The quick and the dead

 Today’s gospel (Matthew 8: 18-22) is one of those passages where Jesus seems unrelenting. The Son of Man has nowhere to lay his head, He tells one scribe. Let the dead bury their dead but come follow me, He says to another apparently willing follower who had just suffered a bereavement. Nice one, Jesus …

It strikes me that, in such moments, the gospel writers give us the headlines but not always the context that was probably better understood by bystanders or those who knew Jesus’ interlocutors. Was there something in the scribe that was making a show of wanting to follow Jesus, but actually anticipated some kind of personal glory in being a chosen disciple? Did the man offer to follow Jesus while in fact seeking something else, perhaps himself? Jesus knew.

Likewise, Jesus’ response to the man who simply wanted to go and bury his father seems a priori harsh, but Jesus is the reader of hearts. While we do know the circumstances, we can be sure there was an agenda behind the man’s request, other than merely paying honour to his deceased parent.  And Jesus skewers it mercilessly. Let your yes be yes and your no be no.

There is another layer of meaning, however, in those words: Let the dead bury their dead but come follow me. The meaning of the second ‘dead’ – their dead - might seem obvious on the surface. It is a reference to the deceased, isn’t it? But who does Jesus call ‘the dead’ in the first place? In the latter case, the dead are perhaps those who are not alive to God, or at least those who are not trying to live in His will. They are ‘dead’ in the sense of being like a ‘dead weight’. They are inert and motionless. The dead are those who refuse to be what they are: wayfarers, like the rest of us. Let the dead bury their dead, therefore, is as much as to say: do not act like the dead. Be alive! Get on the road. Be alive to God and God’s call in this moment. Do not project into the future some moment of serving Him eventually. Serve Him now. Live!

What or who, then, are the dead that those who do not live are burying? The dead in the second sense is perhaps the world as it is laid hold of by those who are not alive to God. The world is always good, for it is God’s creation, but the way that we lay hold of it, especially if we are not alive to God, turns it into something dead. Here it is also a ‘dead weight’ but now in the sense of being a burden, something that weighs us down. And how much more will it weigh us down if we are not alive to God? The dead burdens of the world rob us of freedom. In the case of the man whose father has died, his attachments hold him back from doing what perhaps Jesus has given him to understand he must do now: be alive! Note also that this is not just about attachment to things. Our burdens can also be our habits and ways of doing things, our comfort zones, the price of our agreeableness, our intangible tethers that are deep down only the egotist's declaration of 'my way or the highway'. But our highways and roads lead nowhere. Only God's way, the way of the cross, leads to life.  

Let the dead bury their dead, says Jesus, challenging his listeners - challenging us - to live to God the Father, using this world and doing our thing only insofar as they do not hold us back in our flight towards Him.

Live and be free. This is Jesus’ challenge to us.