Hard Choices - Reflections on Luke 14:25-33, Pentecost 13, Year C

by John C. Holbert on Monday, June 9, 2025

         Luke’s Gospel may perhaps be called the “in-your-face” gospel. Mark has great immediacy, Matthew often refers to the fulfillment of prophecy, while John uses nuance and philosophy to lure the reader into rich depths of reflection. Luke tends to say what he wishes with blunt force language. Luke’s Jesus pulls few punches, both with announcements of the rule of God and with direct confrontations with those who cannot or will not accept the call of Jesus Messiah. Luke 14 is a classic portrayal of this kind of demand.

         Luke 14:15 is a continuation of the preceding scene. Jesus is still at the banquet table of the “ruler of the synagogue,” including their friends, the lawyers, and assorted important people in the community. Jesus may have charged them that the next time they send out invitations to dine, to invite “poor people, the handicapped, the lame, and blind” (Luke 14:13). One can never be certain, but I would bet that these folk will never include such riff-raff on their guest lists. And though Jesus has thus urged them to upset their expected ways of action in community, to avoid their self-exaltation, and to move toward a genuine humility, one who is reclining at the table offers his commentary on Jesus’ pronouncements: “Happy is the person who will eat bread in the kingdom of God!” (Luke 14:15) This is just the sort of pious proclamation that a comfortable and satisfied person would say, between bites of succulent meats and juicy fruits. He fully expects to eat in the kingdom, and imagines he will be wondrously happy doing so! He failed to listen well when Jesus said that the “resurrection of the righteous” will primarily include those who are attentive to the former list of society’s marginalized.

         Jesus then turns to a story to establish the central concern of his teaching at table now: that concern will be that the call of God will necessitate the rejection of anything and anyone that can stand in the way of the acceptance of that call. The story is of a man who gives a great feast, invites many of his friends and close associates to come, sends out his servant to announce that the feast is now ready. But all those invited refuse to come, offering three rather vacant excuses: one must inspect a just-purchased field (just why must that be done now?); another has bought five yoke of oxen (10 oxen is a huge purchase, only available to a wealthy man) and claims he must test them (why now and not some later time?); a third says he just married and cannot come (why exactly does that preclude attendance—could she not come, too?). Each excuse is poor, and may be an echo of the reasons one may not participate in a holy war (Deut.20:5-7), though the reference is not exact. The host grows angry, and sends the servant back out to find fresh invitees, which now will include that same group that Jesus said earlier should have been invited in the first place: “poor, handicapped, blind, and lame” (Luke 14:21). There is still room, cries the servant, so the host sends him out a third time, “among the roads and paths” in order to fill his house with anyone at all! With a full house of strange and outcast people, the first invitees are no longer welcome (Luke 14:16-24).

         And now Jesus gets very blunt indeed, because the call of God to the work of the kingdom has been issued, but it is a hard call indeed. “If anyone comes to me and does not hate father and mother and wife and children and brothers and sisters—even one’s own life, that person cannot be my disciple” (Luke 14:26). This sentence has caused no little consternation among would-be followers of Jesus Messiah. Surely he cannot mean that I must “hate” all those closest to me whom I love—and am I not to ‘love myself?’— in order to become a member of God’s community! Matthew attempts to soften this language by a comparative phrase, “love more than” (Mt.10:37). Not Luke. However, Luke does not mean “hate” in terms of attitude, but in terms of action. Jesus is not speaking of feelings but actions that remove impediments to joining the kingdom of God. The choice of the kingdom means a choice to be a full follower of Jesus.

         And he goes on with more hard choices. “Whoever does not bear one’s own cross and come after me cannot be my disciple” (Luke 14:27). Luke says “bear the cross,” not simply Matthew’s “accept the cross,” emphasizing the continuous need for choice of the way of the cross; note Luke’s earlier “cross every day” at 9:23. The central point is clear: all other claims on a person’s life must be relativized when it comes to the call of God. Hard choices must be made! If one tries to have it both ways, desiring possessions and friends to the exclusion of the kingdom’s demands, one will become like “salt without taste,” fit for nothing, tossed out (Luke 14:34-35). 

         I have long wrestled with these hard words. They sound as if there can be no compromise with the world over against the demands of the gospel. Surely, if I took these words with absolute seriousness, it appears to be required that I give up all—my family, my wife of 55 years, my friends at church—and follow Jesus. Where? To a monastery? To an off-the-grid cabin in the woods? To a life on the road, preaching the gospel wherever and whenever I could? These words haunt me and have for much of my life. I became a clergyperson and have dedicated my life to the teaching of the Bible to thousands of people in many US states and over 20 foreign countries. But is that enough? Is that following Jesus? I have never been certain, and have challenged myself for now nearly seven decades, probing just how what I have done with my life is in fact a way to follow. Have you asked yourself this hard question, too?