Chapter 19 FIRST THINGS FIRST And a certain scribe came, and said unto him, Master, I will follow thee whithersoever thou goest. And Jesus saith unto him, The foxes have holes, and the birds of the air have nests; but the Son of man hath not where to lay his head. And another of his disciples said unto him, Lord, suffer me first to go and bury my father. But Jesus said unto him, Follow me; and let the dead bury their dead (Matt. 8:19-22).
In these two incidents, Jesus was approached by men who said they wanted to follow Him. He did not send the first man away. Rather, He gave him a reason not to commit. The second man was willing to commit, but only after burying his father. Jesus warned this man to ignore his dead father's funeral. They seem to be opposite cases. The first man wanted to come; Jesus discouraged him. The second wanted to bury his father first; Jesus discouraged him. But in both cases, Jesus was motivated by the same principle: first things first. This is the principle of priorities. It is the governing principle of the gospel of Matthew: priorities within the kingdom of God.
The Uprooted The scribe wanted to follow Jesus. This was surely not a normal request. Scribes constantly confronted Jesus publicly, trying to undermine His authority through questioning. Perhaps this man was serious; perhaps he was an informer. But in either case, Jesus challenged him to pay a high price. Jesus had no home, no place to call home, no permanent pillow. He was in a condition like Jacob's in his flight from Esau. "And he lighted upon a certain place, and tarried there all night, because the sun was set; and he took of the stones of that place, and put them for his pillows, and lay down in that place to sleep" (Gen. 28:11). Jacob was now a wanderer, a man without a home.
This is not a normal condition. Wandering is usually a curse. The Israelites wandered in the wilderness; this was surely a curse on the exodus generation. They wanted to rest. They wanted a place to rest. They did not receive their wish. One of the basic ideas of rest is to have a place of one's own to call home. A place of rest serves as headquarters for our dominion. We work; then we return home to rest. The Promised Land was Israel's place of rest.
Jesus' ministry required that He wander. Those who followed Him also wandered. They gave up their places of rest. They also gave up predictable sources of income. Their seemingly patternless wandering broke their familiar pattern of work outside the home, return to home, and rest. Wandering had also broken the exodus generation's pattern of limited dominion: servitude in Egypt.
In the wilderness, the Israelites had been sustained by the manna. We are not told how Jesus and His disciples were sustained. It may have been charity. Perhaps they took odd jobs. Somehow, they had money. Judas kept the bag (John 12:6). But the scribe, hearing that Jesus had no place of rest, must have understood that he would have to forfeit more than a place of rest. He would forfeit the normal pattern of dominion. He could no longer rely on a steady stream of income.
Jesus was telling the scribe that he faced risk. How would he deal with this risk? By relying on others? By relying on Jesus' persuasion of others? By relying on odd jobs, or money shared by the other disciples who might find odd jobs? The pattern of dominion was broken by Jesus' way of life. He refused to stay in His own region, where He was not taken seriously. "And when he was come into his own country, he taught them in their synagogue, insomuch that they were astonished, and said, Whence hath this man this wisdom, and these mighty works? Is not this the carpenter's son? is not his mother called Mary? and his brethren, James, and Joses, and Simon, and Judas? And his sisters, are they not all with us? Whence then hath this man all these things? And they were offended in him. But Jesus said unto them, A prophet is not without honour, save in his own country, and in his own house. And he did not many mighty works there because of their unbelief" (Matt. 13:54-58). Familiarity had bred contempt. So, He took unfamiliar pathways to do His work.
Jesus was nearing the end of His time on earth. He was at the beginning of the next stage of His ministry: covenantal representation by His church. To prepare His followers, He first broke the patterns of their lives. He reshaped their lives by reshaping their dominion patterns. He took away their pillows. He substituted rocks instead.
God did the same with Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob. He took away their places of rest. He uprooted them. He drove Jacob and his sons into Egypt. He drove Moses out of Egypt, and then out of his home in Midian. He did it to David in his time with the Philistines (I Sam. 27:7) and during Absalom's rebellion (II Sam. 16). He did it to the church in Jerusalem (Acts 8:1). He did it to Paul. The uprooting process is part of the next phase of the expansion of the kingdom.
