Reflection: At What Cost

Reflection from the Moderator, Rev Bruce Moore

Luke 14:25-33

Luke tells us that great crowds were travelling with him. You can imagine the excitement, the buzz, the sense that this movement was growing. This passage confronts us with the raw and uncompromising reality of discipleship. Jesus turns and deliberately puts before them the cost of following him. He speaks of the pressures of family ties, carrying the cross, giving up possessions. He warns about starting something you cannot finish, about counting the cost before you say yes.

Jesus never sugar-coated discipleship. In Luke’s gospel he says plainly, “Whoever does not carry the cross and follow me cannot be my disciple. Suppose one of you wants to build a tower. Won’t you first sit down and estimate the cost to see if you have enough to complete it?” (Luke 14:27–28).

Following Jesus is never without cost. To pick up the cross is to embrace a life marked not by comfort but by courage, not by self-preservation but by surrender. Jesus is warning us against a shallow discipleship - a faith that begins with enthusiasm but falters when challenges arrive. He asks us to pause, to count the cost, and to know that the road is steep and the call is demanding.

As a church, we too are invited to “sit down and count the cost.” Renewal, mission, justice, and witness all ask something of us. They require time, energy, resources, and most of all, hearts surrendered to Christ. The danger Jesus names is starting the building but not being willing to finish. For us, it is easy to begin with vision and hope, but it takes discipline, prayer, and perseverance to see God’s work through to completion.

Yet here is the paradox of the gospel: while discipleship costs us everything, it also gives us more than we could imagine. In letting go of our grip on life, we discover true life in Christ. In surrendering our own agenda, we find ourselves caught up in God’s kingdom purposes.

So perhaps the better question is not “Can we afford to follow?” but “Can we afford not to?”

Friends, as we walk together as Christ’s church, may we be willing to bear the cost, trusting that the One who calls us also equips us, and that the work he has begun in us, he will bring to completion.