Reflection for the Website – Sunday 30th August 2026 – Trinity 13A
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. 22And Peter took him aside and began to rebuke him, saying, “God forbid it, Lord! This must never happen to you.” But he turned and said to Peter, “Get behind me, Satan! You are a stumbling block to me; for you are setting your mind not on divine things but on human things” Then Jesus told his disciples, “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. For what will it profit them if they gain the whole world but forfeit their life? (Matthew 16:21-26)
These verses from this Sunday’s Gospel reading prompt us to remember that following Jesus isn’t always easy, and that at times, can involve serious challenges. The passage follows straight on from last week’s Gospel story, in which Peter publicly recognises Jesus as the Messiah, Now, though, we hear a very uncomfortable interchange between the two of them. Jesus tells Peter, “Get behind me, Satan!” and calls him a stumbling block. And then goes on to tell the disciples that, if they are truly to be his followers, they must be prepared to take up their crosses and follow him.
If any of them have been thinking that being close friends with the one they had just recognised as the Messiah was going to guarantee them an easy time, they are being very firmly put right in their misconceptions.
And it is such misconceptions – both about what kind of Messiah Jesus has come to be, and about what that means for those who follow him – that are at the heart of this misunderstanding.
At the start of today’s passage, Jesus tries to get across to the disciples the real nature of what is going to happen – “that he must go to Jerusalem and undergo great suffering …and be killed…” And the disciples simply cannot accept this. Peter articulates their horror at the idea of a suffering Messiah: “God forbid it, Lord! This must never happen to you.”
Jesus’ response sounds remarkably harsh. He compares the man he has only just appointed as the leader of his Church to Satan, showing just how badly wrong he knows Peter’s ideas to be. And yet, whilst rejecting Peter’s words, Jesus isn’t rejecting Peter himself. He doesn’t order Peter to go away. Instead, he tells him to “get behind me” – to follow him, as a disciple should; to learn from his teacher, rather than trying to impose his own mistaken understanding and preconceptions onto Jesus. He needs to stop trying to control things himself, and instead to allow God’s plans to unfold as God wishes. Peter’s perspective is too human, Jesus explains. It isn’t sufficiently aligned with God’s ways: “You are setting your mind not on divine things but on human things.”
How often that can still be the case for us, when we’re finding something hard to accept, or going through a difficult patch. We want to do things our own way. We want to have control over events. We’d like God to make things happen as we think they should – as quickly as possible! But for us, as for Peter, sometimes God needs us to slow down. To stop trying to sort everything out ourselves. To follow God, rather than trying to implement our own solutions.
To do so is likely to present us with challenge. We may be prompted to change our attitudes or our behaviour, so that we become more Christlike, and treat every person with the kind of love that Jesus lived out during his earthly life. We may sometimes feel that living up to these kinds of standards is beyond us. But we can all, in some small ways, try to put others before ourselves and bring God’s love to them. Perhaps that is what taking up our cross looks like for most of us. Not necessarily dramatic acts of heroism or great sacrifices, but the small, everyday choices to put love before self-interest, to follow rather than try to control, and so to show God’s love to others, as we now pray:
Lord, open our eyes to Your presence;
open our ears to Your call,
open our hearts to one another.
And then send us back out into the world,
to live and work as Your faithful disciples. Amen.