Friday, 10 July 2009
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The Meaning of "let the dead bury their dead"
I was recently asked the meaning of the following biblical texts:
“And another of his disciples said to him: Lord, suffer me first to go and bury my father. But Jesus said to him: Follow me, and let the dead bury their dead” (Mt. 8:21-22).
And
“But he said to another: Follow me. And he said: Lord, suffer me first to go and to bury my father. And Jesus said to him: Let the dead bury their dead: but go thou and preach the kingdom of God. And another said: I will follow thee, Lord; but let me first take my leave of them that are at my house. Jesus said to him: No man putting his hand to the plough and looking back is fit for the kingdom of God” (Lk. 9:59-62).
I gave the following answer:
First everyone is born spiritually dead (Eph 2:1, 5; Col. 2:13) but Christ raises the dead and makes them faithful (Eph. 2:3). Christians have a duty to practice the corporal works of mercy of burying the dead, but it is not an absolute duty. For the Christian, burying the dead is important as all the corporal works of mercy are important. However, they are secondary to the spiritual works of mercy. The faithful are the only ones who can practice the spiritual works of mercy (“go thou and preach the kingdom of God”) but any pagan can do the corporal works of mercy. Our Lord would have clearly known the man’s familiar status, like he knew the status of the woman at the well (Jn. 4), and known that his father had unbelieving family to bury him. St. Augustine said:
But the Lord Christ when He is preparing men for the Gospel, will have no excuse from this carnal and temporal affection interfere. It is true that both the law of God prescribes these duties, and the Lord Himself reproves the Jews, because they destroyed this very commandment of God. And the Apostle Paul has in his Epistle laid it down, and said, “This is the first commandment with promise.” What? “Honor thy father and thy mother.”’ God of a surety spake it. This young man then wished to obey God, and to bury his father; but it is place, and time, and circumstance, which is in this case to give way to place, and time, and circumstance. A father must be honored, but God must be obeyed. He that begat us must be loved, but He that created us must be preferred. “I am calling thee,” saith He, “to My Gospel; I have need of thee for another work: this is a greater work than that which thou wishest to be doing. ‘Let the dead bury their dead.’ Thy father is dead: there are other dead men to bury the dead.” Who are the dead who bury the dead? Can a dead man be buried by dead men? How can they lay him out, if they are dead? How can they carry him, if they are dead? How can they bewail him, if they are dead? Yet they do lay him out, and carry, and bewail him, and they are dead; because they are unbelievers (Sermons on Selected Lessons of the Gospels, Sermon 50:2).
Second, this is another example of the absolute devotion the Lord Jesus places on his elect. Jesus said, “He that loveth father or mother more than me, is not worthy of me; and he that loveth son or daughter more than me, is not worthy of me. And he that taketh not up his cross, and followeth me, is not worthy of me. He that findeth his life, shall lose it: and he that shall lose his life for me, shall find it” (Mt. 10:37-39). The devil makes the same demand on his followers. In the same chapter, the Lord spoke that “brother also shall deliver up the brother to death, and the father the son; and the children shall rise up against their parents, and shall put them to death” (10:21). That text is coming home for many of us.
Third, “bury my father” is an Aramaic idiom, meaning, take care of my father until he passes. What the man was doing was placing his father before God. Jesus was not forbidding him from burying his father. Jesus was just forbidding him from placing his father before God and the Gospel. The principal applies to all the faithful.
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