On Today’s Gospel
The gospel today was quite interesting to me. For those attending children at the time, we meet two men that desire to follow Jesus. One is rebuked for wanting to bury his father before becoming a disciple. The other is rebuked for wanting to wish his parents farewell. The first reading today is of Elisha being called by God. Elisha desires to wish his parents farewell. Elisha is allowed to so do so however, and having done so, he follows Elijah, although he does sacrifice his oxen. With “Here I Am Lord” still in my head, I don’t think I had difficulty understanding the message father was trying to impart this morning.
I however have a few questions myself. With a three-fold admonition, it is quite clear Jesus was communicated something here. Discipleship being hard could be that message, and the NAB footnotes confirm that interpretation. Along the lines of the discussions here at Vox Nova over genocide in the Bible, I suppose I could make the claim that burying the dead and honoring one’s parents isn’t as important as discipleship and be content. This would seem to be the wrong argument. There is that whole honor thy mother and thy father thing in the 10 commandments. One of the corporal works of mercy is to bury the dead. Neither of these has been interpreted as an impediment to discipleship. Then there is Christ’s admonition to the first: “Foxes have dens and birds of the sky have nests, but the Son of Man has nowhere to rest his head.”
It’s been quipped that a humanist is someone who loves the concept of humanity in principle. This seems like a similar thing. How are we to understand discipleship absent the care of the dead and following the 10 commandments? Sure one could argue being with Christ is more important, but then the whole Sermon on the Mount doesn’t make near as much sense, because there are a lot of places we find Christ, even today, and I don’t think anyone would claim we don’t find Him in caring for the dead. Unfortunately, you aren’t going to find any clearcut answers from me, because I’m considering the matter as I type it, lacking theological training. Plowing ahead however, the reply to third, “[No one who] (paraphrase edit-mz) looks to what was left behind is fit for the kingdom of God,” seems to almost parallel the warning the Lord gave before destroying Sodom and Gomorrah. Perhaps the Lord had already rendered judgment on the men’s families, as would be suggested in his admonition to the second man, “Let the dead bury their dead.”
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M.Z.:
Thanks for putting this up; I think it may be the first “today’s Gospel” post I’ve seen on V-N.
I think, however, you have the last quote backwards. It should be: No one [oudeis] who looks to what was left behind is fit for the kingdom of God.
It’s typically Christian to see these passages in terms that come out like self-flagellation rather than self-growth. There’s very little talk about the joy and partying at Elisha’s ox stew feast. Paul’s “desires of the flesh” is understood as polite code for sexual desire, and his message is reduced to “deny your sexuality.” “Commitment” is measured by obedience despite deep longing for something else. “Discipleship” is seen in terms of hardship rather than joy and new opportunity. “Fitness for the Kingdom” is seen in terms of God’s judgment rather than self-awareness. I’m not talking now about Christian theology, but about how the message comes across to the average pew-sitter. My pastor’s homily felt uncomfortably like “If you’re committed, you’ll do things in the name of faith that you don’t really want to do.”
These passages look very different from the perspective of personal growth and receiving the grace to let go of attachments. Elisha is released from plowing the field, and free to throw a party for his people. Paul calls us to freedom, not slavery. Jesus is free to give himself away because he is free from attachment to a den or a nest. The plowman who looks forward to the Kingdom rather than backward to his attachments is “fit” because he plows a straight furrow.
Thanks for the correction there Frank M.
I wonder if Jesus really said, “Let the dead bury their dead.” First, it could be a mistake or a mistranslation. The Anchor Bible volume Matthew translates it, “Let the dying bury the dead,” based on the fact that in Hebrew/Aramaic, the word for dead also means dying. One of my commentaries (and I am going from memory here), says some have suggested that it is garbled rendering of “let the burier of the dead bury the dead.”
Or (I am speculating here) it could have been an invention of the early Christian community. It occurs to me that the mission of Jesus was to sinners. Was he really trying to amass as many followers as possible for himself? Perhaps the early Christian community was responsible for this story about the demands of discipleship.
