Pastor Caitlin Trussell, Augustana Lutheran Church in Denver—August 30, 32026.

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Matthew 16:21-28

Romans 12:9-21

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Dolly Parton dazzled with both savvy wisdom and diamanté rhinestones while she crooned country songs backed up with business smarts. She said what she meant and she meant what she said. I admire her for a lot of reasons. Many of you probably could list a few of your own. I preached last fall about her Imagination Library that puts millions of free books in the hands of children to the tune of millions of dollars.[1] And one of my favorite all time movie lines is hers. “Laughter through tears is my favorite emotion,” from Steel Magnolias.

When Dolly died last week, I was sad and I smiled. My first thought was that we lost a light. My second thought was that I felt similar emotions when Mr. Rogers died. Both Dolly and Mr. Rogers were famous people I never knew but had touched my life during rough patches. I couldn’t name it when I was younger, but I got that Dolly knew suffering deeply which is why her joy meant so much. Her joy had strength and grit. Her joy was hard won, in and after her own rough patches. She could hold both suffering and joy.

Holding both suffering and joy was Jesus’ invitation to his disciples. He told them that he was going to undergo great suffering, be killed AND BE RAISED. Peter was at the head of the class last week when he testified about Jesus. Now? Not so much. He appeals for Jesus’ safety. Who among us wouldn’t do the same for a friend? But in the temptation of Jesus way back in Matthew’s 4^th chapter, the invitation to Jesus to avoid his own suffering was deemed “satanic.” [2]  Hence, the name-calling here in the 16^th chapter. The cross talk is confusing. Jesus warns against self-preservation in the face of suffering as he tells his followers to “deny themselves and take up their cross and follow [him].” Jesus’ first disciples knew that crosses killed slaves and political rebels who defied Rome at their peril.[3]  They hadn’t seen crosses on top of church buildings or worn around people’s necks. Crosses didn’t become a Christian symbol until the 5^th century.[4]

Here, Jesus BEGAN to instruct his disciples’ about suffering and the cross. He knew his teaching about the cross would need some repetition. The cross of Christ isn’t something that’s easy to bear or to understand. We remind each other that the cross is the foundational story of our faith while spending a lifetime working out what it means, while our minds try to figure out the difference between divine and human things. This is the tricky part, isn’t it?

Divine things sound simple to figure out but we get them confused with human things all the time. For instance, denying self and picking up your cross does NOT mean forsaking your own wellbeing in persistent situations of abuse and violence.[5] Jesus doesn’t go to the cross to annihilate himself. Jesus goes to the cross as a consequence to the life he lived and the solidarity he showed.[6] Self-denial is an attribute of the Christian community who follow Jesus in seeing and acting on the image of God in each person, in taking risks to do so, and in facing the consequences of those risks with grace.

Congregationally, we try to discern together the difference between divine and human things. An imperfect system, yet somehow our collective wisdom across different points of view lands us in a new place. Arguably, our advocacy and legislative work on issues of human dignity holds a tension between divine and human things. We attempt to figure out which community partners we’re going to work with while working alongside those who face injustice from local and national challenges that deeply affect our neighbors next to us in the pews, in our city, in our country, and around the world.

Welcome 150 is another such thing. Celebrating this congregation’s 150^th anniversary of our founding in 2028 gives us chance to think beyond ourselves into a future some of us won’t live to see. Much like our ancestors in the faith who first gathered as this church and built one building, and then another building, and then this building, we are renewing this building as we learn to care for a building that’s more than 50 years old, and as we care for what we were given so that we can share it with others in welcome and grace. That’s down the road a piece but Welcome 150 is a way to say that this place matters as a place of Jesus, a place of grace, a place of welcome, a place of belonging, and a place for the community outside these walls. A place for people now and for generations to come.

