The Life of Jesus

When the time came for the banquet, he sent his slave to tell those who had been invited, ‘Come! Everything is ready!’

But they responded with a chorus of excuses. The first said to him, ‘I’ve just bought a field, and I have to go out and see it. Please accept my apologies.’

Another said, ‘I’ve just bought five yoke of oxen, and I’m on my way to test them out. Please accept my apologies.’

Still another said, ‘I have just gotten married, so I can’t come.’

The slave came and reported these things to his master. “Then the owner of the house, in a rage, told his slave, ‘Quick, go out into the streets and alleys of the city; and bring in the poor, the disfigured, the blind and the crippled!’

The slave said, ‘Sir, what you ordered has been done, and there is still room.’

The master said to the slave, ‘Go out to the country roads and boundary walls, and insistently persuade people to come in, so that my house will be full.

I tell you, not one of those who were invited will get a taste of my banquet!’”

Large crowds were traveling along with Yeshua. Turning, he said to them,

“If anyone comes to me and does not hate his father, his mother, his wife, his children, his brothers and his sisters, yes, and his own life besides, he cannot be my talmid.

Whoever does not carry his own execution-stake and come after me cannot be my talmid.

“Suppose one of you wants to build a tower. Don’t you sit down and estimate the cost, to see if you have enough capital to complete it?

If you don’t, then when you have laid the foundation but can’t finish, all the onlookers start making fun of you

and say, ‘This is the man who began to build, but couldn’t finish!’

“Or again, suppose one king is going out to wage war with another king. Doesn’t he first sit down and consider whether he, with his ten thousand troops, has enough strength to meet the other one, who is coming against him with twenty thousand?

If he hasn’t, then while the other is still far away, he sends a delegation to inquire about terms for peace.

“So every one of you who doesn’t renounce all that he has cannot be my talmid.

Salt is excellent. But if even the salt becomes tasteless, what can be used to season it?

It is fit for neither soil nor manure — people throw it out. Those who have ears that can hear, let them hear!”

The tax-collectors and sinners kept gathering around to hear Yeshua,

and the P’rushim and Torah-teachers kept grumbling. “This fellow,” they said, “welcomes sinners — he even eats with them!”

So he told them this parable:

“If one of you has a hundred sheep and loses one of them, doesn’t he leave the other ninety-nine in the desert and go after the lost one until he finds it?

When he does find it, he joyfully hoists it onto his shoulders;

and when he gets home, he calls his friends and neighbors together and says, ‘Come, celebrate with me, because I have found my lost sheep!’