The Fourteenth Sunday after Pentecost fell on August 30, and it was the last 9:00 service of the summer. Next Sunday we go back to 8:00 and 10:30, with Christian Education Hour between them at 9:15. Two other things made the morning unusual. Pastor Christopher Ramstad was away with his family, and instead of the Divine Service we prayed Matins.
Matins is the church’s order of morning prayer, short and sung and older than almost anything else we do. It opens by asking for the ability to pray at all: O Lord, open my lips. There is no Holy Communion in it. August 30 was a fifth Sunday, and we commune on the first and third. So the service ran from the psalms, through the readings and the sermon, to the Prayer of the Church and out. It is all in Lutheran Service Book, the red hymnal in the pew racks, and the page numbers are announced from the front.
Preaching was Rev. Ken Lampe, retired now, and just finished serving a vacancy at the LCMS congregation over in Aurora. He gave thirty-nine years to the ministry, and about thirty of them to two Arkansas congregations: Zion Lutheran in Ulm, then twenty-three years as senior pastor of Redeemer Lutheran in Mountain Home. The nine years after that he was president of the LCMS Mid-South District, out of Memphis. When he retired in 2012 the district named him president emeritus. DCE Jason Glaskey welcomed him, observed that even pastors get a Sunday off once in a while, and asked us to greet one another with the right hand of fellowship.
The readings picked up mid-sentence
Last Sunday’s Gospel ended with Peter getting it exactly right: You are the Christ, the Son of the living God. This Sunday’s begins with the next verse, and he gets it exactly wrong. Jesus starts telling the disciples that he must go to Jerusalem and suffer and be killed and on the third day be raised. Peter takes him aside to talk him out of it.
If anyone would come after me, let him deny himself and take up his cross and follow me. For whoever would save his life will lose it, but whoever loses his life for my sake will find it.
Matthew 16:24–25 (ESV)
Jeremiah supplied the Old Testament, and it is one of the least polite prayers in Scripture. The prophet complains about unceasing pain and a wound that will not heal. Then, in the same breath, he says that God’s words were found and he ate them and they became the delight of his heart. God’s answer is not comfort. It is a promise: a fortified wall of bronze, and I am with you to save you. From Romans came Paul’s long list of what love actually does, which ends with the instruction to overcome evil with good.
We opened with LSB 861, Christ Be My Leader, sang Isaac Watts on the cross at LSB 425, When I Survey the Wondrous Cross, and went out on LSB 845, Where Charity and Love Prevail. The Collect of the Day had already asked for what the sermon would spend twenty minutes on. God’s Son willingly endured the agony and shame of the cross for our redemption; grant us courage, the prayer goes, to take up our cross daily and follow him.
The sermon: our daily call from Christ
Pastor Lampe gave his theme in the first minute and then spent a while somewhere else, on the ordinary kind of challenge that has nothing to do with religion. Getting out of bed in the morning. Balancing a checkbook. Cancer, addiction, going on with life after a spouse or a child has died. Some of it we cause and some of it simply arrives. None of that was his text. His text was the harder thing Christ puts in front of a Christian, and puts there daily.
The disciples had just worked out who Jesus is and had no idea at all what he intended to do about it. They were waiting on an earthly Messiah who would throw the Romans out and put Israel back where it stood under David, and as his close followers they expected good seats in that kingdom. A Messiah walking to Jerusalem to be executed was not on the list. Hence Peter: never, Lord.
Deny yourself, in ordinary use, means a week without chocolate. Pastor Lampe would not let it stay that small — every day saying no to your own interests and yes to your Lord, with God as the governing power of a life rather than one consideration in it. He set Matthew 10 beside it, where Jesus says that anyone who loves father or mother, son or daughter, more than him is not worthy of him. Nothing gets to matter more. Not even family, which is the part that stings.
He was careful about the cross, because we have worn the phrase out. In Jesus’ day it was an instrument of execution, and the condemned man ordinarily carried it to the place where he would die. So the demand was that you would sooner die than deny Christ. We now call an illness a cross to bear, or a mortgage, or a difficult relative. That is not what the text is about. The cross in question is the trouble that finds you because you belong to Jesus, and it turns up in a business deal, at school, at a party, at home.
Do not be conformed to this world, Paul had said an hour earlier, and Pastor Lampe offered a translation of the line that he likes better: don’t be so well adjusted to your culture that you fit into it without thinking. He did not inflate what this costs us. Christians in Nigeria are being killed for their faith. Coming to church on a Sunday morning in Joplin was not much of a challenge, he said, unless Satan tempted us to stay in bed. The challenge arrives Sunday afternoon, and Monday, and Thursday, when faith runs into our talk or our pocketbook and our own interests start pushing back.
