...the first suffering of Christ we must experience is the call sundering our ties to this world. This is the death of the old human being in the encounter with Jesus Christ. Whoever enters discipleship enters Jesus death, and puts his or her life into death; this has been so from the beginning. The cross is not the horrible end of a pious, happy life, but stands rather at the beginning of community with Jesus Christ. Every call of Christ leads to death. Whether like the first disciples we leave home and occupation in order to follow him, or whether with Luther we leave the monastery to enter a secular profession, in either case, the one death awaits a, namely death in Jesus Christ, the dying away of our old form of human being in Jesus call. ....because only as one who has died to his own will can he follow Jesus, because Jesus commandment always means that we must die with all our wishes and all our desires and because we cannot want our an death--for all these reasons, Jesus Christ in his word must be our death and our life. Christ's call, or baptism, means placing the Christian into daily struggle against sin and the devil. Hence every new day, with its temptations through flesh and the world, brings new sufferings of Jesus Christ upon his disciples. The wounds that are stuck here, and the scars every Christian receives from this struggle, are living signs of the community of the cross with Jesus.
-Bonhoeffer
(Readings Matt 8:21-38 will help with understanding this passage)
