Grace to you and peace from God our Father and our Lord Jesus Christ. Amen.

One of my favorite professors at seminary was a native of Pakistan. He grew up being influenced by both Islam from his father’s side and Hinduism from his mother’s side. Because his name ends with “Ali,” one can tell that his family is thought to have descended from the prophet Muhammad. This meant that his family had a certain degree of power and prestige within the Muslim community.

I can still remember when he told our class about how he first became interested in Christianity during his studies at Oxford University. He said, “I just didn’t get it.” First of all, why would God show such weakness and, second of all, why would all these people follow someone who demonstrated such weakness? This just didn’t make sense to me, so I wanted to learn more. It was at this point that my professor began to tell us of his first encounter with the folly of the cross. A God who would give up power, in essence, be powerless for my sake and for the sake of humanity–who could imagine that?

We read in the Gospel text today that it was also difficult for Peter to imagine and grasp this kind of God, more specifically, this kind of Messiah. Jesus had just asked Peter who he thought he was and Peter responded, “You are the Messiah, the Christ, the one we have been waiting for.” But Jesus silences him and says, well yes, while that may be true I’m not the kind of Messiah you think I am. I will undergo a lot of suffering and then eventually be killed before being raised. Peter doesn’t want to hear anything like that though. He says, “No, no Jesus. Don’t you mean that you are going to go and kick some Roman butt?!”

Jesus responds to Peter saying, “Get behind me, Satan” and saying that he has his mind set on human things and not on the things of God. He is seeing things with human eyes and not with the eyes of God. He is caught up in the will of humanity and not with the will of God.

Of course Peter is not the first or last one in the Gospels to be caught up with human ways instead of God’s ways. Just after the second Passion prediction when Jesus is trying to tell the disciples that he would be killed in chapter 9, we find the disciples arguing about who is the greatest. And after the third passion prediction in chapter 10, we hear James and John arguing about who gets to sit next to Jesus at the kingdom’s heavenly banquet. Time after time Jesus tries to explain that he is a very different kind of Messiah, but they just don’t get it.

To tell you the truth, I’m not sure I get it either. Let’s get this straight. You mean in order to be a follower of Jesus and a follower of God’s way we are to deny ourselves, take up our crosses and follow Jesus’ way? Honestly, I think most of us are better at following Peter. Peter’s desire to silence and rebuke weakness is a tendency we are all familiar with. Denying ourselves, on the other hand, means to say “no” to all those things that benefit us and build us up. To take up or bear one’s cross means to voluntarily submit oneself and suffer for the sake of others. This is definitely not the human tendency. But this is Jesus’ way as told in Philippians 2: Jesus, “who, though he was in the form of God, did not regard equality with God as something to be exploited, but emptied himself, taking the form of a slave...he humbled himself...”

This emptying of God’s self is what theologians have termed kenosis. Bonhoeffer explains the self-giving nature of God when he says, “God lets himself be pushed out of the world on to the cross. He is weak and powerless in the world, and that is precisely the way, the only way, in which he is with us and helps us..The Bible directs us to God’s powerlessness and suffering; only the suffering God can help.” This understanding of God’s saving work in Christ was in direct conflict with the might-makes-right kind of Messiah that most Jews were expecting.

Today, I don’t think most of the Church gets this understanding of Christ either. Most of the church has been too wrapped up in political power since the 4th century. In his book Why Christian? Douglas John Hall says: “in the beginning Christians didn’t talk much about ‘the church’; they considered themselves [to be] ‘people of the Way’–by which they meant the Way of Jesus, the Way of the Cross, the Via Dolorosa. The first Christians were not thinking in institutional terms at all. They were thinking in terms of a movement.” However, with the conversion of the Roman Emperor Constantine in the fourth century, “the political establishment of Christianity made the tendency toward institutionalization infinitely greater than it had been in the preestablished state of the movement.” So it was no longer dangerous to be part of this alternative Christian movement, and the way of the cross came to be equated with the way of the state.

Last week, a professor from Rice University gave a Table Talk at Christ the King on Radical Islam. In his presentation, he briefly commented on the fact that one of the early crises within Islam–at least Sunni Islam–began when it was no longer experiencing the successes of the Golden Age of Islam. The waning glories of Islam in the 9th and 10th centuries began some internal identity questions about their mission. How could they continue to submit to God in the midst of losses? Ironically, it was the worldly success of Christianity that began its early internal questioning about identity. How could Christians continue to walk the Way of the Cross when they were also carrying the sword?

The Reformation of the sixteenth century was one movement that tried to break Christianity out of the political establishment. Martin Luther’s comments about the Roman Pope were not personal, Hall says. “They were uttered against a whole form of the church that in Luther’s mind had become corrupt–and had become that way because it had gone after power for itself by prostituting itself with the powerful, and not remaining faithful to the weak, crucified Christ.”

As we look at the global stage of events, it seems ridiculous and naive to talk about identifying with and following a weak, crucified Christ. Our human eyes see the way things are. We have our sights and minds made up on what we need to do. It is foolish to think of any other alternative. But just for the sake of argument, what might things look like if we had our mind on God’s ways and not human ways? What would it look like if we set our mind on divine things and not on human things? Would we approach the global arena of war and defense any differently?

In a moment, Katherine Ann Frieda Willcockson will be baptized. She will be united with Christ in a death like his and, as Romans 6 tells us, she will most certainly be united with him in a resurrection like his. Throughout her life, she just like you and I, will be challenged to deny herself, take up her cross and follow Jesus. At various points in her life she will be challenged to set her mind on divine things rather than on human things. She will be struck by the folly of God’s ways versus the ways of the world. From time to time maybe she will get it. Maybe she, and we, will catch a glimmer of the realized reign of God in this world that is now, but not completely yet. More importantly, however, she and we through our baptisms are able to rest in the promise that, because of his suffering, God gets us–God has got us in his sight, God has got us in his mind. And thankfully, God has got the saving of the whole world in his divine plan. Amen.