Take Up Your Cross | Visual Lectionary Resources for August 30, 2026

Food for Thought

The readings this week are challenging on many levels.

First, Jesus tells his disciples that he must go to Jerusalem where he will suffer and be executed by the religious leaders. Peter tries to talk him out of it, but Jesus said, “Get behind me, Satan! You are a stumbling block!” Peter goes from being the rock on which Jesus will build his church to being a stumbling block for Jesus…all in one chapter! I feel like I toggle between these two places constantly throughout my life.

Second, Jesus tells his disciples, “if any want to follow me, let them deny themselves and take up their cross.” In other words, the path of Jesus leads to the cross. Are you willing to go there? What does that mean for Jesus’ disciples today? Am I willing to give up everything and be executed for the name of Jesus? Is my discipleship dependent on my ability to give up my life, or do I rest in the fact that Jesus gave up himself to rescue me? Lord, have mercy.

Third, Jesus predicts a coming judgment that sounds vindictive. The Son of Man “will repay everyone for what has been done.” Is this intentional vindication, or is this a statement of karma? Furthermore, how do we deal with Jesus’ prediction of his second coming when he predicted that some who were living in his day would not taste death before he returns and it has been 2,000 years. Did he already return and we missed it? Was he talking about a return in a way that we didn’t understand? (this is the theological category of eschatology, btw)

I don’t have the answers to the big theological questions, nor is this the format to engage them. This week I lean into Psalm 26. David cries out to God for vindication. He feels wrongly accused. He thinks he is doing the right thing, yet he seems to worry that he will be swept away with the wicked in judgment.

I, like David and Peter, live in the reality that I don’t have it all together. I, like Martin Luther, recognize that I am simultaneously a saint and a sinner. I try to live according to the list of virtues in Romans 12, but more often than not am more like Paul in Romans 7 where I do the things I don’t want to do, and don’t do the things I want to do.

I must trust in the chesed, the steadfast love of God, the lover and judge of my soul.

These three verses are the meditation of my heart this week:

Prove me, O LORD, and try me;

test my heart and mind.

For your steadfast love is before my eyes,

and I walk in faithfulness to you.

But as for me, I walk in my integrity;

redeem me, and be gracious to me.

(Psalm 26:2-3, 11)

Read all the commentaries and get downloads HERE.

Food for Thought

This is the third week of four in the final summer series. We look at five of the words of law and promise.

The first one is an actual command. “Honor your father and your mother.” It is also the only word that gives the reason why, or the positive result, of obeying the command. You honor your parents “so that your days may be long in the land.” The ancestors matter. Honoring the past is connected to protecting the future. There is a deep lesson here for us in our radical individualism and now-focused culture, I think.

The next four words do not begin with an imperative verb (direct command). They begin with the imperfect, future negative, “you shall not….”

murder.

commit adultery.

steal.

bear false witness against your neighbor.

Let those four things sink in. Imagine a world where none of these things existed and you didn’t have to worry that anyone would ever do them.

That would be pretty amazing.

There is a name for that kind of world. Shalom (peace). It is a world where we don’t live in fear of each other. When people don’t fear each other, they don’t fight. They work together for mutual flourishing.

This world is God’s preferred and promised future.

Jesus called it the Kingdom of Heaven.

This is the world that Jesus called us to inhabit as his disciples. That world doesn’t exist right now. We live in the both/and of rampant evil and radical hope. May we participate in making God’s vision a reality, one day and one kind act at time.

Read all the commentaries and get downloads HERE.

Check out this sermon and slideshow Finding the Entangled Trinity in the Ten Commandments of Exodus 20:1-19.