Pentecost 13C 2025

THE REV. E. WAYNE ROLLINS

I might as well go ahead and say it. “Jesus, I really wish you hadn’t said that.” 

Today’s Gospel is one of the more difficult passages in what is often a difficult writing. Luke challenges us in many ways, much in the way the ancient prophets did before him. He urges us to own our societal and communal treatment of the poor and outcast by reminding us that they are those whom God so often favors. And today he poses a question to those of us who claim to follow Jesus. In summary he asks, “Do you really know what you’ve signed up for?” 

Many of you have heard one preacher or another quote the opening line of Dietrich Bonhoeffer’s The Cost of Discipleship. “When God calls a man, he bids him come and die.” All together now. Gulp. What about all those words about new life, everlasting life, abundant life. Resurrection? 

The first few words of today’s Gospel give us a bit of context. Jesus has been going from place to place, and word of his presence and work has gotten around. And this was back when social media meant you actually spoke to your neighbors face-to-face instead of posting and re-posting in a sniper-like fashion. Luke makes a transition by saying, “now large crowds were traveling with Jesus.” 

This is much more than twelve disciples. This is a throng of people trying to get a glimpse of the celebrity passing through town, rows deep on the sidewalks and reaching out into the street. Jesus gets somewhat suspicious. Are they in for the long haul, or simply here to see the holy show? He doesn’t stay around long enough for them to paint a selfie, and there are no photo bombs during the possible healings. 

So he turns and faces them with today’s words. Here’s what following me really means. Take up your cross. Give up relationships that hold you back. Sell your possessions. 

What? Crosses are heavy, and tend to be extremely painful. The neighbors will talk if I turn away from parents and siblings and friends. And sell all those things I worked so long and hard to buy? I was hoping Better Homes and Gardens, even Architectural Digest might be interested in a photo shoot. I dusted and everything, even under the sofa! 

No doubt many turned and walked away. I might have been one of them, and, truth be told, tried to be one of them at least a couple of times. And yes, I’ve managed to help keep more than one moving company busy for a few days now and then. 
What if Jesus meant something beyond the literal words Luke quotes him as saying? 

I was asked one quiet Sunday evening to visit a patient who had just been told he had what was most likely a fatal disease. His family ran sobbing and screaming from the room when the doctor delivered the diagnosis, leaving their husband and father alone with the news. 

That evening I walked into the room, quietly hoping he was asleep so I could delay the conversation. Instead, he was awake and talking with a couple of friends who were visiting. They all said it was okay for me to stay, so I asked what was going on. The patient whispered haltingly, “I have cancer.” 

Since I had already stated who I was and why I was there, he began talking about a time some years past when he attended church regularly, but that had not been the case in recent years. He didn’t offer an explanation as to why, just stated the fact. Then I heard these words falling out of my mouth. “There’s something standing between you and God.” 

He looked at me and I at him, and no further explanation came. I thanked them for sharing their time with me, said a prayer and left. 

I think of that encounter with today’s Gospel before me. At another time, I would have considered his cross to be his illness, but now I think that to be at least partially untrue. He did not turn away from family and friends or sell his possessions. Instead, his cross, which he did take up, was the healing of broken relationships, and they in turn became more important than belongings that could have possessed him. That process healed one other relationship—with God. 

All those around him began ministering to each other, the one who said we must take up our own cross joining them as one who not only underwent suffering, but transforms suffering and even death into life in ways we never thought possible, and are impossible to do ourselves. 

A few months after that visit, I read this man’s obituary. I went to the funeral home, because while he was in the hospital and after, when he returned for follow-up tests, he ministered to me more than I think I did to him. His wife saw me come in the day of his funeral, hugged me and said “you saved him.” I replied that I couldn’t do that, but together we remembered the One who had already saved all of us. 


Genesis tells us of a garden, with the Tree of Life in the middle. Those first humans in the garden were expelled lest they eat of the fruit of the tree and become gods. They were already researching recipes for apple pie, as you’ll remember. The cross, an ancient symbol of torture and death, has become our tree of life. Our ministry with and to one another and in and with the community around us bears the various kinds of fruit that find life and growth in connection to that tree. Our cross is love, the love that became one of us to save us, and who joins us as we continue his work in the world. And because love lives best when shared, we let go of anything and anyone who cannot or who refuses to share in that love, or that works to separate us from the Love that is our life, moving on to where the life of Love itself is our top priority. 
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So, yes, we do know what we’ve signed up for. To use a contemporary phrase, “Bring it on.”