I'd like to ask you to relax for a moment about the clothes that you are wearing. Think about how your clothes say something about who you are: your gender, your age, your economic status, maybe even how you feel about yourself. As you think about that, imagine yourself in quite different clothes. Note that your real self would not change. Even if you were wearing Eskimo clothes or Arabian clothes, you would still be who you are, so your real self is not your clothes. Therefore, you are not your clothes."

Think about the place where you live. Think about everything you own. Those things say a lot about you, but are you your possessions? Would you change even if a fire or a flood took everything that you have away? Think about that and say to yourself, "I am not my possessions."

Now think about your job, whether you are a homemaker or work outside of the home or are a student or a retiree. A lot of our identity comes from our job, but if you did something quite different, would your essential self change? Wouldn't you still be you? Think about this and say to yourself, "I am not my job."

Think about your relationships: think about the people who think of you as a friend, or as a brother or sister, or as a cousin, or as a child, or as a parent, or as a spouse. Imagine what it would be like if all these people disappeared from the earth. Would you stop being yourself? Wouldn't your true self persist? Think about this and say, "My relationships are a very important part of my life, but I am not my relationships."

Now how do you feel, both your physical and emotional feelings. You may be in pain at this moment. You may be grieving. Or you may be feeling very peaceful, very happy. Maybe you don't like this exercise and you are irritated and angry or maybe a little frightened. Imagine that somehow the feeling you have at this moment was taken away and an opposite feeling was put in its place. Would you stop being you? Would your essential self really change all that much? Think about this and say, "My feelings are very important, but I am not my feelings."

Pay attention to what you are thinking at this moment. Perhaps you are worried. You are making plans. You are thinking critically about yourself or about me or about people you know. You are thinking about the past or about the future. Obviously our thoughts are very close to our essential selves, yet they are always changing, and something about us never changes. Each of us is always the same person no matter what we are thinking about. Think about this and say, "I am not my thoughts."

Think about your life's experiences. Imagine looking back down the road of life and seeing all the people you have ever known: old friends, old neighbors, old enemies, teachers, schoolmates. See the places you lived, the schools you went to, and the places you worked. Think of funerals and weddings, hospitals, sunsets, dark nights, rainy days and sunny days. Your experiences have done so much to shape you, and yet you have to ask yourself, would I be all that much different if some of my experiences had been different? Is there something about me that is really me no matter what has or has not happened to me? I have had many experiences, but I am not my experiences. Who am I? Who am I?

Listen to the words of Jesus again: "If any want to become my followers, let them deny themselves and take up their cross and follow me. For those who want to save their life will lose it, and those who lose their life for my sake will find it."

Some of you just lost your lives -- or almost did. Some of you just found yourselves, or almost did.

When someone asks, "Who are you?" what do you answer? Most of us begin with a name, and then -- well, it depends who is doing the asking. If I am calling my mechanic to see if my car is done, I'm the owner of a certain kind of car. If I am calling the school to make an appointment with the principal, I am my child's parent. If I am at a family reunion, I am the child of whichever parent it is whose family is having the reunion. If I am calling my doctor to find out about an X-ray, I am a sprained ankle. When I am calling my Congressional representative, I am a voter and a taxpayer. But, if I am talking to God, who am I?

Does God see me only as someone else's brother, or father, or son or husband? Does God see me only as a minister or as an American? Does God's understanding of who I am change when God sees what kind of car I drive or what kind of neighborhood I live in? Does God only think of me as a physical ailment? Does God think of me only as a middle-aged guy whose hair is getting thinner and whose waist is getting thicker?

The person you are before God is that mysterious "I" who isn't what you wear or what you do or what you feel or think or own. Wouldn't you like to find that person -- that essential "I"? Don't you sometimes chafe under the false and superficial understandings of yourself that other people have of you -- and you too often have of yourself? This so-called "self" that is defined by our jobs, our relationships, our marital status, our social status, our appearance and other externals is really a false self. How do we find the true self -- the self that we are before God? To find our selves before God, we have to lose what we think we are or what we think we are supposed to be. Often that feels like crucifixion.

When Jesus went to the cross, he lost everything. He lost his position in the community; instead of being a respected leader, he became a common criminal. He lost his friends and his followers. He lost his only possessions, his clothes, and with them went his dignity. He lost his family. In order to insure his mother's survival, he had to give her away to one of his disciples. There was a terrible moment when he even lost his connection with God: "My God, my God, why have you forsaken me?" Jesus lost everything including life itself, but in losing everything, he became the person he really was before God -- the Christ, the son of God.

