Planted, Not Buried
Summary
What does Jesus actually mean when he says to deny yourself, take up your cross, and follow him? Working through Matthew 16:24–26, Dominic Jackson takes three instructions that are easy to flatten into one vague call to try harder — and pulls them apart. Denying yourself isn't self-loathing. Taking up your cross was the most scandalous image imaginable to its original audience. And following Jesus means letting go of the version of Jesus you've been trying to control. The invitation at the end of it all isn't about doing more. It's about learning, as Eugene Peterson puts it, how to die — and discovering that what looks like burial is actually being planted.
Questions for reflection
Dominic describes reading the Bible like a high school yearbook — looking for yourself, skipping the parts you don't like. Which parts of Scripture do you tend to skip or explain away? What might it look like to lean into one of those this week?
He distinguishes between self-denial (occasionally giving things up) and denying self (surrendering control to Christ). Which one do you practice more? What's the difference in how they feel?
The cross was the most offensive, shameful image in the ancient world — not jewelry, not a church logo. How does recovering that original scandal change how you hear Jesus' invitation?
Dominic describes the Knights Templar being baptized while keeping their swords out of the water. What is the equivalent in your own life — the area you're holding back from Jesus while handing over everything else?
He asks: if God hates all the same people you hate and loves all the same people you love, you're probably molding God in your image rather than the other way around. Where might that be true for you?
C.S. Lewis writes that the more we get ourselves out of the way, the more truly ourselves we become. Does that feel like good news or a threat? What does your answer reveal?
Luke adds the word "daily" to Jesus' call to take up the cross. What would a daily practice of dying to self actually look like in your life — not as a discipline to perform, but as a posture to inhabit?
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Years ago, one of my mentors — a guy named Ray — gave me some of the best and most painful advice I've ever received about reading the Bible.
The challenge was to read Scripture as it was made to be read: in context, and what he called "deep and wide." And here's what that meant — because for most of my Christian walk, I had been approaching the Bible the way I approached my high school yearbook.
Every couple of years, Megan and I will pull out our old yearbooks and flip through. And if you're like me, the first thing you do is go looking for yourself. There I am — too cool to smile, dumb look on my face. Then you find your friends, maybe flip through a few clubs and sports pages. And you skip entire sections of people you didn't know. I was a junior once; I didn't know any freshmen, so those pages didn't exist to me. Then you flip to the back and find the little notes people wrote specifically for you.
For years, that was how I read the Bible. I'd go looking for me — a little Jeremiah 29:11, a little John 3:16, Philippians 4:13. Mantras for my life, without much concern for context. I'd flip to the captivating stories, the beautiful poetry. I loved the story of Jesus — especially the parts where he welcomed sinners and put the religious leaders in their place. Then I became a religious leader, and I didn't love those parts quite as much anymore. Thomas Jefferson famously cut out the parts of Scripture he didn't like. I did the same — just with my attention instead of an exacto knife.
Ray challenged me to change that. He said: when you get to a place you don't like — especially in the teachings of Jesus — don't skip it. Lean in.
That's what we're doing today. Some Sundays you leave here with an encouraging word or an interesting piece of ancient history. Other Sundays the text is harder. This is one of those Sundays. Not a verse you'll see on a coffee mug anytime soon. But as Ray instructed me: we lean in.
This sermon wraps up our series Journey to the Cross, in which we've spent the last several weeks following Jesus through his final days, teachings, miracles, and encounters on the road to the crucifixion. Last week was Resurrection Sunday. You'd think that would be the natural end of the series — but while we've spent all this time looking at one cross, there's another one we haven't looked at yet.
That's what we're doing today.
[Prayer]
The Context
If you have a copy of the Scriptures, we're in Matthew 16:24–26. And you'll notice right away that we're jumping into the middle of a conversation.
Just before this, Jesus has been recognized by his disciples as the Messiah — not for the first time, but they're finally starting to put it together. He's also telling them plainly that he's going to die. They don't fully grasp it yet. Peter, in response, actually rebukes Jesus — tries to redirect the will of God — which doesn't go well for him. And then immediately after, right on the heels of declaring his march toward the cross, Jesus says this:
"Whoever wants to be my disciple must deny themselves and take up their cross and follow me."
A Terrible Sales Pitch
Before we dig in, I just have to acknowledge the obvious: this is a terrible sales pitch.
Every time the crowds around Jesus start growing, it seems like he asks himself, what is the most offensive thing I could possibly say right now? And he delivers. Over and over, as interest builds, he finds a way to thin the crowd back down. This is one of those moments.
