us to do: this one, Baptism (which happens to you only once at the beginning of official entrance into the journey); and the Eucharist (which happens at least every week when the Church gathers to do the drama we call worship), that comes later.

But now Baptism. It is of course a Greek word that comes to us from the followers of Yeshua (Jesus) from 2 millenia ago. The word is βαπτιζειν and it means literally “to go under the water — and come up again”. There is symbolism in this word: what happens is that we are baptized into the death of Jesus, and come up into the Resurrection, the Life of Jesus.

And this morning, Ryker, there are many of us (most of us, maybe all of us) who have been Baptized. And so, in a very real way, you are related to us, we are related to you.

We are your brother or your sister, and you are our youngest brother this morning.

And, Ryker, this means that you are not alone — in addition to your own family, Mom and Dad, brother, Grandparents, Aunts, Uncles, Godparents and anyone else I’ve left out — your family is here and wherever we shall be now and in the future — the family of the Church.

Which means, that we shall pray for you and love you and be here for you — no matter what, not matter when.

We make those promises for you today, just as you parents and godparents will make them on your behalf as we gaze into the water of life with you this morning.

Welcome, Ryker. Welcome to the family. Welcome to the Church.

And let us all say: Amen.

Deo Gratias (+)

The Rev. Benjamin Larzelere III
Retired