Photo Alexander Grey
Karen Hollis | August 30, 2026 14th Sunday after Pentecost
Matthew 16:21-28 From then on Jesus began to tell his disciples plainly that it was necessary for him to go to Jerusalem, and that he would suffer many terrible things at the hands of the elders, the leading priests, and the teachers of religious law. He would be killed, but on the third day he would be raised from the dead. But Peter took him aside and began to reprimand him for saying such things. “Heaven forbid, Lord,” he said. “This will never happen to you!”
Jesus turned to Peter and said, “Get away from me, Satan! You are a dangerous trap to me. You are seeing things merely from a human point of view, not from God’s.” Then Jesus said to his disciples, “If any of you wants to be my follower, you must give up your own way, take up your cross, and follow me. If you try to hang on to your life, you will lose it.
But if you give up your life for my sake, you will save it. And what do you benefit if you gain the whole world but lose your own soul? Is anything worth more than your soul? For the Son of Man will come with his angels in the glory of his Father and will judge all people according to their deeds. And I tell you the truth, some standing here right now will not die before they see the Son of Man coming in his Kingdom.”
Let us pray . . . May the words of my mouth and the meditations of all our hearts be reflections of your word to us today, in Christ’s name we pray. Amen
I’m guessing this isn’t the sort of text we expect to hear on an affirming Sunday. We might expect to hear something about love and commitment from Ruth and Naomi or queer faith from the Ethiopian eunuch. A few months ago, I talked about some of the clobber passages that have been poorly interpreted and used to harm, like Sodom and Gomorrah.
But when we dedicate a Sunday to affirmation and inclusion, we don’t need to stick to those texts that have gotten a lot of attention. We can simply choose a text and apply a queer theological lens. There are an infinite number of theological lenses through which we can view scripture. Some common ones are social justice, being pastoral, transformation, love, grace. Different lenses will reveal to us different things about the text. So, let’s take this relatively challenging text – and this is just what came up this week in the lectionary – and let’s look at it through a queer theological lens and see what it reveals to us.
When we’re talking about queer theology, we’re talking about a few different things: God’s love for each of us in our authenticity, we’re talking about freedom to be as God made us, about God’s presence in the midst of relationship, about fluidity and diversity of gender and identity in all of creation. This is the breadth queer theology. We’ve looked through this lens many times, so it probably feels familiar, but I don’t think we’ve talked about it specifically . . . in part, because I’ve been on my own journey with this and doing my own learning.
Connecting with this lens in an intentional way happened for me kind of spontaneously. After reading some books on queer theology, I was preparing for this morning, and as I read Matthew 16, this queer lens just kind of appeared and new possibilities emerged for me from within the text. It was pretty cool.
So, what did I notice? Jesus has a core value of authenticity. Of discerning what is true, truer, and truest within us and living from that deeper place. And that value of authenticity has everything to do with queerness. Living authentically is all about releasing, deconstructing, or giving back the social constructs we’ve been told to live within and instead living our truth. Queerness, or life outside of traditional norms, is a reality of the universe. Across every species of insect and animal, creatures are born biologically male, female and other; and animals live in relationship in every configuration imaginable: female/male, female/other, male/male; even in the plant world, the focus is on mutuality, rather than individuality. Our world was not made to be binary . . . our world is queer, it just is. And in this morning’s text, Jesus is challenging Peter and the disciples to embrace the reality of the world as it is.
Because of his value of authenticity, a foundational aspect of Jesus’ ministry is helping people to align with their deeper truth. There are lots of stories from scripture where people meet him and either instantly connect with something deeper or do so through a process. Following him, of course, doesn’t mean to walk behind him, it means to embody his teachings. Pretty quickly his disciples have to have a radical look at who they are, who Jesus is, and their calling in the world. Jesus makes it very difficult to continue on without vertical alignment (with the divine) and horizontal alignment (in the world) with what is truest for us.
