This morning, my mother asked me to explain to her my thoughts on a particular passage of the New Testament:
A scribe then approached [Jesus] and said, “Teacher, I will follow you wherever you go.” And Jesus said to him, “Foxes have holes, and birds of the air have nests; but the Son of Man has nowhere to lay his head.” Another of his disciples said to him, “Lord, first let me go and bury my father.” But Jesus said to him, “Follow me, and let the dead bury their own dead.” (The Gospel of Matthew 8:19-22, NRSV)
The context of my mother’s question is the death of my godmother’s sister (whom I never knew, and who lives nowhere near me). My Catholic mother had shared news of the event with one of her sisters, who belongs to an Evangelical denomination, saying that she wanted to call my godmother soon and offer condolences. Her Evangelical sister dismissively quoted “let the dead bury their own dead”, much to the surprise of my mother. However, having heard this verse many times in church, my mother couldn’t argue that these words really are ascribed to Jesus. Seeking to reconcile the apparent harshness of these words with her view of a loving Jesus, my mother came to me for more insight.
As flattered as I was, I know that this is not a simple task. Christians over the millennia have noted that the same Jesus who likened the Kingdom of God to a Prodigal Son returning home to his father; who washed his disciples’ feet on his last night of earthly life; who wept for the death of his friend, Lazarus, even as he knew he was about to raise him from the dead; who preached love of God, neighbor, and self as the greatest commandment(s), and even love of the enemy—is also the same Jesus said to have publicly repudiated his mother and kin (Mt. 12:49-50); warned, through analogy, that the enemies of the king(dom?) would be killed before the king’s presence (Lk. 19:27); and that even heirs of the kingdom would be cast into outer darkness, away from God’s presence, forever (Mt. 8:10-12). So what does one do with “let the dead bury their own dead”?
There are many ways to read a faith text, but a good starting place is to see how others before you have read it. Since Jesus is addressing a living man who has lost his father, then the common traditional interpretation makes some sense: ‘let the spiritually dead bury their own dead’. However, further interpretations of the verse focus on different things:
- “Jesus is not negating the command to honor parents, but is teaching us to put the things of the Kingdom as the highest priority. Those who ignore this priority are spiritually dead.” (The Orthodox Study Bible, p. 1282)
- “The demand of Jesus overrides what both the Jewish and the Hellenistic world regarded as a filial obligation of the highest importance.” (The Catholic Study Bible, p. 1265)
- “Jesus’ harsh-sounding answer to this would-be disciple should not be understood as a general rule, since honoring one’s parents was required by the Commandments (Ex. 20:12). This particular man needed to hear that following Jesus should take precedence over everything else in his life.” (The Lutheran Study Bible, p. 1595)
- “Let the spiritually dead bury the physically dead. The time of Jesus’ ministry was short and demanded full attention and commitment. This statement stresses the radical demands of Jesus’ discipleship, since Jews placed great importance on the duty of children to bury their parents.” (The New International Version Study Bible, p. 1450)
What all of these varying explanations show is that the text, as we have it, is not enough to explain its meaning.
I think of it as the Austin Powers: The Spy Who Shagged Me. Bear with me for a moment. Generations from now, if that movie still exists, people will still get the fact that Starbucks is a powerful company in the film and a tool of Dr. Evil. But when this movie was released, Starbucks had become popular and ubiquitous seemingly out of nowhere. In some cities, where few people had even heard of the company, there were Starbucks stores across the street from other Starbucks stores. Unless you lived through this or read about it, you won’t truly be able to grasp the significance of the Starbucks logo on the Space Needle (as Starbucks originated in Seattle), or even the dialogue in the film, which ascribes Starbucks’ overnight success to Dr. Evil’s investment, and as such makes the contemporary viewer imagine: “What if Starbucks is growing so rapidly because of some sinister motive?” In short, the whole concept is humorous in a wink-and-a-nod sort of way that only people who were around at the time would fully appreciate.
