There’s a new insurance commercial in which the spokesperson is talking to a customer, and the customer says it’s a bit overwhelming to run a business and to care for a family. And the spokesperson says, “Sounds like someone needs a vacation.” The customer responds with, “What’s that?” And then she names a bunch of things that are really just five minutes of downtime, while the spokesperson keeps saying, “No,” until she too finally admits that she doesn’t know what a vacation is because she’s never taken one either. The idea, of course, is that you have to work yourself to the bone in order to run a business. The unwritten question is, “Are you willing to make the sacrifice?”
Maybe you’ve thought about starting a business at some point in your life, and so you’ve read up the articles about what it takes to start a business. Mark Cuban, the billionaire, says that he didn’t take a single day of vacation in over 7 years when he was starting his first business. That’s the sacrifice it took, he says. The name of the game, again, is how much are you willing to give up in order to get the results you want?
In the Gospel today, we see the question, “which of you, intending to build a tower, does not first sit down and estimate the cost, to see whether he has enough to complete it?” This word, “cost,” appears only once in the entire New Testament, and it is only in this verse. This means that we need to take some serious consideration when we try to determine what this scripture might be telling us.
Just like when we begin on a business venture, or a construction project, like in the Gospel, we don’t just ask, “Do I have the money?” The money might be readily available, but these kinds of ventures have a cost that is more than just the finances we might use. And so the question that we ask is not just, “Do I have the money?” but also, “Can I afford it?” And that question takes in all the things that are necessary: the money, the time, the time spent away from family and friends, and even the lack of sleep or the potential for failure. It’s not just about having the money, but about the real cost of the whole project or new adventure. Knowing the cost allows us to make an informed and calculated decision.
Now, decisions are more than just a “Yes,” and a “No” to whatever we are thinking of doing. Whenever we make a decision, we have declared a loyalty to something. That is, when we make a decision, and we choose to follow through on that decision, it becomes a part of our identity, because we have stepped into the reality of that decision and have deemed it worth the cost. In some sense, it becomes a possession of ours, something that belongs to us, like a winter coat or a hat that we think “looks good on us” and shapes the image of “who we are.”
In this country, we value work. In fact, we extol the virtue of work above all else, such that we have far too many people who suffer from an inability to switch off their brains even for an hour – they are constantly thinking about work, their business, or their projects. They value this business, this possession of theirs, this thing that defines them in the eyes of others – because our culture says that productivity equals success.
The other thing we value in this country is family. You can hear a phrase like “Family Values” almost everywhere. Making sacrifices for family is considered virtuous, because we have obligations to family. The trouble is, of course, that if we have started a business, or a new building project, then we have an obligation to the business as well. Both of them demand things from us, and both demand our loyalty. These two values that we hold are often in direct opposition to one another.
We can have loyalties to everything, from family, to church, to country. But what Jesus is saying in today’s Gospel is that every one of these loyalties, every one of these decisions – to remain loyal to one thing over another – come with a cost. And the cost of these things is an obligation to uphold that loyalty. Do these obligations define us, and drive us? In this scenario: am I a husband and father? Or am I a business owner? And which one is more important to my identity? Because when the rubber meets the road, and obligations begin to compete for priority, then one obligation, one loyalty, will have to give in to another.
You’ve all heard the stories. Someone begins a business, and they spend so much time at work that they forsake their family, either bringing them to the brink of divorce – or actually losing their family. Why? Because they are loyal both to their family as well as their business – and they have chosen one over the other. We have obligations to people, and sometimes to many people; and we have obligations to our own projects and businesses, and all the other loyalties that we have decided to keep. And each of these loyalties bring with it an obligation that stems from a decision we made. And the question that demands a decision when that rubber meets the road is, “What is the cost?” That is, “Can I afford to let go of one obligation – one loyalty – for the sake of the other?” And because each of these is so valuable to us, it is a difficult decision.
