The Lenten season, to which Ash Wednesday opens the door, is a time for heart-searching. "The Son of God goes forth to war a kingly crown to gain," and we are asked, "Who follows in his train?" Our Lord’s path to his kingly glory passes through Gethsemane and Calvary, and if we are to be his followers, we too must "climb the steep ascent of heaven through peril, toil and pain." We must count the cost and be willing to pay the price of true discipleship.

The portion of scripture before us is a direct continuation of the parable in which our Lord compares the kingdom of God to a great banquet to which people are invited but they invent various excuses for spurning the invitation. Here he goes on to show what is expected of those who accept the invitation. Although the banquet itself is free and there is no charge for entering the kingdom of God, he says, "you must sit down and count the cost" of being my disciple. Don’t be like the man who starts to build a tower but can only lay the foundation and then runs out of money and cannot finish the job. Don’t be like the king who rashly goes to war against another king whose army is twice as big. Again and again he stresses: such and such a person cannot be my disciple.

In one of the outstanding books of our century, Dietrich Bonhoeffer, the young martyr theologian, has captured this emphasis. It bears the title The Cost of Discipleship. Because God offers us his saving grace free of charge, he tells us, we have interpreted salvation to be something cheap. The fact is that when Christ invites us to be his disciples, he demands that we surrender to him everything that we have and are, our very life. Actually, being a conscientious Christian in Nazi Germany did cost Bonhoeffer his life - it led him to the gallows. Dean Inge of St. Paul’s, London, put it this way: "We are losing our Christianity, because Christianity is a creed for heroes, while we are mainly harmless, good-natured little people who only want everybody to have a good time."

Remember how our Lord laid down his creed for heroes to two of his disciples who came to him asking for places of honor in his kingdom. His reply was: "Are you able to drink the cup that I drink, or to be baptized with the baptism with which I am baptized?" (Mark 10:38). Are you able to drink my cup of suffering? Are you able to be baptized with my baptism of blood? Today he asks us: are you able? Have you counted the cost?

First of all, are you able to make a personal and independent decision? Being my disciple, says Christ, is not mere conformity to a group or heritage. It is not just falling in line with a family tradition, following the crowd, doing what others do. He drives this point through in a most emphatic way: "If any one comes to me and does not hate his own father and mother and wife and children and brothers and sisters, yes, and even his own life, he cannot be my disciple." He taught love in family relations, but being a disciple is something bigger than family relations. Life is a failure unless you have found a loyalty that makes everything else look like hatred in comparison with it. You must find that pearl of great price for which you are willing to give up everything. True discipleship begins with decisive choice. Christ is not satisfied with any half-way measures. With him it is everything or nothing. You cannot serve two masters. Choose whom you will serve. Choose the hard narrow way which leads to life or the broad easy way which most people take. There is no substitute for decisive commitment.

In proceeding with counting the cost, our Lord goes on to ask: are you able, not only to make the initial decision, but also to follow it through in rugged loyalty? "Whoever does not bear his own cross and come after me, cannot be my disciple." To be a Christian is not merely to worship Christ on his cross but to walk in the footsteps of the Crucified. It is to say with Mr. Steadfast of Pilgrim’s Progress "Wherever I have seen the print of his shoe in the earth, there have I coveted to put mine also." It is just as true today as it was 600 years ago when Thomas a Kempis wrote in his Imitation of Christ, "Christ in our day has many admirers but few followers." And it is just as true what Luther wrote in his 95 Theses, "A Christian is one who follows his Master even through hell." Christ does not offer his followers a pillow to sleep on but a cross to carry, all the heavy and difficult responsibilities of translating faith into life. He does not provide us with ready-made solutions to the complex problems that confront us in today’s world, but he does give us a goal, the kingdom of God, the God-controlled life, and the power of his Spirit to move toward that goal. He enables us to see life as God meant it to be. He sensitizes us to human needs to suffering and injustice and evil, and he makes us bear the cost of bringing the mind of Christ into the effort to meet each need.

This leads us to the third question with which our Lord challenges us. First, are you able to make a decisive commitment?; second, are you able to follow this commitment through?; but finally, are you able to exert a constructive influence on others? "Salt is good," he says, "but if salt has lost its taste, how shall its saltness be restored? It is fit neither for the land nor for the dunghill; men throw it away."

