NOTES for Luk 14:33

This thought is repeated in the Gospel many times in different forms. What is going on? Why does the Lord consider it so important? Perhaps because He sees that our desire "to have" carries a deeply sinful nature. It is the desire to secure the foundation of our selfhood, our independence from God and from one another, the desire to reinforce our pride and our exaltation over others, over those who "do not have." But God's design is a universe founded on love, that is, on mutual connection, mutual dependence, and mutual self-giving. Jesus is not saying here that we should have nothing. He calls us to "renounce," not to attach too much importance to what we have, not to consider our property any kind of serious support in our life, but to place all our hope, all our trust, only in God.

The Gospel gives us such an example. People always try to set something aside "for a rainy day"; for older people it is generally common to save for their own funeral. And the Gospel tells us about one such elderly, respected man who had taken care in advance of his future burial and prepared an expensive tomb for himself... Then he met Jesus and began to consider himself His disciple, a secret disciple, because he feared the opinion of the religious authorities. But then Jesus dies on the cross, and this man, Joseph of Arimathea, loses his fear. He goes to Pilate and obtains permission from him to bury the Lord. By giving Jesus his tomb, he renounces what he has, the human basis for hope in the respect of others and in a dignified end to life, and at that moment he stops being Christ's "secret" disciple and becomes His real disciple.

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.

Speaking about the Kingdom, Jesus never tires of reminding His listeners that one still has to enter it, and that this will not happen by itself. For the sake of the Kingdom one must leave everything. One must be ready to take up the cross. These words of the Savior were quite understandable: His listeners still remembered how, a little more than a hundred years before the Gospel events, during the reign of Alexander Jannaeus in then-independent Judea, the participants in an anti-government uprising were crucified, people who demanded that the authorities strictly observe the norms of the Torah in the country. The participants in that uprising wanted one thing: the Kingdom. Of course, the Kingdom as they knew it. And for that Kingdom they gave everything. Their ideas about the Kingdom were little like what Jesus speaks of. But He sets their resolve as an example for His listeners. They really did leave everything.

Not like the characters in Jesus' parable, who refuse to come to the feast. They refuse under pretexts that may seem quite reasonable, but still they refuse. And they lose the main thing. Their place is taken by those who have nothing in this world. And no reasons to refuse. Is it a question of priorities? Yes, of course, of priorities too. But not only of priorities. Jesus does not speak by chance about a feast, about the first and the last, about those places where many strive to sit even under threat of being driven from them.

The Kingdom is not a place. It is not a structure. It is not a hierarchy. The Kingdom is a state. It is a state in which one can abide, but which cannot at all, so to speak, be fixed in place. And people very much want to fix it in place. That is where the better and worse places come from. In reality there are no good or bad places in the Kingdom. There is only one criterion there: whether a person is in his own place. Whether he is in the very place God appointed for him, or in the place he chose for himself because he considered it more suitable for himself.

From this comes the question: should one go to the feast or to the field just bought? The wedding feast is a symbol of the Kingdom. And if a person does not know what to choose, then he does not know what the Kingdom is. If he knew, it would not enter his mind to compare the significance of the life he lives with anything belonging to him. Life is fullness, while the field bought, property, even family, are only derivatives of that fullness. Here it is important not to confuse the part with the whole, the main thing with the secondary. And only one thing can help in this: the experience of the genuine life of the Kingdom, that very life which is salvation.

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.