Matthew 8:18-22
When Jesus saw the crowd around him, he gave orders to cross to the other side of the lake. Then a teacher of the law came to him and said, "Teacher, I will follow you wherever you go."
Jesus replied, "Foxes have holes and birds of the air have nests, but the Son of Man has no place to lay his head."
Another disciple said to him, "Lord, first let me go and bury my father."
But Jesus told him, "Follow me, and let the dead bury their own dead."
I wonder about this encounter. It is God who calls us to honor our parents, but yet, here, Jesus' words seem pretty insensitive to one of the disciple's desire to pay his last respects. yes, there will be times in some people's life where the cost of following Christ requires the leaving behind of one family. But in this instance, why wouldn't Jesus allow the disciple to pay his last respects and bury his dad? Any thoughts?
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I think the word "first" plays a big part. It seems this disciple placed burying his father at a higher priority than following Jesus, showing the cost of discipleship.
ReplyDeletehttp://www.biblegateway.com/resources/commentaries/IVP-NT/Matt/Following-Where-Jesus-Leads seems to shed more light into this incident.
hrm, thanks for that insight bro. makes good sense. but yeah, it's definitely rough when family is one of the costs to be counted when it comes to following Jesus. The cost of discipleship... hrm, I'll save my thoughts on that for another post sometime.
ReplyDelete1 John 4:11-12
ReplyDeleteOne of the greatest mysteries, i believe, is despite its counter-intuitive manner, getting the order right empowers our love for one another.
Some hints from my Student Bible: chances are, it isn't that his father has passed away and is pending burial. Chances are, the person is talking about "oh, my dad is still alive, but I don't really want to just disappear on him. Let me wait till he's passed on, THEN i'll follow you" type of deal.
ReplyDeleteThis fits Christ's character better, where He's raised at least 2 people from the dead and commented when John the Baptist got beheaded. Similarly, in Luke 14.26, Christ isn't actually telling them to hate their family...that goes directly against the Greatest Commandment! Rather...Christ is saying, "you should love Me so much that everything else looks like hate"...the scale is relative.
(I typed all this before reading the reference Mark posted...oh well. =P I guess Phillip Yancy agrees with Biblegateway)