Wicker Park Lutheran Church
Rev. Jason S. Glombicki
August 30, 2026
In last week’s gospel, Jesus asked, “Who do you say that I am?” and Peter answered, “You are the Messiah, the Son of the living God.” In response, Jesus praised him saying: “on this rock I will build my church.” And in today’s reading, only about five verses later, Peter heard Jesus say, “get behind me, Satan.” That was one whiplash of an afternoon for Peter.
But really, who can blame him? Jesus started telling the disciples what lies ahead: Jerusalem. Conflict. Suffering. Death. And Peter said, essentially, “Absolutely not. We are not doing that.” After all, Peter loved Jesus. He believed in what Jesus was doing. He had begun imagining a future around him–a future that many imagined would involve a Messianic victory over the occupying forces. So Peter did what most of us do when something we love feels threatened: he held on tighter.
We do that too. We hold tightly to relationships, plans, health, and the future we thought we were going to have. And congregations do it too. Here at WPLC, we are searching for our next Director of Music Ministries. Soon, Sunday School and Youth Group begin again, and Confirmation launches for the first time in over a decade with six students. There is a lot starting, a lot changing, and a lot we would really like to hold together.
And none of that is bad. Wanting to preserve something can come from love. But, holding on can become something else. We begin to believe that if we plan enough, protect enough, manage enough, control enough, then maybe it is enough that we can secure life for ourselves.
That is where Peter ran into trouble. Peter wanted to save Jesus. But Jesus would have needed to become less disruptive. Less willing to confront power. Less insistent that people pushed to the edges belong at the center of God’s concern. And, so, Peter could only preserve Jesus by asking Jesus to become a little less like Jesus.
And we can do that too. We can preserve peace by refusing necessary conflict. Preserve an institution while hollowing out its purpose. Preserve belonging for some by allowing others to carry the pain. Sometimes we become so afraid of losing what we love that we begin betraying the very thing we were trying to protect.
And then Jesus said something Christians have often made even more dangerous: “Deny yourself. Take up your cross. Follow me.” Those words are important and central to our faith, but they have also done real harm. They have been used to coerce, deceive, and dominate. They have been used to tell abused people to stay, oppressed people to endure, LGBTQIA+ people to accept second-class status, and women and people of color to become smaller, quieter, and less themselves. But suffering is not automatically a cross. In fact, some suffering should be treated. Some should be escaped. Some should make us angry. Some should be stopped. And a cross is never something that Christians get to place on somebody else’s shoulders.
You see, Jesus was not teaching us to love suffering. Rather, he was exposing something deeper: for all our efforts to secure life, we cannot. We cannot preserve everything. We cannot control the future. We cannot hold everything together. And the harder we clutch, the more exhausted we become. And sometimes the more exhausted we become, then the more hurt we become. And, sometimes, the more hurtful we become, then the more harmful we become. Because underneath all that grasping is fear. Fear that if I let go, what will happen? Fear that if something changes, then who will I be? Fear that if I stop holding it together, then nothing might hold?
And right there, with Peter’s fear echoing in our own, Jesus said something that sounds like a demand, but is actually a promise: “Those who lose their life for my sake will find it.” Find it. Not earn it. Not manufacture it. Not finally become faithful enough or brave enough or good enough to deserve it. Find it.
That’s because the life we are desperately trying to protect is not ultimately ours to secure. There is life beyond our grasping. Life beyond our control. Life beyond the futures we can imagine. And that does not mean every loss is reversed. Some losses remain losses. Some things really do end. Some things we love cannot be recovered. But the promise is deeper than that: loss does not exhaust the possibility of life.
In the gospel, Peter will lose the Messiah he thought he understood and he will find a Christ larger than his expectations. The disciples will lose the future they imagined, and they will find themselves gathered into a community they never could have built on their own. Even when violence does its worst, when the disciples scatter, when everything looks finished, our life in Christ still carries on. Because the life we cannot secure for ourselves is already given.
And perhaps nowhere do we practice trusting that more clearly than at this table, where after our hands spend so much time clutching, they are opened to receive. For, at Communion, we come with empty hands. We do not prove anything. We do not earn our place. We do not hold our lives together well enough to deserve what is offered. We simply receive the bread and hear the promise: “the body of Christ, given for you.”
And today, we celebrate Cade, Stella, and Tycho who have been learning more about this meal. And in their learning, they’ve been reminded of the gift that Communion is and how in receiving it they have an opportunity to serve. And that order matters. They do not serve so they can belong. They belong first. They receive first. Grace first. Then service.
So, maybe finding our life looks something like that: hands that have spent so much time clutching are now finally opening to discover that Christ has already placed life there. Given for you. Grace you did not earn. A future you do not have to secure. Simply, life that you have found.
So come to the table. Open your hands. Receive what you cannot give yourself. And with those same open hands, you are invited to share. Amen.