This sermon is based on Matthew 16:13-28

You are no doubt familiar with the Japanese word Kamikaze. The Kamikazes were the suicide pilots in World War II who, at the cost of their own lives, attacked Allied ships in the Pacific. Some 1200 died in sinking 34 ships. The word Kamikaze in Japanese means "divine wind" and recalls a typhoon in the year 1281 that crushed the invasion fleet mounted by the ambitious Mongol emperor Kublai Khan in the wake of his conquest of China. Six-hundred-plus years later, to wreck the US naval juggernaut, the retreating Japanese tried to create another kamikaze - the suicide bombers. The effort did not succeed, as we all know, but the Kamikaze pilots will forever be remembered for their devotion to duty and their willingness to make the supreme sacrifice in de…