The Lukan travel narrative continues in today's reading with the pointed observation that "large crowds were traveling with" Jesus, yet another signal to the reader that Jesus is in mid-journey on a relentless pilgrimage to Jerusalem begun and first noted in 9:51. Aware of the throngs, Jesus turns to them and utters a hard and enigmatic saying which can have no other effect than to diminish considerably the ranks of the discipleship wannabes in the crowd. "Whoever comes to me," he says, "and does not hate father and mother," and other family members, and even life itself, "cannot be my disciple" (v. 26). Then, evoking the image of the prisoner condemned to death on a Roman cross and compelled to carry the patibulum, or crossbar, of his own personal cross to the site of his execution, he dr…