If you've heard sermons on this passage before, chances are it went one of two directions. Either: you're not doing enough — white-knuckle it, try harder, prove to Jesus you've got what it takes. Or: the cross is obviously impossible, only Jesus could do it, so just try your best and don't swear and don't watch too much HBO.
But I want to suggest that Jesus isn't saying either of those things. And when I started looking more carefully, I noticed that what sounds like one instruction repeated three ways is actually three distinct things. A formula, if you will. Not typical for me, but it worked for Jesus, so here we go.
Step One: Deny Yourself
First, remember the context. Right before this, the religious leaders have been demanding a sign from Jesus, telling him what he needs to do to prove himself. A moment later, Peter is trying to redirect him. And throughout the ministry, the disciples have been arguing among themselves about who gets to be Jesus' number two, who holds the most important seat. Into all of that, Jesus opens with: deny yourself.
Worth noting, though, that New Testament scholar Warren Wiersbe draws an important distinction here. Denying self is not the same as self-denial. We practice self-denial when, for a good purpose, we occasionally give something up — like participating in Lent. But we deny self when we surrender ourselves to Christ and determine to follow his will rather than our own.
Jesus is not asking you to suppress the gifts and passions and personality God uniquely gave you. He's not telling the gifted musician to go do something they're terrible at in the name of humility. The "self" he's talking about is the self-absorption, the self-righteousness, the self-centeredness — the part of us that makes everything about me.
And that is deeply countercultural right now. We live in an age of self-love, self-help, self-optimization. The greatest sin you can commit in today's culture is denying yourself — not living your truth, not following your heart, not making your own happiness the highest priority.
I want to be careful here. This is not another pastor telling you that you're a monster for taking a day off or driving through Dairy Queen after a hard week. Treat yourself. That's not what Jesus is talking about. He's talking about viewing the entire world through the lens of me. About being the main character in your own story, centered on your own needs and preferences and comfort.
And if I'm being honest, this mindset has made its way into the church too — including my own approach. I've walked out of services thinking, what did that do for me? I liked the speaker, but I wish he'd been funnier. I liked the songs, but I prefer a different style. Jesus would say: deny that. Turn your attention toward him.
Step Two: Take Up Your Cross
I want to make sure we don't miss how completely scandalous this would have sounded to its original audience.
Today, a cross is almost certainly either a church logo or a piece of jewelry. It's decorative. It's familiar. We have one in our own branding here, and I'm not judging that — I just want us to notice how much has changed. Imagine Gateway Church unveiling a new logo next week with an electric chair in it. That would be jarring. That would feel wrong. That's closer to what the cross meant in the first century.
Two thousand years ago, the cross was the most offensive imagery imaginable. It was reserved exclusively for the worst criminals — and not just as punishment, but as public degradation. It was a shameful death, a humiliating death. It was actually illegal to crucify a Roman citizen regardless of their crime, because crucifixion was considered only appropriate for those viewed as subhuman.
Have you ever noticed that the gospel writers, when they reach the crucifixion in their accounts, simply write: and then Jesus was crucified. That's it. No details. No emotional description. No invitation to imagine the physical suffering. These writers, who elsewhere describe things in elaborate detail, stop there. In the same way you wouldn't linger on the graphic details of the worst kind of crime you can imagine — neither do they. The horror is understood. No elaboration needed.
And yet right before he walks toward this death, Jesus turns to his followers and says: pick up yours and come with me.
Dietrich Bonhoeffer, in The Cost of Discipleship, puts it plainly: "When Christ calls a man, he bids him come and die."
That was not the sales pitch I received in youth group. Come follow Jesus and your life will be better and more exciting. And listen — that has been true for me. I genuinely cannot recognize the person I was before. My life is so much better. But it started with me laying it down first. I just didn't fully know that's what I was signing up for when the David Crowder song played at camp and I walked to the front.
Step Three: Follow Me
Before we look at what it means to follow, notice who Jesus is talking to. He's telling his disciples how to become disciples. The people who were already closest to him. And yet they needed to hear this.
One thing I've noticed in the church — and I've been guilty of this myself — is how many categories and tiers we create for people in their faith journey. Seeker, believer, follower, leader, disciple. I used to run a youth group and I had an elaborate dartboard system for categorizing every student. The idea was to meet people where they are, which is good — but somewhere in there I started treating discipleship like a ladder with most people on the lower rungs and a select few who might eventually graduate to the top.
Jesus doesn't have that chart. To Jesus, you are either a disciple or you're not. And the door is wide open — whoever wants to — while the bar is very high. The word "disciple" appears 269 times in the New Testament. The word "Christian" appears three times, almost always as an outside label. To follow Jesus was to be his disciple. Full stop.