I submit that this is something modern-day readers of the Bible have to accept. We are free to believe that everything we need to know for our salvation is contained in the Bible, but we must recognize that Scripture was written by people who were a product of their own time. Therefore they were influenced by their surrounding culture(s), traces of which they incorporated into their writings in order to better get their message across.
With this in mind, the study Bibles I quoted above are all correct. The earliest Christians were confronted by two urgent realities: the brevity of their beloved teacher’s ministry, and his words that the end was near. In short, then, time was running out! Therefore the death of loved ones mattered little to them because Jesus was going to return within their lifetime, the dead would rise again, and the Kingdom of God would be established on earth. That’s an idea we’re somewhat acquainted with, especially in these past couple of years. To those who believed the Rapture was going to happen in March 2011, or to those who believe the end is coming in December 2012, I’m sure worldly things probably matter less than they did a decade ago.
Another concept that finds its way into this verse is ancient cultural priorities. Whereas we who live in the modern West lay more value on our individuality, the family unit was more important to those living in European and Mediterranean societies at the time of Jesus. The earliest Christians, however, began to experience a different kind of unity, one of faith in Jesus, one which provided them with a sense of strength. It offered these people their first experience of individuality, as they chose to follow Jesus. For women especially, this was their first experience of having control over their own bodies, as they could now freely commit their lives to Christ, a man of their own choosing, and not to a man already chosen for them. We shouldn’t then be surprised to read that following Jesus is more important than adhering to socially-established family ties.
However, while we of course should keep in mind an understanding of the cultural attitudes that lie behind this passage, what the commentaries of these study Bibles miss is how we should read this text today. For the end has not come, and there’s so much death and suffering in this world that family and friends are important to us. Is there any truth that we can still take from the text and appropriate into our lives?
A possible answer popped up to me, like Starbucks years ago, during the conversation with my mother. It played out in my mind like a scene from a movie—and I believe you often have to play out these texts like that in order to understand them. For we know what was said, or may have been said, but not how it was said.
Thus: although one study Bible calls the man a “would-be” disciple, the text itself simply calls him a “disciple”. This means that he had already been following Jesus for some time. And if he had been following Jesus, he might have heard Jesus saying these sorts of things:
- “You are the salt of the earth [and] the light of the world.” (Mt. 5:13, 14)
- “Blessed are those who mourn, for they will be comforted.” (Mt. 5:4)
- “Blessed are you who weep now, for you will laugh.” (Lk. 6:21b)
- “... in fact, the kingdom of God is within you.” (Lk. 17:21b)
- “I am the resurrection and the life. Those who believe in me, even though they die, will live; and everyone who lives and believes in me will never die.” (Jn. 11:25-26)
And so after all of this, the disciple still says: “Lord, first let me go and bury my father...” The hurt and shock on Jesus’ face must have been unashamedly evident, and he may have wanted to say:
“How is it that, after hearing me talk so much about what the Kingdom of God really is, you can still ask me that—as if following me and attending your father’s funeral are mutually exclusive? The Kingdom of God is both here and beyond. After all, you saw me heal and restore people in the here and now. Now you have the opportunity to go and do likewise—to comfort those who mourn, to tell them about the hope of resurrection and life that I offer, to bring the light of the world and the Kingdom of God to your small corner of the earth... and you still think that you can do those things only by literally following my footsteps? What are you going to do when I’m no longer around?”
But all Jesus could give voice to was:
“Let the dead bury their own dead.”
And if this sounds a little angry and even spiteful, we must remember that the divine Christ was human too. He could be prone as much to happiness and love as to anger and spite.
Fellow Christians, we are called to live in this world. Yes, the apocalytpic fervor of the first Christians teaches us that we shouldn’t despair about worldly things, for Christ gives us hope of the world to come. But there is no dichotomy between our physical world and the realm of God, and in times of earthly need, we are called to act. We are called to bring Christ’s comfort, healing, and love to everyone—and not, mind you, as an opportunity to proselytize, but simply because it’s the right thing to do.
If this story is literally true, I believe that this spiritually-dead disciple left to go bury his father and, through the act, finally realized that he was still following his Savior. In so doing, he entered into the experience of countless generations before and after him: a rebirth of the spirit.
