Luke 14: 25-33

Large crowds of people were traveling with Jesus. He turned toward them and said, "Whoever travels with me and does not hate father and mother, wife and children, brothers and sisters, yes even life itself, cannot continue with me. This is about cost: Which of you intending to build a tower does not first sit down and estimate the cost to see if he can afford it? If not, when he has laid a foundation and is not able to finish the rest, all who see will ridicule him. Or another example: What king who decides to wage war against another king will not first sit down and figure out whether his 10,000 troops are any match for the other fellow's 20,000? If he sees they will not, he will send emissaries to the other and ask for terms of peace. This is the kind of cost counting I am talking about. The cost of following me is giving up all you care about." (Translated and paraphrased by Harry T. Cook.)

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"No dilly-dallying" would be an appropriate summary of this passage. Extremist in nature, the mandate to follow in Jesus' way is depicted as being a stiff one even before one takes the first step, because one has to take it without ever making the mistake Lot's wife made. He who would follow must never look back and be willing to leave all of the past, materially and emotionally, in the past. The author(s) of Luke would have known, of course, what following Jesus ultimately meant and could mean.

Not only must a firm commitment be in place before the first step, but one must also count the cost of taking it, and be certain that he has what it takes not only to start but to finish.

Just to be a Christian? Just to be able credibly to say that one is a follower? That is not how contemporary Christianity works at least in such developed countries and societies such as the United States. Here church membership or faith affiliation is generally about as life-changing as joining the local Rotary Club.

Jesus and his following must be getting closer and closer to Jerusalem and the denouement because the going now gets tougher. One must now choose between family and following while accepting the cost of doing so. Matthew at 10:37-38 and Mark at 8:34 display parallels to the passage at hand.

In a good many English translations of the Bible, the page heading over such passages reads "The Cost of Discipleship." Indeed, that is the subject here. Luke's Jesus addressed the challenge to "great crowds" (οχλοι πολλοι), and the demand as we have seen is not insignificant. But the text makes clear that, by Luke's time (as early as the end of the first century CE.), the business of publicly being part of Jesus Judaism was becoming a serious matter. It might even have been a fault line down the middle of a family; it might have required disregard for one's own well-being.

In the tumult of the severance of Jesus Judaism from the synagogue communities, family ties were no doubt sundered. But "hate?" The Greek here is a complicated word μισει from μισειν (hatred) the opposite of αγαπη (total self-giving love). In the former state, one is more concerned for self than for other. In the latter, it is the other way around. So Luke's Jesus may have been heard in this wise: "You can't give yourself totally to your family and at the same time give yourself totally to me." Not so much, then, "hatred" of family as putting it second to loyalty to whatever it meant to be a disciple of Jesus.

For those whose research leads them to the hypothesis that the Gospel of Thomas in an as yet undiscovered Aramaic version preceded Mark and maybe even Q, the presence of the "hate" passage at Thomas 55 with a variation at 101 will reinforce the idea that the going was tough for Jesus followers from the beginning.

Taking up the cross -- a phrase that appears in some near-parallels to the Lukan passage before us in this edition of FINDINGS IV -- is a transparent allusion to the general method of Roman humiliation and terror and to the specific application of it to the execution of Jesus, as told of in the four canonical gospels. One can feel the apprehension the "great crowds" must have experienced as they are depicted as hearing the Jesus of Luke's imagination call them to faithfulness, with the cross as the sign of that faithfulness. The cross, the text implies, is the cost factor of discipleship. Willingly embracing it as a way of life is a steep cost to pay.

That brings Luke to a clunky juncture at which that cost is assessed and analogized. Among Jesus' probable audience of fellow peasants, who among them would have had the wherewithal to build any kind of tower? The illustration may be an exaggeration for effect. The same goes for the king spoiling for a fight. One has to count the cost before plunging into any significant human endeavor.

The "bottom line," as we say in our financially oriented culture, can be translated in this wise: "Whoever among you does not say 'goodbye to all that' cannot follow me." One cannot haul along everything including the kitchen sink and be effective on the way.

It seems evident that institutional Christianity has always had trouble deciding what light it would follow. When, here and there and now and then, it has followed the light that is the gospel image of Jesus, it has eschewed temporal power and status to become, for practical purposes, a servant -- even a slave or one indentured.

More often it has been unable to resist temptation to seek and to hang on to power and privilege, unable to say "goodbye to all that." It counted the cost of doing so and found it more than it wished to pay. Thus it has not often "followed Jesus," and for that will end up paying even more in terms of reputation and effectiveness.

Lots of luck to clergy who in their homilies and sermons this coming Sunday follow the logic of this passage to the end. The history of the Christian church is a moral disaster, and one cannot read, study or dilate upon this passage without seeing that fact and commenting upon it.