The Cost of Discipleship

Whenever I go to a new place where folks speak a different language than my native Southern English, there are a few important phrases that I need to know. These include:

Where is the bus stop?
Where is the bathroom?
Is desert included with dinner?

And perhaps most importantly:

How much does it cost?

In a consumer culture, we are always, well, consumed, with the cost of things. Are we getting a bargain or are we getting cheated? Can I get a better deal over there? Is this really worth the money I am going to spend? What is the exchange rate?

The cost of things is often uppermost in our minds, those minds that become a perpetual calculation of loss and gain.

In the Gospel, Jesus is honest about the cost of being his follower.
Today’s passage stands in the middle of the long journey that Jesus has been undertaking with his chosen band of disciples, a journey that began in Chapter Nine, verse fifty one.

In Chapter Nine, Jesus set his face to go toward Jerusalem. It will take him ten chapters to get there. He has ten chapters to prepare his followers for the ordeal that is to come, because when the prophets go to Jerusalem, they go for one thing. We know that one thing but Jesus’ followers are mostly gentiles, they do not.

Today Jesus offers these erstwhile yet perhaps somewhat naïve disciples a lesson on the cost of things.

What is necessary to be a follower of Jesus? Losing everything.

What is the cost of discipleship? It is abandoning a reliance on the natural bonds of family and home. Jesus calls the disciples to put him first and if that means leaving the others behind that’s what it means.
Harsh we say, yet true.

Nothing can separate me from Jesus and his mission, even father and mother.
Nothing can keep me from God’s purpose, even a longing for marriage and family. Nothing can keep me from God’s will, even that which we hold most sacred in the world.

Know the cost of what you are doing, Jesus says. Know the cost. Feel the cost. If there is benefit, experience it to the full. If there is loss, mourn it and move forward. Preaching the message of the Kingdom is the most important thing we can do. It is all we can do. It is all we have to do and false understandings of what is meaningful and what is important in this world are distractions and must be rooted out, plundered, and destroyed.

Our task here is the preparation and inspiration of fearless advocates of God’s plan, of his initiative, of his gracious will realized in the Kingdom he has established.

Our task here is the salvation of souls, lost souls, souls enmeshed in the confusion of false Gods, empty promises, and dead ends.

Our task here is evangelization, of telling the world that if they risk abandoning all, they will gain an everlasting inheritance, fail to acknowledge that risk and gamble on the ephemeral and the passing and all is lost.

Our task here is that through our work, through our words, through our preaching, through our prayer, through our study one thing and one thing only will be realized. Jesus Christ, and him crucified.

Take up your cross, Jesus says, because I have taken up my cross and will be nailed to that cross for the salvation of the world.

Leave your family behind, I have left my Father behind, I have condescended to leave the home of my heavenly habitation to serve you, to be found in the form of a slave, to suffer and die for you.

Prepare the foundations of your soul to have built upon it the edifice of God’s reign living and breathing in your flesh and blood, as I have offered my flesh and blood to build the Holy Church, the everlasting dwelling place of the Spirit

Give and give more, give everything, and never count the cost. I will never count the cost, Jesus says, when I get to Jerusalem, when we get to Jerusalem.

Be for me and me alone, as I am for you and you alone, suffering the indignity of a criminal when you are the criminal, dying the death of a thief, when you have stolen your very life from the God who made you.

In the Gospel today, the disciples are half way there, just half way there. We too are half way there because:
We hold back, putting our lives in the safe deposit box of our own values and creativity
We fail to give God everything, absolutely everything
Out of fear, out of faithlessness, out of selfishness
We hold back
Nickeling and diming the slot machines of fortune and blessing
Clutching to our chests grudges, old hurts, prejudice, sour dispositions
Conserving our way into oblivion.
Because, in all our hearts is a dead place that like a stone keeps us from soaring up to God
Jesus says: Come with me now, father and mother, sister and brother, they can come with us or stay home
In our spirits is a leaden earthboundedness and Jesus says: Dare to soar! Take the chance
Give up your life and you will truly learn how to live
Sacrifice yourself completely to the service of your brothers and sisters and learn the meaning of authentic discipleship

There is an amazing book by the Lutheran theologian and pastor, Dietrich Bonheoffer called: The Cost of Discipleship

In the book there is a line so haunting, so chilling and so true that I find myself returning to it again and again. It has become like a mantra for my life and my ministry. It is an axiom that I know I can never live up to, but that I know I must continually strive toward.

Bonheoffer said: When God calls a man he bids him come and die.


In the foreign culture of discipleship formation there are a few important phrases that you need to know, or at least I do. These include:

Where is the bus stop?
Where is the bathroom?
Is desert included with dinner?

And perhaps most importantly

How much does it cost?