![]() ![]() The first parable concerns a man who contemplates building a tower. The hard sayings are interrupted by two parables about counting the cost of discipleship. Those who decide to follow Jesus must be prepared to take up the cross, here understood as an instrument of shame as well as of physical torment, and imitate Jesus’ example of suffering for the sake of God’s kingdom. The second hard saying asserts that following Jesus can and will involve suffering. The term “hate” in the saying, while an obvious exaggeration, un-derlines the overriding importance of God’s kingdom and following Jesus. This was an even more difficult choice in Jesus’ culture than it is for most people in 21st-century America. The first hard saying places before the prospective disciple the choice between following Jesus and family ties. ![]() It consists of three “hard” sayings and two parables. Today’s reading from Luke 14 concerns the high cost of discipleship and the need to count that cost. His experience has been repeated many times since, for example, by Ignacio Ellacuría, S.J., and his companions in El Salvador. For Bonhoeffer discipleship-fidelity to the Gospel and Christian principles-had a very high cost. Several years afterward he was arrested and executed for resisting Hitler and the Nazis. In the late 1930s, Dietrich Bonhoeffer, then the most promising Protestant theologian in Germany, wrote a book entitled in English The Cost of Discipleship. ![]()
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