I’m not sure it really is a call to discipleship. Having thought about it overnight, I’m thinking this is more of a parallel to Sodom and Gomorrah.
“Let the dead bury their dead” seems to be an ancient folk proverb.
There’s no indication that the father had just died – the son may have wanted to wait at home the next 20 years until his father passed away.
Jesus’ first response seems to indicate the costs of discipleship; his second a critique of the “I’ll follow you BUT” excuse (one is reminded of St Augustine’s prayer “Lord make me chaste, but not yet!”); his third a reminder that discipleship brings us into a new family (the Church) which may involve cutting some existing family ties.
God Bless
“Let the dead bury their dead” seems to be an ancient folk proverb.
Chris,
It sounds like one, but the Anchor Bible volume Matthew says,
So it may be an old saying, but apparently it is unknown except for its inclusion in the Gospels.
The NAB notes to Matthew and Luke seems to assume that the man’s father has just died, as do the notes in the Anchor Bible volume I have just quoted from.
The big question in my mind is whether the “historical” Jesus urged any of his followers to disregard any of the laws and teachings of Judaism. Yes, it is believed that Jesus was God incarnate, but wasn’t he still trying bring sinners (nonobservant Jews) back to the Father? And of course the Jews believed that God himself had laid down the law. So although Jesus could speak with authority, why would he contradict Jewish law?
I know it is a huge topic, and I am probably not even framing the question correctly. Perhaps if I can get through Volume Four of A Marginal Jew, I will know how to frame the question better (and even know some of the answers). Meier says, ” . . . [A]lthough I may not be right in my positions, every other book or article on the historical Jesus and the Law has been to a great degree wrong.” Fortunately, I have not done much reading on the topic!
David,
If suppose if Matthew/Luke were completed after the Jewish uprising concluding circa 70AD then “let the dead bury their dead” might well have the connotation of not following the dead end path of revolutionary violence. And also perhaps the pharisees’ re-construction of post-temple Jewish religion in opposition to the early Church.
I suspect that might be a better way to frame the question rather than “the end of the old dispensation” which has plenty of problems eg “not one jot or tittle will pass from the law”; the early Christian practice of continuing with temple worship.
God Bless
Deducing the sources of Gospel sayings is a lot of fun, but I don’t think it advances discipleship at all. It’s an intellectual exercise in a spiritual context. At worst, intellectualization is a defense against spiritual experience.
There’s no guarantee that the sayings are exactly as Jesus said them, nor that the way they are arranged in the Gospels is the sequence Jesus chose. I choose to believe that the Gospel authors assembled and linked the sayings into narrative with which they hoped to authentically transmit Jesus’ message, based on their own discipleship within their 1st and 2nd century communities. This must have worked for a lot of people at the time, or these Gospels would not have become canonical.
It can be helpful to know something about Aramaic as Jesus spoke, or Koine as the authors wrote. Maybe we can escape misinterpretation, misdirection and entrapment by our modern analytical perspective. In the end it’s up to us to hear the scripture and accept the miracle of Grace without expecting to understand anything.
The story makes sense if you consider that Jesus could always sniff out a liar. The passage has the same tone as one of those encounters with a Pharisee or the rich young man, someone more interested in his own agenda than in Jesus’s. The sequence shows a slide from “I’ll follow you”, to a decent-sounding reason, to an iffy-sounding reason.
It’s nestled between sending out the twelve to sending out the seventy-two. At the time, Jesus was probably hearing a lot of excuses from people who would have loved to help, really, but were just too busy.
The two versions differ slightly. In Luke, Jesus says, “Let the dead bury their dead. But you, go and proclaim the kingdom of God.” And in Matthew, Jesus says, “Follow me, and let the dead bury their dead.” In neither version are we told what the man does upon receiving the command from Jesus.
“not one jot or tittle will pass from the law”
Chris,
Of course there’s Mark 7:18-19:
Declaring all foods clean is doing away with more than a jot or a tittle! There are, of course, significant problems with little parenthetical remark. For example, the Apostles didn’t seem to know about it.