Is Discipleship costly?
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| Jesus (Photo credit: Wikipedia) |
As the Lord and his disciples traveled to Jerusalem a man said to Jesus, “I will follow you wherever you go” (Luke 9:57). How often we have heard and made such professions. It is easy to make promises in the flush of joy and enthusiasm, but not so easy to keep them in difficult times.
Jesus sobered this man by saying, “Foxes have holes and birds of the air have nests, but the Son of Man has no place to lay his head.” In other words, “If you want to follow Jesus you must leave behind earthly security.”
Then Jesus invited another man, “Follow me.” But the man replied, “Lord, first let me go and bury my father.” If this man’s father were already dead he would probably have been at the house mourning; more likely he meant his father was near death.
Jesus answers with one of his most difficult sayings: “Let the dead bury their own dead, but you go and proclaim the kingdom of God.” Jesus knew that this man was procrastinating. One of the most important things a man could do in Judaism was to attend to the burial of his family members, but Jesus was saying that life holds greater claims than does death (vv. 59–60).
Understand that Jesus was not setting down a law for all times, as if we are not supposed to try to provide homes for our families, or as if we are to neglect sick and dying family members. Rather, he was pointing to the immediate urgency of that uniquely historic moment on the road to Jerusalem and the crucifixion. When the kingdom of God is at stake, there is only one place for the Christian—the front lines.
This is also the context in which we must take the last incident recorded in this passage. Another man said, “I will follow you, Lord, but first let me go back and say good-bye to my family.” To give farewells would have only taken a few minutes, but Jesus is making a larger point in his response to this request for delay. Jesus said that anyone joining him at that moment had no time to look back, even for a moment (vv. 61–62).
Competing time demands can be made even more complex in the light of teaching such as Jesus provides in this passage. Where is the balance that conventional wisdom would prescribe? Evaluate your priorities and commitments in light of Christ’s seemingly “unbalanced” approach.