Listen again to Jesus' words: "If any want to become my followers, let them deny themselves, take up their cross and follow me." That little exercise we went through at the beginning of this sermon was a denial of our selves. I deny that I am the clothes that I wear. I deny that I am the job that I perform every day. I deny that I am my relationships. I deny that I am my feelings. In some ways, that exercise is superficial. It's one thing to say to yourself, "Of course I am not my clothes. Of course, I am not my possessions." It is another thing to go and sell all you have and give it to the poor and follow Jesus.

It's one thing to say, "Of course, I am not my job." It's another thing to lose your job or quit your job -- or to retire from a job. It's one thing to say, "I am not my relationships." It is another thing to lose relationships, or to have them change profoundly. Some of you may feel that this morning as you anticipate a child going off to kindergarten. Who will you be if you don't have that preschooler arounnd all day? Some of you have a child going off to college. Who will you be if you have a child who is now an adult? Who will you be if you have an empty nest? You have thought of yourself in a certain way for the last five years or the past 18 years. Now you will be different, because that relationship is different. Even more profound -- and much more painful -- are the losses caused by death or divorce. Who am I, if I am no longer someone's child? Who am I if I am no longer someone's spouse?

This church is full of people who have suffered losses of possessions, of jobs and of relationships. They know the pain. People who have been through these traumas can tell you, however, that there is something to be discovered when what you always identified as yourself is stripped away. People often find the self that God sees and God knows.

This, however, happens involuntarily and usually painfully. Jesus counsels us to deliberately lose ourselves: "If any want to become my followers, let them deny themselves and take up their cross and follow me. For those who want to save their life will lose it, and those who lose their life for my sake will find it."

This sounds harsh, but it is really a prescription for spiritual health. Letting go of the things that seem to define us gives us the chance to grow and change. I can think of no better place to see the truth of this than a high school class reunion. The healthiest and most interesting and most authentic people at a class reunion are the people who let go of what they were when they were in high school. The most tragic people are the ones who have hung on to the identity they had: the class clown, the jock, the class queen.

Sooner or later many of us come to the conclusion that we need to let go of pieces of our identity and try to find our real selves. When we do that, we will run into difficulty because Satan will stand in our way. When I speak of Satan, here, I am not talking about Satan as the epitome of evil. I'm speaking of Satan in the same way Jesus was in our gospel lesson. When Jesus says, "Get behind me, Satan," he isn't saying that Peter is the Prince of Darkness. In fact, if it weren't for John Milton and possibly the book of Revelation, we wouldn't even think of Satan as the Prince of Darkness. Satan, throughout most of the Bible, is just the one who keeps getting in people's way. You and I both know, when we are really honest with ourselves, that most people's real problem in life -- and our own real problem in life -- is that we get in our own way. We are not as loving and as free as we were created to be because we keep getting in our own way.

Sometimes we get in each other's way, too, and we do it thinking that we are being loving. A woman announces to her family that she isn't going to completely define herself as wife and mother anymore. That doesn't mean she stops loving them. It just means that she isn't going to see herself as confined to those two roles anymore. Maybe she is going to get a job or go back to school or become an artist. She wants to find out who she is by letting go of thinking of herself as only a wife and a mother. Her family starts to argue with her. "You can't do that. We need you." They may not actually say it. They may be outwardly supportive, but they begin sabotaging her efforts to do something else with her life. They are getting in her way.

A man starts sharing with his wife that he is thinking of changing careers. Maybe he wants to back off and devote more time to doing volunteer work or to writing a novel. She has some legitimate concerns about paying bills, but maybe some of her identity is tied up with his career. She is the wife of the doctor or the lawyer or the Indian chief. His effort to find himself by losing himself makes her feel like a part of herself is dying, so she begins raising objections and gets in his way.

A son or a daughter comes home from college and announces that he or she wants to be a missionary. Well-meaning parents try to talk some sense into their child. "You could do so much more good by finishing medical school and supporting missionaries with your tithe. You could do community service." What they are really saying is, "I've begun to picture myself as the parent of a certain kind of adult and you are changing my view of myself and of you."

We get in our own way, too. Walter Wink, a Bible scholar, has said that "Satan is yesterday's will of God." When we do the will of God we feel alive; we feel like we are doing the right thing; our lives have meaning and purpose. However, the thing that made us feel alive and which was right for yesterday may not be right today. It may have lost its meaning and its purpose. Remember the class reunion? So often the people who are least likely to change are the ones who enjoyed high school the most -- the ones who found meaning and fulfillment in the games, the grades and the goofing off. The ones who are most likely to have let go of their old identities are people like the class nerd, the class drunk, the class slut, and all the ugly ducklings.