That may be all well and good in theology and theory and our broader work in the world. But I’d like to drop us into what’s real for many of us right now, today, this week. Perhaps the world’s woes are more than overwhelming with the flash flood devastation for our human siblings in Nepal and Tibet; or the wars in Africa’s Sahel region, or in Iran, or Ukraine, or the Holy Land. Or perhaps physical or emotional pain makes it hard to see straight or to even get through the next minute. The 30,000-foot theological view can be too much and not enough. We hear the reassurance that Jesus’ self-sacrifice on the cross means that God knows suffering personally and suffers with us when we suffer, but the promise falls flat because the fatigue and challenges are too great.

Phew, thank God for Paul’s letter to the Roman church. Basic directions for the faithful are listed—no assembly required. Sometimes what we need is one simple tip that focuses us on making it through the day. Here’s a quick bullet point summary of Paul’s list:

Hold onto something good.

Show honor.

Welcome a stranger.

Serve.

Pray.

Be humble.

Feed an enemy.

Cry with someone who’s crying.

Laugh with someone who’s joyful.

Joy IS defiance in a culture that benefits from perpetuating fear, anger, hate, and division. Dolly doubled down when she was ridiculed for her big hair and sparkly clothes—her hair got bigger and her clothes got more sparkly. She embraced joy despite the suffering she endured and celebrated our shared humanity when life was painful. Dolly was a faithful saint no matter her fragility.

Faithful saints remain fragile sinners. No one is perfect. Hence that grace that Jesus so freely gives us and we are free to give ourselves and others even when it may seem risky. We are a congregation who celebrate God’s grace and one another, who find good in the world and who do good in the world. We are Jesus’ people who follow the One who makes us one. Thanks be to God and amen.

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[1] Hope Holds Laughter Through Tears and Hope Lives Here | Caitlin Trussell on November 9, 2025 at caitlintrussell.org.

[2] John Petty. Commentary on Matthew 16:21-28 on August 28, 2017 for Pentecost 13. http://www.progressiveinvolvement.com/

[3] Ibid.

[4] Ibid.

[5] Cody J. Sanders, Associate Professor of Congregational and Community Care and Leadership, Luther Seminary, St. Paul, MN. Sermon Brainwave podcast for August 30, 2026. #1099: Fourteenth Sunday after Pentecost – August 30, 2026 – Working Preacher from Luther Seminary

[6] Matthew Skinner, Professor of New Testament, Luther Seminary, St. Paul, MN. Sermon Brainwave podcast for August 30, 2026. #1099: Fourteenth Sunday after Pentecost – August 30, 2026 – Working Preacher from Luther Seminary

Caitlin Trussell with Augustana Lutheran Church on December 25, 2019

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John 1:1-14  In the beginning was the Word, and the Word was with God, and the Word was God. 2 He was in the beginning with God. 3 All things came into being through him, and without him not one thing came into being. What has come into being 4 in him was life, and the life was the light of all people. 5 The light shines in the darkness, and the darkness did not overcome it. 6 There was a man sent from God, whose name was John. 7 He came as a witness to testify to the light, so that all might believe through him. 8 He himself was not the light, but he came to testify to the light. 9 The true light, which enlightens everyone, was coming into the world. 10 He was in the world, and the world came into being through him; yet the world did not know him. 11 He came to what was his own, and his own people did not accept him. 12 But to all who received him, who believed in his name, he gave power to become children of God, 13 who were born, not of blood or of the will of the flesh or of the will of man, but of God. 14 And the Word became flesh and lived among us, and we have seen his glory, the glory as of a father’s only son, full of grace and truth.

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Today, at the manger-side, we’re drawn in a quieter way into the company of other people and the promises of God. Whether by temperament or circumstance we find ourselves in a reflective moment at a worship service. Christmas is a funny thing.  It’s religious.  It’s cultural.  It’s festive.  And it comes at just about the shortest day of the year.  There’s some history in those developments.  The church long ago tried to figure out how to exist alongside non-Christian celebrations that were rowdy and a lot of fun.  So time of year and some of the trimmings were combined from those celebrations and remain today.  I’m cool with that.  Christian faith has always lived in people’s lives while being translated by people’s lives.  This means that all kinds of things make their way into the mix.