And what does that following look like?
First, it means following with our actions. Doing as Jesus does. Living as he lived. Not sitting back thinking, I said a prayer twenty years ago and now I just wait. The invitation is to ask daily: how might God use me as a vessel of the Spirit to bring renewal and reconciliation and hope and healing to this world? As the hands and feet of Jesus — not by our own power, but by his.
Second, it means following with our allegiance. And here I want to be careful with how we read these stories, because we often judge the people in them without putting ourselves in their place.
Every Palm Sunday, we comment on how the same crowd that cried "Hosanna" was crying "Crucify him" just days later. We wonder how people could have missed Jesus when he was standing right in front of them. But let me ask you to imagine something.
Imagine being a Jewish person not two thousand years ago, but eighty years ago — in the middle of the Holocaust. Millions of your people are dying. And then the Messiah arrives. The one you've been waiting for is finally here. And your first question — the only reasonable question — is: when are you going to get to work? When are you going to destroy this evil? When are you going to save us?
And instead, the Messiah walks past the guards, makes his way into town, and starts telling farming parables.
Or imagine being a follower of Jesus in Ukraine a few years ago. Bombs dropping. A system every night just to confirm your family is still alive. The school you grew up in, leveled. The park where you proposed, leveled. The hospital where your grandmother died, leveled. And then the Messiah shows up and heals somebody's ankle. And you think: that's it?
I bring this up because when I pray for Jesus to return and set things right, I have a long list of where he needs to start. Politicians. Criminals. Human traffickers. Toxic celebrity pastors who exploit desperate people. I could go on.
You know who's not on that list?
Me.
I want Jesus to come back and deal with my enemies. But not before blessing me, obviously. And it's easy to say, I'm not perfect, but I'm definitely not as bad as them. Which, if you notice, is almost verbatim the prayer of the Pharisee in Luke 18.
So if the God you believe in hates all the same people you hate, values all the same people you value, and aligns perfectly with your political convictions — you can be fairly certain that you have been molding God to be more like you rather than allowing him to mold you to be more like him.
Don't hear me say Jesus has no opinions on justice or policy. Read his own words — he clearly does. I'm saying that to follow Jesus means letting Jesus lead. Letting him enter those places rather than forcing him into the labels we've already created. Letting Jesus define who Jesus is.
And that includes releasing the parts of ourselves we've been keeping from him.
If you know anything about the Knights Templar, you know that before going into battle to pillage and destroy things supposedly in the name of Jesus, many of them would be baptized right before departing. But historians record that as they were lowered into the water, many kept their swords raised above the surface — gripping their weapons even in the moment meant to symbolize death to self and new life in Christ.
We read that and think: how absurd. How could they?
And then I ask myself what I'm keeping out of the water. Lord, you can have all of me — except my finances. My views on sex. The addiction I minimize because I'm not ready to let it go. My political hypocrisy. My closeted prejudice. My ego. That part is mine.
Just like the knights, we go under — but with our wallets, our career ambitions, our resentments held high above the surface.
Luke's version of this same teaching adds one word that Matthew leaves out: daily. Daily take up your cross. As in: this is not a one-time transaction but a daily decision to let these parts of us die. Every day we go under. Every day we allow those parts to be washed clean and made new.
The Good News
So what do we do with this? How is any of this actually good news?
Here's what I believe: the beauty of following Jesus with our entire selves is that we become more ourselves when we do so — not less. C.S. Lewis writes in Mere Christianity: "The more we get what we call ourselves out of the way and let him take over, the more truly ourselves we become. Because our real selves are all waiting for us in him."
It sounds strange to say you will never truly live until you first walk toward your death with Jesus. But that's the invitation. You don't lose a seed when you plant it. Though it looks dead and buried, you're actually setting it free to become what it was always meant to be — alive, growing, connected to the vine.
The happiest people I personally know are not the richest or most successful or most attractive. They are the most faithful, most surrendered, most trusting.
If you heard this morning a message about needing to get it together and do more, I've failed. The invitation is not to do more. In many ways it is to do less. Death to self is like any death — it is not something you perform, but something that happens to you. It is letting go. It is allowing the work that has already been done to move you.
The cross is not just a way to die. It is a way to live.
Eugene Peterson says it this way: "That's the whole spiritual life. It's learning how to die. And as you learn how to die, you start losing all your illusions, and you start being capable of true intimacy and love."
What the world calls restriction, the Bible calls freedom. What culture calls suffering, the New Testament calls joy. What our flesh calls dying, we echo as true life.
What looks like burial is simply being planted.