It happens later in life, too. We have a tendency to hang on to roles and relationships and even possessions which were right and had meaning at one time in our lives, but have lost that meaning now. It may be the will of God to spend most of one's waking hours looking after a four-year-old, but it may not be appropriate to do that when the child is 14 and it certainly isn't when he or she is 40.

It isn't just our possessions, our careers and our relational roles that get in our way. Our beliefs can also get in our way. We can understand that losing or changing our possessions, our job, our relational roles might help us find the true self, but what about our beliefs? Aren't my beliefs, especially my religious beliefs about God and Jesus Christ, always true and always God's will? Aren't my religious beliefs fundamental to who I am?

No. Our beliefs belong to yesterday. Indeed, our beliefs may even be inherited -- even the ones that seem to define who we are. Many of us are a little like the guy whose friend asked him, "George, are you going to vote for the Democrat in the next election?" George says, "No, I'm going to vote for the Republican." His friend says, "Why?" George says, "Because my father was a Republican and my grandfather was a Republican and my great-grandfather was a Republican -- that's why I'm going to vote Republican." His friend says, "George that's crazy. What if your father was a horse thief and your grandfather was a horse thief and your great-grandfather was a horse thief, what would you be then?" "Oh," says George, "then I would be a Democrat."

Our beliefs are often inherited. They may have been right and true and meaningful for our parents and grandparents and great-grandparents, but they may get in our way. They may stop us from having an authentic faith in Christ. That's exactly what happens to Peter in this passage. Only minutes after he affirms that Jesus is the Messiah and Jesus commends him and calls him a rock and tells him he is the foundation of the church, Jesus starts talking about having to die. Now this isn't Peter's understanding of what the Messiah is. Peter had a Sunday school picture of the Messiah in his head. It was a picture of a king who sat on a throne and ruled forever -- a king who would never die. He had inherited this belief from his ancestors. He had made it his own, especially as a follower of Jesus, whom he believed to be the Messiah.

He starts to argue with Jesus. "You can't die," said Peter. That's not what the Messiah does. The Messiah lives forever. Peter's most sacred beliefs were getting in the way of his really hearing Jesus and seeing Jesus and understanding Jesus and following Jesus. They were getting in the way of Peter becoming Peter -- the disciple or follower of Jesus. When Jesus says that his followers must be willing to pick up their crosses to follow him and lose their lives in order to find them again, he means that we sometimes have to lose even our beliefs -- our faith -- so that we can find a truer faith. Recently a committee interviewed several people who were preparing for the ministry.

All of them were second-career people. Each one had lost the life that he or she had been living. Two of them were men in their fifties who had spent most of their lives working as managers in large corporations. Both of them quit their jobs at great financial cost to themselves to go to seminary. Another was a young woman who had grown up in a very conservative evangelical church. She spoke warmly and movingly of how she had given her life to Christ when she was a teenager and how that meant that Christ needed to become the Lord of her whole life: the way she related to her friends, to her teachers in school, even to her brother. In college, she became part of a group that tried to evangelize other students.

As she described her journey, however, something didn't fit the stereotype. She is now a member of a church that is best known for its diverse congregation. It has many interracial couples. She attends a seminary that most people think of as a very "liberal" school. Someone asked her how she put all of this together in her life. She said, "That was a real crisis for me. I felt, when I gave my life to Jesus, that I had found the truth. How could I find new truth?" The answer to that came to her in understanding that Jesus never changes, but we change in our understanding of him. Satan is yesterday's will of God. Who are you today? What do you believe today? What must you do today? What do you want today? Sometimes we think of ourselves today as being the person we were yesterday who has the mission that God revealed to us yesterday. That gets in the way of knowing who we are today and knowing what we are called to do today.

To take up our cross means that we are willing to let go of everything that was true of us yesterday and let God show us who we are today. We need to die to yesterday in order to be raised up today. That doesn't mean that we don't keep the promises we made. That doesn't mean that there is no consistency in our lives. In fact, the strange thing that we discover is that the more we let go of yesterday, and of who we think we are and what we think we want, the more consistent we become. There really is a self down there inside of each of us -- a self that has been there from the time we were babies and will be there until the day we die.

It is that self that Christ calls to follow him over the horizon into a new world. It is that self that needs to let go of everything that isn't itself so that it can pass through the eye of a needle and enter the kingdom of God. Amen.