NOTES for Luk 14:28

Jesus often connects the path into the Kingdom with a kind of evaluation, calculation, and analysis of a person's possibilities. The one who is going to begin building must first assess his resources and understand whether they will be enough to complete the work; if not, it is better not to begin. Such an attitude is just in any case when the issue is a spiritual path.

Indeed, when setting out on a road, we always hope to reach the goal and always try to understand how difficult or dangerous the road may prove to be, and whether it will be within our strength at all. And if what has been said is true of every spiritual path, it is especially true when the matter concerns the Christian path: here the issue is the Kingdom, the path into which is harder than any other even though the Savior Himself constantly accompanies us on this path. Of course, if Christianity were simply one more new religion, the situation would be different. Every religion is, to a certain extent, a goal in itself.

And even if the issue is something greater than itself, every religious person can always comfort himself by saying that even if he has not reached that greater thing, he has at least done something, and what he has done is valuable in itself. Usually in such cases a religious person tells himself and others that he did what he could and never counted on more: after all, he is not a saint or a righteous man, but an ordinary person. But that is precisely the point: Christianity as a religion has no meaning at all.

Christianity is the path into the Kingdom and life in the Kingdom, and the only goal of a Christian can be the Kingdom in all its fullness; otherwise it is not worth beginning. This is what Jesus speaks about, giving as an example the owner's plan to build a watchtower in his garden. An unfinished or poorly built tower is not only useless; it can even harm by creating for its builder the illusion of safety where there is none. Then it is better not to build anything at all.

So also a Christian who has not reached the life of the Kingdom in all its fullness may fall into a trap: it may seem to him that everything is in order with his spiritual life because he fulfills certain "religious duties of a Christian," while in fact he is no closer to the Kingdom than anyone else who never thinks about religion at all. This maximum, this reaching of the goal, is what Jesus sets before His listeners, calling them to consider whether they are ready to go to the end, and if not, whether it would not be better for them to leave Him and live their ordinary life, the one they lived before.

As we can see, Jesus directly warns each person what the way into the Kingdom costs. And He advises: before you decide to follow Me, weigh everything calmly and soberly. Do you want what I can give you? Are you ready to walk the path you will have to walk? Of course, there is no desire here to frighten anyone or turn anyone away from the way into the Kingdom. But there is an understanding that, once a person has set foot on this path, turning aside from it later, if it remains possible at all, will come with serious spiritual losses, and perhaps not only spiritual ones.

It is no accident that the Savior compares the situation of someone preparing to enter the Christian path with the situation of a person preparing to build a watchtower in his field, or with the situation of a ruler preparing to go to war against a neighbor. In both cases it is better to think everything through before beginning, because failure can leave a person in a position far worse than the one he would have been in if he had abandoned the plan. According to Jesus, the cost of the way is renouncing everything this untransformed world, lying in evil, can give.

It is no accident that the Savior uses the image of the cross. In the Gospel era it was clear to everyone in Judea, since all the inhabitants of the country still remembered the revolt that had taken place earlier, during the years of independence, when the revolt organized by the Pharisaic brotherhood against Alexander Jannaeus was suppressed. In the rebels' judgment, that ruler had pursued a policy completely contrary to the Torah. At that time the participants in the revolt suppressed by the authorities were crucified: a punishment not only agonizing, but also humiliating for any Jew.

Jesus directly warns everyone who wants to follow Him: one must be ready for anything, as the participants in that revolt were ready for anything for the sake of their faith, and even the cross did not frighten them. The point here is not that the Kingdom Jesus brought into the world will have to be established by force, as the participants in the revolt under Alexander Jannaeus wanted to establish it by force.

The point is that, according to the Savior's own word, it is "not of this world." Therefore "this world" will always be hostile to it, not because of nature, which can be transformed and which in the end will be transformed, but because of the evil that entered the world after the fall. This conflict with the forces of evil acting in the world is what makes the cross inevitable for every Christian, in one form or another. But, as we can see, there is no other road into the Kingdom. And each person, of course, decides for himself whether to walk it.

To know the will of God, the gift of wisdom is necessary, but so is our effort in using that gift. The Holy Spirit who has been sent down gives us the ability to determine the costs and calculate our strength, but we ourselves must do this. At the same time, Jesus also points to the right result of such a calculation: our strength will be enough precisely to give up everything, take up the cross, and follow Him.

The Kingdom of God comes into this world, but a person must take a step toward it, for it is like a wedding feast to which everyone is invited, but not everyone wants to come. Very much depends on this step; that is why Christ speaks of it in such serious words. He may require everything from a person, even to the point of forgetting himself for the sake of the Kingdom. In order to take this step, the Good News must become more important than the things most important to a person: home, household, family, confidence in the future. (The Aramaic pair "love-hate" here simply means "prefer.")

But a serious step requires a serious decision, perhaps even more serious than the decision of the king or the tower builder in these parables. Christ wants trust, but He does not require madness: a person must soberly "calculate" whether the Gospel is truly more precious to him than all the rest of life, and if so, step toward it.

Today's parable of the wedding feast directly concerns the question of life, joy, and love. After all, we all strive for these things. We all need them. But one fine day, or more often than that, we face a choice: where should we seek life and joy? We can begin to build our own life and our own happiness, whether family happiness or some other kind. Or we can go to the wedding feast, a constant Gospel image of Christ's Kingdom. The choice is entirely free.

When speaking of the Kingdom, Jesus never tires of reminding His listeners that they still have to enter it and that this will not happen by itself. For the sake of the Kingdom one must leave everything behind and be ready to take up the cross. These words of the Saviour were perfectly clear: His listeners still remembered how, a little over a century before the events of the Gospel, during the reign of Alexander Jannaeus in the then independent Judea, those who took part in an uprising against the government and demanded that the authorities strictly observe the norms of the Torah in the country were crucified. The rebels wanted one thing: the Kingdom, the kind they knew about, of course. And for its sake they gave up everything. Their ideas about it bore little resemblance to what Jesus speaks of, but He holds up their determination as an example to His listeners. They truly did leave everything behind.

Not like the characters in Jesus' parable who refuse to come to the feast, for reasons that might seem perfectly reasonable, but still refuse and lose what matters most. Their places are taken by those who have nothing in this world and no reason to decline. Is it a matter of priorities? Yes, of course, priorities too, but not priorities alone. It is no accident that Jesus speaks of a feast, of the first and the last, and of the places that many strive to occupy even at the risk of being driven from them.

The Kingdom is not a place, a structure or a hierarchy. The Kingdom is a state in which one can abide, but which one absolutely cannot, so to speak, fix in place, however much one may wish to do so. The desire to occupy better or worse places comes from this. For in the Kingdom there are, in fact, no good or bad places. There is only one criterion: is a person in his or her own place, in the very place God intended, or in one chosen personally because it seemed more suitable?

This also gives rise to the question: should one go to the feast or to the field just purchased? The wedding feast is a symbol of the Kingdom. If a person does not know which to choose, it means that he does not know what the Kingdom is. If he did know, it would never occur to him to compare the importance of the life he lives with anything he owns. Life is fullness, whereas a purchased field, possessions and even family are merely derivatives of that fullness. What matters here is not to confuse the part with the whole or the principal with the secondary. Only one thing can help us do this: the experience of the true life of the Kingdom, that very life which is salvation.