Gospel and reflection 4.9.2022

We know from our experience that before any significant undertaking, we need to sit down and think through what will be required of us. Before we act, we need to reflect, not just on our own but with others. That is the message of the two small parables that Jesus speaks in today’s gospel reading. Before building a tower on his land, the landowner has first to sit down and work out the cost. Before marching to war, a king has to first sit down and work out whether he has the soldiers necessary for victory.

The enterprise that Jesus was referring to in today’s gospel reading is that of becoming his disciple. He was talking to the great crowds who were accompanying him. Jesus obviously wanted disciples from that great crowd but he also wanted people to know what was involved in becoming his disciple. It would require giving Jesus an allegiance that is even stronger that the allegiance we would naturally give to our families. That is what Jesus means by that language which seems very strange to our ears about hating family members. It is a Semitic way of expressing preference. Jesus was saying, ‘You are to prefer me to even the most significant people in your life’.

He goes on to say that if we are to love him even more than family we are certainly to love him more than our possessions. Attachment to him comes before attachment to family and possessions. So, Jesus is saying to the people around him that, in the light of what is involved, they need to sit down and reflect whether or not they really want to be his disciples. Becoming his disciple is not to be undertaken lightly. The message of the two parables is ‘don’t start if you cannot finish’.

Jesus wants disciples who will be faithful to him to the end, even though that may mean taking the way of the cross with him.

We live in a time when we need to make a deliberate and informed choice to be a follower of the Lord today. We are no longer being carried by a tide that is moving in the broad direction of the gospel that Jesus preached.

Instead, there can be a great deal of pressure to take a path different to the one that Jesus is calling us to take (some of it subtle pressure and some of it not so subtle).

In choosing to belong to the community of the Lord’s disciples, we are more likely to find ourselves at odds with family members and friends than would have been the case in the past. Belonging to the family of the Lord’s disciples today requires more of a conscious decision on our part. It requires a conscious effort to follow the Lord.

In the language of today’s first reading, we seek to ‘know the intentions of God’, to ‘divine the will of the Lord’, to ‘discover what is in the heavens’.