There’s a great ad that I‘ve heard many times on the radio. A woman calls the dentist office to make an appointment. When the receptionist offers her several different times and days, she has an excuse for every one of them, many of them lame.  She clearly doesn’t want to go in the first place but makes a feeble attempt to make an appointment.
This woman reminds me of those who are called to follow the Lord in both the first reading and the Gospel reading today. These people who are called find every excuse in the book not to respond fully to God’s invitation. The excuses in the gospel might make you think that Jesus is heartless: let me bury my father; let me say good bye to my family. But Jesus is responding not to the exact excuses but to their hesitancy to commit themselves to him. He goes on to say that no one who puts their hand to the plow and keeps turning back to the past is worthy to follow Him.
    Jesus asks us for a full commitment to follow Him and to be His disciples.
None of us do that perfectly but we try. From time to time we find excuses that hold us back: we’re too busy; we forget; we have family obligations that get in the way; we have sickness or death matters to attend to. Whatever the reason we are hesitant to commit ourselves totally to God.
Jesus invites us once again today to let go of those excuses and to wholeheartedly follow Him as He journeys to Jerusalem to accomplish the gift of salvation for each one of us.