Oh boy, does Peter struggle with this. In the beginning of this passage, Jesus tells the truth of his own path. He speaks of a future that is inevitable, given who he is and his particular calling and ministry. He knew that his ministry was not sustainable, that the earthly powers would at some point put a stop to him. Peter doesn’t like it. He doesn’t want it to be true. We know Peter to have a bit of his own agenda, he’s impulsive, resistant to new ideas. In this case, Peter resists reality, denies reality, and Jesus calls him on it.
Jesus is pretty direct and abrupt in this teaching, but what he is trying to get at is really central to his overall message. He says “Give up your own way, and take up your cross and follow me.” In other words, let go of your egoic agenda, dig down deeper and connect with that from which you can’t look away. What we find there is freedom . . . freedom from a life or aspects of a life that - when we are most honest – we know don’t really fit. And there is freedom to live within the flow of our call in this life. It connects us back to the queer theology . . . it’s God’s love for each of us in our authenticity, it’s freedom to live as God made us. Jesus says, for on the other side exists your very soul . . . and what is more valuable than your soul? The soul is at peace when we are aligned with who we are . . . regardless of who we are and where we are on life’s journey, the soul is at peace when we are aligned with who we are. When we are not aligned, we can really suffer.
What does it look like in real life to give up our own way, let go of our own agenda, of what the world tells us is important? What does it look like to shed that layer, lose that life?
Last year I watched a movie called Will and Harper that tells one such story. It features actor Will Farrell (Elf and Anchorman) and his friend of 30 years, Harper Steele, a comedic writer, who wrote for Saturday Night Live for many years. Not long after Harper fully transitioned from male to female and came out as trans, the two friends acknowledged that Harper’s transition may impact their friendship, so Will invited Harper to go on a road trip together across the US to figure out their relationship, whether major changes were needed, how to act, what to ask, what not to ask, etc. They spent over 2 weeks on the road and filmed their journey. We’re actually going to be showing the film Will and Harper for PIE day in March, so here’s a little taste of it.
Before her transition, Harper really experienced that state of non-alignment. She had built this life as a man: married to a woman, 2 kids, decades building a career as a comedy writer, liked to spend time in sketchy places, had great friends . . . she just couldn’t figure out how to live that life as a woman . . . this reflects many people’s story.
About 7 years before the documentary was filmed, she bought a house in a small, poor town in rural California, where, in her words, I could have “my own space to dress like a woman, walk around like a woman. Miles from anyone.” She spent time there because she just wanted to hide from everyone. “I hated myself so much,” she said, “I felt like a monster.”
The friends stopped at the house on their coast-to-coast trip. It was badly in need of repair and showed clear signs of vandalism. Harper showed Will around the house, and in some moments viscerally remembered what it was like living disconnected. While spending time there kind of worked for a while, she said, “it just wasn’t the path.” She didn’t want to continue lying to her friends and family. The only way for her to find peace was to align her life with who she really is. It was an excruciating and courageous process of shedding layers of identity, behaviour, masks, coping mechanisms. With the shedding came more exposure, more vulnerability, and the process of learning to be seen as she actually is . . . allowing her soul to shine through.
On the other side of this kind of transition, queer people and specifically trans people never know what they’re going to find. The journey of stripping away our layers of protection also reveals where other people are at. We learn where the openness is, the confusion, the resistance, where the love is. This process shows us where the love is. And love is relational (this is queer theology), God lives in relationship. We will find the love in relationship . . . unfortunately not every relationship – but love is kind of the fabric through which everything is connected.
Through her courageous transition, a deeper love was revealed to Harper . . . a love for herself, from her children, her friends. She lost the life she knew, and gained through her alignment this abundance. It’s like a well of life that pours forth from within. It washes the heart, quenches thirst, and provides sustenance for the journey ahead. Thanks be to God for God’s faithfulness and companionship as we all seek to follow what calls to us from deep within. Amen.