The Cost of Discipleship

Luke 14.25-33

25Large crowds were travelling with Jesus; and he turned and said to them, 26‘Whoever comes to me and does not hate father and mother, wife and children, brothers and sisters, yes, and even life itself, cannot be my disciple. 27Whoever does not carry the cross and follow me cannot be my disciple. 28For which of you, intending to build a tower, does not first sit down and estimate the cost, to see whether he has enough to complete it? 29Otherwise, when he has laid a foundation and is not able to finish, all who see it will begin to ridicule him, 30saying, “This fellow began to build and was not able to finish.” 31Or what king, going out to wage war against another king, will not sit down first and consider whether he is able with ten thousand to oppose the one who comes against him with twenty thousand? 32If he cannot, then, while the other is still far away, he sends a delegation and asks for the terms of peace. 33So therefore, none of you can become my disciple if you do not give up all your possessions.’

John Pridmore in 'Church Times'

LUKE'S JESUS says that I cannot be his disciple without hating. Jesus begins to list those whom I must "hate" - father and mother, spouse and children, brothers and sisters - but then he breaks off. The list would be endless. I must, in his catch-all phrase, hate "even life itself". No one and nothing is to be excluded from this all-embracing "hatred" required of me.

Commentators hasten to point out that to "hate" would not have meant the same to those who first heard this shocking saying as it does to us. I "love x" and "hate y", so we are told, is the Semitic way of saying: "I prefer x to y," or "I choose x over y."

We have the same extreme way of putting things in the saying of which Paul makes so much: "Jacob I have loved, but Esau I have hated" (Malachi 1.2-3; Romans 9.13). On this view, the sense of Jesus's words is captured in Matthew's more palatable paraphrase: "Whoever loves father or mother more than me is not worthy of me" (Matthew 10.37).

That said, we must be wary of interpretations that soften the impact of Jesus's hard words, even when it is another Gospel writer who tries to cushion the blow for us. Sometimes it is better to leave the difficult sayings of Jesus just as they are, and to live with them as best we can. Why should we expect to grasp all he meant, the one at our side who is always beyond us?

"Whoever does not carry the cross . . ." Thus most of the modern versions translate Luke's Greek. These versions miss the emphasis Luke adds to what has been said before about Christ's cross and ours (Mark 8.34, Matthew 16.24, Luke 9.23). All turns on Luke's precise choice of one word. As always, the 1881 Revised Version, for all its archaic and sexist language, gets it right. "Whosoever doth not bear his own cross cannot be my disciple." There is a world of difference between "carrying" and "bearing". I carry a brief-case, but I bear the cross.

The supreme commentary on Sunday's Gospel is, of course, Dietrich Bonhoeffer's book, The Cost of Discipleship. His chapter on "Discipleship and the Cross" is an extended reflection on the "bearing" that must be done if Christ is to have his way in us. "For God is a God who bears. The Son of God bore our flesh; he bore our cross; he bore our sins, thus making atonement for us. In the same way his followers are called on to bear. That is precisely what it means to be a Christian."

I must bear "my brother's burden", says Bonhoeffer. That burden is not only "his outward lot". It is also "quite literally his sin". The Christian, too, has to bear the sins of others. "He, too, must bear their shame and be driven like a scapegoat from the gate of the city."

Jesus bears the sin of others, but so must I. Any contradiction here was to be resolved at dawn on the 9 April 1945, when Dietrich Bonhoeffer was hanged in the Flossenbürg concentration camp.

I cannot be a disciple without "hating", without subordinating all else and everyone else to the prior claims of Christ and his Kingdom. Nor can I be his disciple if I hang on to anything. I have to "give up all my possessions".

We turn again, as we did last week, to Simone Weil. There are very few - though Bonhoeffer is among them - who have "attended" (her word) as she did to Christ's call to renounce "even life itself". Crucially - the adverb must carry its full weight - I must renounce my supposed rights. To assert my rights, Weil taught, is to cease to love. I have no rights, none whatsoever. I have only duties. It is you, my brother, my sister, who alone have rights.

Christian discipleship is costly. That is the message of the twin parables - "Don't start to build a tower you cannot afford to finish. Don't wage a war you do not have the resources to win." So far, my Christian allegiance has cost me little. Is there any sacrifice so small, I wonder, that I would not still be reluctant to make it?

The Cost of Discipleship was translated into English by the late R. H. Fuller. I have a copy on my desk as I write. I picked it up in a second-hand bookshop in York. It is signed by Fuller himself, and beneath it - whether or not in his own hand is unclear - is a note saying "translator's own copy". Here on my desk is "his" copy of the book. Now it is "my" book, this book that teaches me that nothing is mine. Long ago, Fuller let his copy go. Do I have the grace to do the same?