Let the Dead Bury the Dead

One day Jesus invited a man to follow Him and become His disciple—but the man refused. He said he would follow Jesus later, but first he wanted to go bury his father. Jesus responded, “Follow me, and let the dead bury their own dead” (Matthew 8:22).

What did Jesus mean by that?

It brings up a rather ludicrous image of zombies burying dead people, if I approach it completely with my rational, human mind. That wouldn’t make sense, of course. We all know that the physically dead don’t do much, let alone bury others who are also dead. So, Jesus must have been talking about something else.

If you accept that Jesus is God (which is a prerequisite for being a Christian), it’s pretty easy to figure out what Jesus meant in this statement. He was talking about the spiritually dead — those who are alive physically, but unregenerated at the spiritual level and therefore, not alive unto Christ, but dead toward God in their souls. We can be strong and virile physically and still be spiritually dead, which is a much more serious condition than on death’s door.

There are those who might think Jesus was incredibly harsh to this man, but that’s because they (or we) do not understand what the man was really saying to Jesus. In 1st century Jewish life, to say “I want to go bury my father” did not necessarily mean Papa had ceased to breathe. It meant that they wanted to stay with their father until he died. That could be years away. This man was simply excusing his avoidance of becoming Jesus’ disciple.

Christians. we all have some dead man still clinging to our boots as we try to follow Jesus. We all have excuses for hanging back. I don’t want to insult the people I know who are not Christians, so I’ll not say what I know to be true about the sin they are living in. That’s my dead man, btw. I’m a lot bolder here than I am in my personal life when I might hurt someone I care about.

And, no, I am not calling for laws to legislate morality. Get over that, Church! It’s not our world any longer! I suspect we’ve done great harm to the cause of Christ by fighting to force others into our mold.

STOP!

Listen!

I am call for honesty with the world and Christians living the way we know God wants us to live. Yeah, that puts us at odds with the world around us and that will be uncomfortable. The world is becoming more secular and less moral everyday and very comfortable with redefining morality to its own design. The clarion call of society is “Christians, change with the times.”

But Jesus’ call to us hasn’t changed. “If anyone wants to come after Me, he must deny himself and take up his cross daily and follow me.” (Luke 9:23)

Anything less is hanging back making an excuse for not following Him!