There is also the story told in scripture.  At Christmas, we celebrate a birth.  Not just any birth…but a birth that shines light in the darkness, a birth that changes the world.  God was active in history long before the birth of Jesus. Connecting the moment of this birth to all of God’s history, the gospel writer of John uses those powerful words, “In the beginning…”[1]  These words that John uses to introduce the Word can also be heard in the very first verse of Genesis at the very beginning of the Bible.[2] This connection draws a huge arc through time, space, and place, between the birth of creation to the birth of Jesus.

So while Luke spends time on the human details of shepherds and a manger, John spends time on the cosmic ones.  Where Luke’s words are a quiet story of a holy family, John’s words elevate us into poetic mystery.  We could leave it there, in those mysterious heights.  We could keep at a distance this mysterious poetry that many discard as heady and inaccessible.  Except…except…John doesn’t leave it dangling out in the mystery of the cosmos, untouchable or inaccessible.

John brings the Word straight to the ground.  “And the Word became flesh and lived among us.”  This God who created…who made promises through Abraham, who brought freedom through Moses, who instigated challenge through the prophets, who gave guidance through kings…this God became flesh – vulnerable, tiny newborn flesh.  A mysterious, inaccessible, cosmic God becomes a God that is part of our common humanity, through common flesh.  God taking on flesh to join us in our humanity is the birth.  Or, as John likes to put it, “And the Word became flesh and lived among us.”[3]

God living among us in Jesus is cause for reflection. Not simply because God showed up but because God entered human fragility.  As John writes, “The light shines in the darkness and the darkness did not overcome it.”  Light moving in the dark; day against night.  This language may be poetic but we understand it, in part, by way of our experience.

The darkness of someone we love living with a mental illness that is difficult to treat.

The darkness of grief and the confusion it brings to daily life.

The darkness of disease, acute or chronic, that seems to take up more space than anything else.

The darkness of unrest in the world that is a matter of life and death.

If we could sit and talk about the darkness, each one of us could name a way that it affects our lives or the life of someone we love.  Into these real struggles, this darkness, Jesus is born.  Jesus who continues to bring light that reveals God in the midst of the worst that life brings – a light that shines a defiant hope.

My mother gave me permission to tell a bit of her story.  Many years ago, she married my first father in a romantic whirlwind. They honeymooned in Germany. While there, they picked up a set of Dresden angels – a few inches tall, fragile white porcelain, graceful, and beautiful. Life was good and fun and quickly grew to include five children.  Those angels were set out in a bed of pine boughs at Christmastime every year to protect their wing tips in case they were knocked over. They surrounded a small porcelain baby Jesus who finally joined the angels on Christmas Eve.

Then my father got sick.  Schizophrenia.  Life wasn’t so good and we had to leave. As a single mother, mom kept putting those angels out. She remarried and every year those angels would go out. My stepfather died and the angels still stood, surrounding and celebrating the baby Jesus. A few years ago, my mother and her third husband Larry gave the angels to me.  I think about those angels and my family’s story – the good, bad, and ugly.  I think about people and their stories, about light in the darkness, about how we struggle personally in families and collectively in world-wide crises. I also think about God slipping on skin and how that makes all the difference in my own life and faith – in bright times and broken times.

We don’t have to go very far to find what’s broken.  But think about how fast the speed of light travels to us, whether from the next room or from a star a million miles away.  We don’t move a muscle and light comes. Just so, God comes down to us in a flash of light, fleshy and fragile, right to the heart of things in the good, bad, and ugly.  We don’t move a muscle and God shows up. In the company of other people today, we remind each other that this is God’s promise to us and to world.  Some days that promise feels as fragile as porcelain. Today, Christmas Day, the glimmer of light from the manger feels like a defiant hope. No matter our feelings on any given day, “the light shines in the darkness and the darkness did not, [can not, never will] overcome it.” Amen and Merry Christmas!

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[1] John 1:1

[2] Genesis is the first book of the Bible’s 66 books. Genesis 1:1 – “In the beginning when God created the heavens and the earth…”

[3] John 1:14