In the Hebrew and Greek texts for today, there is an interesting connection. In Exodus Moses asks God---if he has to go on this incredible journey back to Egypt to liberate God's people---who will he say sent him? All he gets in response is "I Am" or "I will be who I will be." YHWH is what Moses gets. Now among the ancients knowing the name of a god gave one divine power. The name of YHWH certainly didn't do much for Moses in the eyes of the people he would like to have impressed. As one scholar puts it: "As Moses begins his journey with YHWH, he is aware that he has no god on a leash, no genie in a lamp, no chip in the big game he can produce on demand. Humankind is on notice that this God is elusive; giving a name that is not a name, a moving, not a fixed, target, a God who is not here, not there, but everywhere." The scholar goes on to say that "it is as if God were saying, 'If you want to know my name, come with me and spend the rest of your life finding out.'"

Hold that picture and next to it, put the scene just before our text from Matthew today in which Jesus, God-with-us, is the one asking the question of his followers: "Who do you say that I am?" Peter pipes up with the big answer: "The Messiah!" Now Messiah was a word with a long history and huge expectations attached to it, first spoken by the prophet Nathan in David's day. Peter considered the Messiah to be a conqueror, fighting for the oppressed, controller of kingdoms, or as Ched Myers says Peter here affirms the "myth of redemptive violence". This was the Hebrew perception of the Messiah.

This could be our culture's perception as well. Jim Wallis of Sojourner's raises our awareness that "The language of 'righteous empire' is employed with growing frequency in our churches. The roles of God, church, and nation are confused by talk of an American 'mission' and 'divine appointment' to 'rid the world of evil.'"

William Sloan Coffin says something similar: "I wonder if we Americans don't also have something that we should contribute…something that would make the world a safer place. I think there is something in us. It is an attitude more than an idea. It lives less in the American mind than under the American skin. That is the notion that we are not only the most powerful nation in the world, which we certainly are, but that we are also the most virtuous. I think this pride is our bane and I think it is so deep-seated that it is going to take the sword of Christ's truth to do the surgical operation."…or perhaps it will take a confrontation that says "Be Gone!" to an idea that is hijacking what the true reign of God is about. I personally am tired of the dominance of those of the religious persuasion who emphasize law at the expense of grace, purity at the expense of community, especially when law is used to justify prejudice and complacency and hierarchy and dominance.

Jesus' idea of Messiah clashes with Peter's, and suddenly the star pupil, the rock on whom Jesus has just said he will build his church becomes the stumbling block. Faith can be both of these: a foundation on which to build and/or a stumbling block that trips us up. And Jesus responds vehemently…just as he did to the temptations in the wilderness.

I have been plugging away at Robertson Davies' Deptford Trilogy. In this book Davies plumbs the depths of his religious sensibilities. Into the mouth of a Spanish cleric the Canadian author puts some fascinating lines one of which is pertinent to our text: "I am sure Christ learned a great deal that was salutary about Himself when He met the Devil in the wilderness." I think the same is true in this encounter with Peter, when he is tempted to take the easy way. And who would be the greatest tempter but the one who seems to understand him best. But Jesus is wiser than that.

He calls his disciples and us to take up the cross and follow him. There are many understandings of this instruction. I don't think Jesus was talking about the little irritations of every day life…and I don't think he was saying life is cheap, go spend it foolishly. I don't think he meant to hold life lightly…I do think he wants all of us to have life abundant, but that is quality of life with a capital Q…that means that we live it with eyes wide open for that which robs anyone of life or hope or dignity and are ready to step in to uphold life…that we don't hold life so dearly that we are afraid to enjoy it…or hold it so carefully that we are essentially caged. Life is given with the invitation to live it fully…pouring it out…and knowing that we will be refilled from the source that is overflowing.

Perhaps we are on the right track when we think of the cross to which Jesus referred as the Hebrew letter Tau, which at that time was in the shape of a lower case "t" which looks like a cross. It is the last letter in the Hebrew alphabet and represented the fulfillment of the entire revealed Word of God. The prophet Ezekiel uses the imagery of the Tau to commend Israel to remain faithful to God til the last, to be "sealed" with the mark of the tau on their foreheads as God's chosen people until the end of their lives. Remembering that this was a Jewish community of faith, not Christian at this point… I believe that Jesus was reminding his disciples that they were to be faithful, remembering the tau on their foreheads… remembering who they were and to whom they belonged and then to follow Jesus because he was faithful to that God and would not lead them astray, but take them deep into faithfulness in ways they could never dream. I think that is the cross Jesus asks them to take up, a cross that keeps their focus on God's reign, God's priority, God's inclusive love. This priority Jim Wallis says "commands us to see not only the splinter in our adversary's eye, but also the beam in our own. The distinction between good and evil does not run between one nation and another, or one group and another. It runs straight through every human heart."

We each have these two aspects of Peter within us…the one that declares "You are the Messiah" and the one that says "Don't do what you have to do because if you do, then I might have to leave the safety of my existence…to leave the familiar…and strike out on a journey, the destination of which I do not know the ending."

But if we dare to follow Christ on that path, let us remember the words of Thomas Merton: "Most Holy God, I have no idea where I am going. I do not see the road ahead of me. I cannot know for certain where it will end. Nor do I really know myself, and the fact that I think I am following your will does not mean that I am actually doing so. But I believe that the desire to please you does in fact please you. And I hope I have that desire in all I am doing. I hope that I will never do anything apart from that desire. And I know that if I do, this will lead me by the right road though I may know nothing about it. Therefore, I will trust you always though I may seem to be lost and in the shadow of death. I will not fear, for you are ever with me, and you will never leave me to face my perils alone." Amen.