What holds anybody to that is not resolve. Jesus did go to Jerusalem, and died, and on the third day was raised, and did all of it so that we would have forgiveness and life through faith in him. The same love forgave Peter, who would later deny knowing him at all. So Pastor Lampe finished with two ballplayers. Brett Favre the NFL quarterback broke Dan Marino’s touchdown record on September 30, 2007, and two weeks later broke the record for interceptions with 278. Babe Ruth hit 714 home runs and struck out 1,330 times. Neither man quit when he failed, and Christ already knows we will fail this week, without intending to let that be the end of it.
There is no podcast episode from this Sunday. Our Word & Sacrament podcast carries Pastor Ramstad’s preaching, so on a Sunday with a guest in the pulpit the full service video above is the recording we keep.
The children’s message: boots nobody could fill
Jason Glaskey had come to the chancel steps earlier with an armload of his own big rubber work boots and asked which of the children could fill them. Not one volunteer, which he told them was the smart answer. They would fall off. You would trip. They might be too heavy to lift your legs at all.
Then the two Sundays side by side, in words a five-year-old could hold: last week Peter was wonderful, this week Peter hears “Get behind me, Satan” — and behind Jesus, he pointed out, is exactly where Peter needed to be. On the screen was a photograph of footprints in snow. He asked the children what they were looking at, got “footsteps,” got “snow.” Then he had them bow their heads and prayed an echo prayer a line at a time. Lord Jesus, you went first. You walked down the hard road. You carried the cross for me. Because I never could.
Children are spoken to directly in nearly every service here; there is more for our youngest members on our Children and Families page, and our Youth Ministry page has what is coming for grades 5–12.
Thanking Susan Ideker
The other thing that happened on August 30 is the thing a member will remember, and it landed on the sermon without anyone planning it that way. This was the Sunday the congregation set aside to thank God for Susan Ideker, who has directed Immanuel’s choir for decades. The Prayer of the Church named her and gave thanks for her willingness to lead God’s people in the praise of his name through her musical gifts.
In the announcements Jason said the rest of it, with the sermon still close enough to reach for. Thank you Susan, for often denying yourself, taking up your cross, and following Jesus — and for showing the rest of us how to do it with joy, and that as we serve we ought to sing. There was cake and punch for her in the fellowship hall during the Bible class hour.
After the service
Being the last Sunday of the month, the Helping Hands boxes were at the back of the church. What goes in them goes straight out to ministries here in Joplin. It was also the third and final week of the Time and Talent emphasis. Paper forms were on the table in back, and the survey is open online from here on.
Confirmation begins right after Labor Day, and parents of sixth through eighth graders will meet Pastor Ramstad in the fellowship hall on Wednesday. The new member class meets Thursdays for six weeks, and it is still an easy class to join late. Wednesday youth meals need cooks and sponsors for the whole school year; you can claim a week on our youth meal signup. LifeLight paused for a week so the LWML could hold its fall retreat here. Everything else is on the events calendar.
The announcement slides closed on photographs from the first full week of school at Martin Luther School. Very full classrooms, duck-duck-goose with the preschoolers, Bibles handed out at chapel that week. Some students reportedly loved their new bibles so much, they wanted to take them out to recess. The school has been part of this congregation since 1953, and its building on Connecticut went up twenty years before the church did. For those twenty years the congregation worshiped in what is now the gym, and the original cross still hangs proudly on the wall behind the stage.
If you are looking for a church in Joplin, this was an unusual Sunday in a fairly ordinary way. A guest preacher, an older and shorter order of service. But everything sung out of the hymnal, children spoken to directly, and one woman thanked by name for work most people never see. Next week the two-service schedule returns and visitors are welcome at either one. Our What to Expect page walks through the morning in more detail, and prayer requests are always welcome through our Contact Card. Last Sunday’s service, with our teachers installed for the year, is here: Thirteenth Sunday after Pentecost. And earlier this month Pastor Ramstad preached the same disciple in the same trouble, out on the water, on the Eleventh Sunday after Pentecost.
Read it again this week
Sunday’s texts are worth a second look on a weekday, when nobody is singing and there is no one sitting next to you. Each reading below opens in the English Standard Version, the translation we read from in the service.
