Luke 9:59-60 59To another he said, “Follow me.” But he said, “Lord, allow me first to go and bury my father.” 60And he said to him, “Leave the dead to bury their own dead, but you in going proclaim the kingdom of God.”
The second person Jesus met along the road to Jerusalem presents another scenario about discipleship. In this case, Jesus invited the unnamed and generic man to follow (akolouthei) him. This invitation was the same as given to the apostles (5:11, 27-28). To be a disciple means to follow Jesus (9:23). The unstated issue behind this invitation is what is required to follow Jesus. Was this man willing to pay the cost of discipleship?
Although this person was given the same invitation as the apostles, he gave a different response. Instead of “leaving everything” (5:11), including family and job security, he chose culture. One background question was whether or not the man’s father was actually dead yet. People who died were typically buried on the same day. It is possible that the man’s father was not dead yet, though perhaps close to it, and so the man wanted to stick around long enough to take care of the body once his father did pass. It was a significant social obligation for a son to bury his father. His concern seems legitimate from a human and social perspective. His essential problem was that he could not let go of the past or move beyond social and family obligations and was letting his concerns get in the way. His excuse could be paraphrased, “I will follow you after I . . . .”
Jesus responded by calling the man to move forward into the future kingdom. Jesus gives a short statement with a wordplay with dead. The first dead refers to the spiritually dead who stay in their old comfortable lives and refuse to heed the call to discipleship. The second dead represents those things that bind people to their old life. In the case of this mean, the word refers to his physically dead father. There are many other familial, social, or cultural obligations that keep people spiritually dead. The man’s problem was that his sense of responsibility was misplaced.
There was still an opportunity for him to follow Jesus. The story does not give his decision, whether he returned home or followed Jesus and proclaimed God’s kingdom. The context of the three scenarios implies that none of the three chose to follow Jesus. Every person who meets Jesus will have his or her own battle with what must be put on the cross and crucified. No two battles with the old life will be the same. How would we fill in the blank, “First let me do this ___ before I come and follow you?”
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