Luke 14:25–33 ESV – Bible Gateway
In today’s Gospel, we see the cost of discipleship. In his introduction to today’s reading, John Bergsma brings up Bonhoeffer’s most famous work, a meditation on the Sermon on the Mount entitled (in English) The Cost of Discipleship[1]. That Bonhoeffer criticized “easy-believism” as “cheap grace”:
Cheap grace is the preaching of forgiveness without requiring repentance, baptism without church discipline, Communion without confession… . Cheap grace is grace without discipleship, grace without the cross, grace without Jesus Christ.
Costly grace confronts us as a gracious call to follow Jesus, it comes as a word of forgiveness to the broken spirit and the contrite heart. Grace is costly because it compels a man to submit to the yoke of Christ and follow him; it is grace because Jesus says: “My yoke is easy and my burden is light.”[2]
Large crowds are accompanying Jesus at this point in his final journey to Jerusalem. These people essentially saw Jesus as a miracle worker and wanted these signs and wonders to fix problems in their own lives. While modern Christians now have a more theologically astute understanding of who Jesus is, we share this essential attitude with these crowds. We also must be reminded of the cost of discipleship and the priority of Christ in our life.
Jesus explains the radical commitment required of those who follow him. Three times he sets forth a condition without which a person, he says, cannot be my disciple (14:26, 27, 33). First, Jesus demands a commitment greater than one’s attachment to family members: parents, wife, children, and siblings (see 14:20; 18:29–30)[3]
There are a couple of aspects to the language Jesus is using here. First, he uses rabbinical hyperbole to make a point, “a dramatic overstatement that attracts attention and provokes thought.”[2] The word he uses translated into Greek does translate as hate. Used here primarily, it is used to shock and contrast, but the word for hate in scripture has a semantic range as:
An idiomatic term meaning “to love less” (Gen 29:31–33; Mal 1:2–3). Not even the sacredness of family loyalty should outweigh our commitment to Christ, since we must be willing to abandon even close relationships to follow him (Mt 10:37).[4]
We see this range, such as in Genesis 29, where it says, “Leah was hated,” which means that he loved Rachel more than Leah; he preferred Rachel to Leah. We also see, “elsewhere Jesus criticizes the Pharisees for using a loophole in the law to justify not caring for their parents (Mark 7:11), and Paul rebukes Christians who do not care for their own family (1 Tim 5:8).”[2]
We also see this point made in Matthew 10:37:
He who loves father or mother more than me, is not worthy of me. He who loves son or daughter more than me, is not worthy of me. And he who does not take his cross and follow me is not worthy of me.
While his audience would have understood some of these distinctions, what is shocking is that Jesus is revealing to them his divinity. As Brant Pitre references, “Jesus is divine. He’s making divine demands. He’s making demands that only God himself could make of an Israelite audience.”[3]
Jesus continues to shock them by telling them that discipleship will involve carrying his cross. We have gotten used to this imagery and likely have spiritually reduced the meaning. For his audience, crucifixion was a cursed death where you were stripped of all dignity and put on display. To follow Jesus, we also must be stripped of our pride and attachment to the things of the world.
St. John of the Cross in the Ascent of Mount Carmel writes:
“The doctrine that the Son of God came to teach was contempt for all things in order to receive as a reward the Spirit of God in himself. For, as long as the soul does not reject all things, it has no capacity to receive the Spirit of God in pure transformation”[5]
The Ignatius Catholic Study Bible references that:
Discipleship is a serious commitment. It is not about testing the waters or holding ourselves back from God (9:62). A complete surrender to Christ is necessary to complete the tasks of Christian living[4]
Before mentioning the third condition (14:33), Jesus supports his teaching with two short parables. Most interpreters apply them to his disciples. Because of the commitment involved in following Jesus, potential disciples, according to both parables, should first sit down to deliberate. Following Jesus is not a decision to be made lightly.[6]
The Catholic Commentary on Sacred Scripture for the Gospel of Luke continues:
In the first parable, about building a tower, the issue is the cost involved. One must have enough financial resources to bring the project to completion, or else face mockery from onlookers. The message of this parable seems to support most closely the third condition of discipleship mentioned in this passage (v. 33), which similarly involves financial resources: deliberation is required before giving up one’s possessions to follow Jesus.
In the second parable, about a king marching into battle against another king, the issue is the number of troops needed to win. The stakes are higher than in the first parable since one’s life is on the line in the decision whether to fight or to seek terms of peace (19:42, same Greek phrase as here). The message of this parable especially recalls the first condition of discipleship (14:26), in which Jesus calls his disciples to love him even more than their own lives.
In this extract from the Gospel, Jesus continues that discipleship requires total renunciation. We don’t get to decide what we want to renounce for our convenience. We don’t get to set the terms. We must strive to know God’s will and use prudence to live that out in our lives. Jesus doesn’t want just part of us; he wants the fullness of ourselves. St. Thérèse of Lisieux said, “You cannot be half a saint. You must be a whole saint or no saint at all.”
Peter Kreeft puts this succinctly:
If we preach Jesus, if we say we are Christians, that’s the deal. Give him everything. Trust him with everything. Your life, your death, your sanity, your happiness, your hope both for this life and for the next, your sex life, your financial life, your home life, your recreational life, your body, your mind, your soul, your feelings, your freedom, your rights, your time, your past, your future, your present. Give it to him now, with no conditions, no strings attached, no footnotes or fine print. Say and mean, “Thy will be done,” and then don’t duck. [7]
Sources and References
- The Word of the Lord: Reflections on the Sunday Mass Readings for Year C – John Bergsma
- Catholic Productions, Commentaries by Brant Pitre
- The Ignatius Catholic Study Bible꞉ The New Testament
- The Gospel of Luke, Catholic Commentary on Sacred Scripture, Rev. Pablo T. Gadenz
- Peter Kreeft, Food for the Soul: Reflections on the Mass Readings Year C
- Photo by Ben White on Unsplash
- Dietrich Bonhoeffer, The Cost of Discipleship (New York: Touchstone, 1995), 45. ↩
- The Word of the Lord: Reflections on the Sunday Mass Readings for Year C, John Bergsma ↩
- Catholic Productions, Brant Pitre ↩
- Ignatius Catholic Study Bible: New Testament ↩
- St John of the Cross, Ascent of Mount Carmel, book 1, chap. 5, 2. ↩
- The Gospel of Luke, Catholic Commentary on Sacred Scripture, Rev. Pablo T. Gadenz ↩
- Peter Kreeft, Food for the Soul: Reflections on the Mass Readings Year C ↩