Several years ago, I was reading one of these books on starting a business, and the author was very clear: a business is something that brings in money even when you are not there. If the business requires that you are there – and there all the time – in order for it to function properly, then you do not own a business. Instead, you own a job. Or, more to the point that the author was making: the job owns you. Because you are obligated to be there, to be working, in order to make any money. This is a fine distinction, but it helps to make the point that you cannot walk away from this obligation, without losing something. Walking away from this job that owns you is impossible without estimating the cost. The cost of future security, the cost to your family, the cost to your well-being – physical, mental, or even emotional. To walk away from these sorts of things is like giving up a prized possession or a part of our identity because it requires choosing loyalties and priorities and weighing these loyalties and obligations against all the other obligations and loyalties we have.
At the end of today’s Gospel, Jesus makes the startling claim that no one can become his disciple unless they give up all of their possessions. Some translations say, “sell all their possessions,” but the word actually means, “to bid farewell to,” and which, figuratively, means, “to forsake, to renounce.”
That’s a different meaning than “to sell,” and even slightly different than the phrase “give up.” Because both of those suggest that we need to completely divest ourselves of all of our possessions – just get rid of them entirely. But we can all probably realize that if we divest ourselves of all of our possessions, then we would become beggars on the street, or dependent upon the good graces of everyone we know. Some saints, like Francis, have managed to pull this off, and despite this, they were never without what they needed. But for the rest of us, that’s probably too drastic a change than we are capable of.
The point is that all the decisions we have made in our lives come with obligations, and each of those obligations comes with a cost. Each of these things, these decisions and obligations and loyalties to others are, in one sense, a possession that we own, because we have chosen to let it define us. But because we are obligated to keep these loyalties, these things can eventually begin to own us.
And when we are owned by something – then we are not our own.
And when we are not our own, when our loyalties lie with something outside of us – whether they be physical possessions, or loyalties to people or groups – then we can begin to understand why Jesus is saying that we need to forsake everything in order to follow him.
So how do we do that sort of thing? How do we forsake these things, yet still own possessions? How do we forsake these things, but still identify as business owners, spouses, or as parents?
The Christian Mystic Meister Eckhart, a Dominican Monk who lived in Cologne, Germany, wrote a little book called On Detachment. In this book, he writes about how to let go of things, to detach from our desire to possess things. To make it so that we are not enslaved or owned by anything.
He writes about Paul’s letter to the Corinthians, in which Paul says, “If I give away all my possessions and if I hand over my body so that I may boast, but do not have love, I gain nothing.”1 That is, Paul is saying, if I hand over my body and suffer for the sake of Christ, but do not love my neighbor or even my enemy, then what good is doing any of that, really?
And to this Eckhart responds, saying, “I extol detachment above love because love compels me to suffer all things for God’s sake, whereas detachment makes me receptive of nothing but God.”2
That’s a heady bit of knowledge that Eckhart is dropping on us there, but what he means is that when we let go of everything, when we detach from allowing the obligations and desires of possessing those things to own our thoughts and actions, then the only thing that we will listen to – and respond to – is God alone. Out of all the loyalties, decisions, obligations we have in this life, if we still hold dear to them, and if they own us, then we will not be receptive to God. Instead, we will listen to these distractions and weigh them against our obligation and loyalty to God. That is, here the rubber meets the road, and instead of choosing God, we choose these other obligations and loyalties instead of God.
Hating our family and carrying our cross are other metaphors that get at this same concept. We are not literally going to hate our family, nor are we going to carry the instrument of our own execution. These analogies are intended to bring us to the same state of mind that says: I should value nothing more than I value God.
And that is only possible when we detach ourselves from people, possessions, and loyalties to anything other than God. When we forsake them for the sake of God. Because each of these things, in their own way, own us.
This is the cost of discipleship that Jesus declares in this passage.
It is a matter of priorities. It is a matter of forsaking all of our possessions – anything that claims our loyalties and obligations – for the sake of Christ alone. And that may very well mean choosing God over family, over financial security, over our businesses, or any other choice and obligation we may have made.
Because, Jesus says, the cost of discipleship is to forsake all else for the sake of him.
Our question needs to be, “Can I afford it?”
Or perhaps, the more accurate question is “Do I want to afford it?”
And until we have an answer to that question for ourselves, then we have not really ‘sat down and estimated the cost’” of what it means to be a disciple of Jesus.
But when we do, we will most certainly discover that the answer is that it is worth the cost.
[This sermon was delivered at St. Alban’s Episcopal Church in Wickenburg, AZ on September 7, 2025.]