Salt works by contact, and Christianity is a contact game. We are responsible for what happens when our lives touch the lives of others. Salt prevents rottenness. What are we doing to prevent the rottenness that surrounds us on all sides and corrupts especially the lives of the young and immature? We do well to remember that our Lord was never more serious than when he pronounced judgment on those who exert the wrong kind of influence on the young. If you by word or example lead them astray, he says, it would be better that a millstone were hung around your neck and you were drowned in the depth of the sea. Let this thought hit you with its full force. Some child of God was trying to find his way to the Father but I led him astray. He saw through my sham religion and turned his back to God. Where is the millstone that will enable me to hide from the wrath of God that I have deserved?

Our Lord is so serious because we are the instruments with which he works to build Christian men and women. His reputation is in our hands. When he thinks of Christians who do not behave as Christians, who give the wrong impression of his way of life, the image of a dunghill, a pile of manure, comes to his mind. But no, he says, manure is good for something, but a fake Christian is good for nothing. A salty Christian is not only an antidote for rottenness but he also gives people a taste of what true Christianity is all about. "Christian men and women," says Moody, "are the world’s Bible and in most cases a revised version is needed."

These are stiff requirements which the Master lays down as he speaks to us about the cost of discipleship. If we are honest with ourselves, we must confess that we have been poor disciples. We have rendered only lipservice when he has asked us to give up our self-centered life for a life of self-forgetting service. We have said to Christ, "Lord, Lord," but we have not done what he has commanded.

How, then, can we become real Christians, authentic loyal disciples of Christ? How can the saltness of flabby, insipid, ineffective Christians be restored?

There are those who answer: we must try harder to obey Christ’s teaching. But how are we to overcome our own desires and ambitions when they are in conflict with Christ’s teaching? There are others who say that the church should hold before us the perfect life of Christ and say: here is your example, here is the true life, live like that. But is it possible for us to live like Christ? It is as though a young lad who plays third base on a Little League team were to watch Brooks Robinson play that position and then were told, "You see how it is done, play like that." The little fellow would have to say, "Don’t be funny. I can never play third base like Brooks Robinson." And even if Robinson himself were to offer to coach the Little Leaguer, the boy would still have to admit, "It’s no use. I can see how it is done but I am not up to doing it." Just so, if our Lord is only an example, he is an impossible example, for we cannot come anywhere near copying him. And if our Lord is merely a teacher, we would soon become drop-outs from the school of discipleship.

How can we become real Christians? The true answer lies in one word with which Luke introduces our Lord’s speech on discipleship. "He turned and said to them." The disciples did not have to look at Jesus’ back when he was speaking to them. He turned so that they could look up into his face. So it is today. He does not merely walk before us and leave us to struggle on our own to keep pace with him. He turns his face to us and lets us draw upon the resources of personal fellowship with him. And when we look into the face of Jesus, what would otherwise be impossible becomes possible. "Without me," he says, "you can do nothing." But he also empowers his disciples to say, "I can do all things through him who strengthens me." Paul reveals the secret of this strengthening: "It is no longer I who live, but Christ who lives in me" (Galatians 2:20). "I am the way, the truth, and the life," says Christ. He is most certainly the way in which we should walk. And he is most certainly the truth by which we should live. But we can neither walk in the way nor follow the truth unless we have within us the life. The living Christ is the indwelling Christ. We talk about the Christian life as if we did the living of it. But it is his living in us and through us that makes us Christians.

Discipleship is counting the cost, to be sure, but it is much more than that. It is, above all, counting on him whose strength is made manifest in our weakness and who assures us, "I am with you always." He is with us not only as an example of consecrated living and as a teacher of eternal truth but as our Savior. The purpose of the Lenten season is to teach us to know him better and to draw us closer to him. Our discipleship becomes genuine when we learn with Saint Ambrose, "In Christ, then, are all things. Christ is everything to us. If thou hast wounds to be healed, he is thy physician. If fever scorches thee, he is a fountain. Wouldst thou punish evil-doing? He is justice. Dost thou need help? He is strength. Dost thou fear death? He is life. Dost thou long for heaven? He is the way. Dost thou flee from darkness? He is light. Dost thou hunger? He is food."

All this in Christ? Yes, all this in Christ.