I don't (won't?) understand

Absent the stimulation of M3 (Monday Morning Men) this morning I rose early anyway.  Walked a few blocks with Scripture memory review, then set a bit with yesterday's sermon from Luke 9:18-ff on my mind.


It occurs to me that perhaps I have ongoing challenge in understanding Luke 9:23-26 especially because I am uncomfortable with its thrust.  Allan certainly honed in on it clearly enough.


Just now I found these comments to be further clarifying (and disturbing):

Jesus' message to his disciples portends a lifetime of discipleship as cross-bearing, not for the sake of suffering but because this is how God's salvation will permeate the world: undermining the enslaving power of coercion and the onerous burden of reciprocal obligation through daily refusal to engage in the world system.  For Luke, then, the theology of the cross is rooted not so much in a theory of the atonement, but in a narrative portrayal of the life of faithful discipleship as the way of the cross. (Joel Green, NICNT Commentary)


Despite the power unleashed in the church by the Holy Spirit and the joy attending the spread of the gospel, Luke (Luke-Acts) does not minimize suffering; to join *the Way* is to volunteer for risky duty. (Richard Hays, The Moral Vision of the New Testament)

I'm guessing that Allan might add, now "higher up and further in" (from C.S. Lewis, as I recall),