The Fourteenth Sunday after Pentecost - Matthew 16:21-28 - The Rev. Colette Hammesfahr
August 30, 2026 - Matthew 16:21-28 “If any want to become my followers, let them deny themselves and take up their cross and follow me. For those who want to save their life will lose it, and those who lose their life for my sake will find it.” There are four times in the Bible that Jesus speaks about taking up a cross and six times where he speaks about losing or saving one’s life. These verses are hard to understand. Sometimes we interpret these phrases as taking on a life of suffering or giving up everything fun and enjoyable we do in our lives. But I think Jesus and Paul, in his letter to the Romans, are teaching us much more than that. Father Damien was a Belgian priest who went to Hawaii as a missionary. In 1873, he learned that priests were needed to minister to people with Hansen’s disease, which we know better as leprosy. When diagnosed, these people were isolated on two of Hawaii’s remote islands. There were approximately 700 people there at the time, and Damien and...