- Jeremiah 15:15–21 — the prophet complains, and God answers with a promise instead of an explanation
- Romans 12:9–21 — what genuine love actually does, in about twenty short commands
- Matthew 16:21–28 — the sermon text: deny yourself, take up your cross, follow me
Three questions from the sermon, if you want something to chew on:
- Pastor Lampe drew a line between the crosses we talk about — illness, money, a difficult person — and the cross Jesus means, which is trouble that finds you because you belong to him. When did that last happen to you, in an actual room, with actual people?
- “Don’t be so well adjusted to your culture that you fit into it without thinking.” Name one thing you do without thinking because everyone around you does it.
- Peter’s worst moment was not this rebuke; it was denying he knew Jesus at all, and he was restored anyway. What have you quietly decided you are disqualified from?
Luther’s Small Catechism is free to read online from Concordia Publishing House, and two sections sit close to this Sunday. The Table of Duties is Luther’s answer to Romans 12 — Scripture gathered by station in life, which is where “deny yourself” stops being an abstraction and turns into your Monday. And the section on Confession is the church’s ordinary machinery for exactly the failure Pastor Lampe assumed we would have this week.
In the service — Fourteenth Sunday after Pentecost, August 30, 2026
| Liturgy | Matins (Lutheran Service Book) — no Holy Communion |
| Old Testament | Jeremiah 15:15–21 |
| Epistle | Romans 12:9–21 |
| Holy Gospel | Matthew 16:21–28 |
| Hymns | LSB 861, Christ Be My Leader · LSB 425, When I Survey the Wondrous Cross · LSB 845, Where Charity and Love Prevail |
| Preacher | Rev. Ken Lampe (guest) |
| Children’s message | Jason Glaskey, DCE |
| Podcast | No episode this week — the full service video is above |
| Also in the service | Thanksgiving for Susan Ideker, choir director · Helping Hands offering · final week of Time and Talent · reception during the Bible class hour |
Questions about this Sunday
What is the Fourteenth Sunday after Pentecost?
It is one of the “green” Sundays. The church year has two halves. The first follows the life of Christ, from Advent through Pentecost. The second is much longer, follows the life of the church, and its color is green. In 2026 the Fourteenth Sunday after Pentecost fell on August 30, and the readings came from Series A in Lutheran Service Book. Our sermon series page shows how the seasons run across the year.
What is Matins, and why did Immanuel use it instead of the Divine Service?
Matins is the church’s order of morning prayer. Christians have prayed it for many centuries. It is one of the daily offices — short services built around psalms, Scripture, and prayer. It is sung, and it is shorter than the Divine Service, because it does not include the Lord’s Supper. So congregations often use it on a Sunday with no Communion. August 30 was a fifth Sunday, and we commune on the first and third. It is also a good fit when a guest preacher is leading. The full order is in Lutheran Service Book.
Who preached on August 30, 2026?
Rev. Ken Lampe, a retired LCMS pastor. He served Zion Lutheran Church in Ulm, Arkansas, and then Redeemer Lutheran Church in Mountain Home, Arkansas, where he was senior pastor from 1980 to 2003. From 2003 to 2012 he was president of the LCMS Mid-South District. The district named him president emeritus when he retired, after thirty-nine years in the ministry. Most recently he served a vacancy at an LCMS congregation in Aurora, Missouri, which he has since completed. Pastor Christopher Ramstad was away with his family, and DCE Jason Glaskey led the children’s message. You can meet our regular staff and lay leaders on our People Profiles page.
What does “take up your cross” actually mean?
Not illness, money trouble, or a difficult relative, which is how we usually use the phrase. In Jesus’ day the cross was how Rome executed people, and the condemned man carried his own cross to the place where he would die. So the phrase means a commitment to Christ you would not give up even to save your life. Pastor Lampe applied it to the trouble that comes to a Christian because of faith — at work, at school, at home. And it only works because Jesus carried his first. Our What We Believe page explains our confession further.
When does Immanuel Lutheran Church worship in Joplin, Missouri?
August 30 was the last of our summer Sundays. In summer we gather once, at 9:00, with Sunday School and Bible classes at 10:15. Beginning September 6 we return to two services, 8:00 and 10:30, with Christian Education Hour between them at 9:15. You can watch live or catch up any time on our worship livestream page, or browse the sermon archive.
About Immanuel Lutheran Church, Joplin, Missouri
Immanuel Lutheran Church is a confessional congregation of The Lutheran Church—Missouri Synod, gathered around Word and Sacrament at 2616 S Connecticut Ave, Joplin, MO 64804. We are the home of Martin Luther School, serving children age 3 through 8th grade. The whole congregation is fed weekly through Services and Sermons and daily through our devotions. You can support this ministry through online giving, or find out who we are on our About Us page. Jesus Brings Life. Meet Him Here.