Jesus' parents were uprooted when they took Him into Egypt (Matt. 2:14). His public ministry began with His uprooting out of Galilee. The familiar environment that had sustained Him was removed. His hope could not be placed in a place to rest. It had to come from above. God the Father would sustain Him. Jesus would do His work of building the kingdom without the capital asset that most men rely on: a predictable place of rest.
Missionary activity is always based on an uprooting. Irish monks in the sixth century spread across northern Europe, building monasteries.(1) In the United States, the Baptists and Methodists captured what was then the Western part of the nation by adopting circuit-riding. These men had no permanent homes. John Wesley was the model, who spent most of his adult life on horseback. While ministers in the traditional Calvinistic denominations stayed at home east of the Allegheny Mountains, the Baptists and Methodists worked for little pay and no place of rest in the West. There were 750 Congregational churches in 1780, and about 500 Presbyterian congregations and 450 Baptist congregations. The Methodists were barely visible. By 1900, there were almost 50,000 Baptist congregations, almost 54,000 Methodist congregations, 15,452 Presbyterian, 5,604 Congregational (liberal), 6,264 Episcopal (liberal). There were over 10,298 Disciples congregations: two-thirds of the number of Presbyterians.(2) Episcopalians and Congregationalists were hardly visible in the West.
Jesus was telling the scribe that to follow Him, he would have to become one of the uprooted. He did not tell him he could not join the disciples, but He warned him of the high price.
Let the Dead Bury the Dead The second inquirer was already a disciple, but not one of the permanent wanderers. He was ready to join the wanderers, almost. But first he had to go and bury his father. Jesus dismissed the ritual as trivial. "Let the dead bury the dead." This statement was an epitaph on the grave of Old Covenant Israel.
Filial piety is basic to almost every civilization. It was the heart of classical religion. It was also important in Israel. Isaac and Ishmael came together to bury Abraham (Gen. 25:9). Jacob and Esau buried Isaac (Gen. 35:29). Yet Jesus told his disciple to break with tradition and immediately join the band of wanderers. In a sense, Jesus' inner circle wandered in circles. They were no longer part of the normal pattern of family life in Israel.
The would-be wanderer had to assess the importance of becoming one of the inner circle, being present at the creation of a new world order. Was it worth defying convention? To defy this convention would be to move outside of polite society. He would become an outcast. If he did not bury his father, his son might not bury him. This, in fact, was quite likely. Jesus later warned them: "Think not that I am come to send peace on earth: I came not to send peace, but a sword. For I am come to set a man at variance against his father, and the daughter against her mother, and the daughter in law against her mother in law. And a man's foes shall be they of his own household. 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 his cross, and followeth after me, is not worthy of me" (Matt. 10:34-38).
But it was more than this. The man would have to participate in the burial of Israel. It was not just that his father was dead; it was that his nation was dead. The old order was dead. The new Israel of God was being born.(3) This new Israel would not attend the burial of the old Israel. In fact, the new Israel was warned to flee from the old Israel when the signs of the imminent burial appeared (Luke 21:20-22). When Rome's legions arrived, the church was to have departed, which church tradition said they did, fleeing to the non-Judaic town of Pella.
Conclusion Jesus warned both men to put first things first: to set their top priority. Joining the wanderers would mean giving up home, bed, and pillow. Jesus had done this; His followers would, too. Was the scribe ready to pay this price? Joining the wanderers would also mean giving up traditions. Burying one's father was a very old tradition in Israel. That tradition was about to go. The new Israel would soon be at war with the old Israel. The household would be divided. The would-be wanderer was told it was time to choose: covenantal life or covenantal death. Jesus told him to choose life.
He was telling them both that the New Covenant would supersede the Old. To join Him would be to take a new covenant oath. They could no longer live halfway between the Old World Order and the New World Order. For a brief time, it might have looked as though that was possible, but it was not. The dead would have to bury the dead. The living would have to wander. Within one generation, they would have to flee. "And when ye shall see Jerusalem compassed with armies, then know that the desolation thereof is nigh. Then let them which are in Judaea flee to the mountains; and let them which are in the midst of it depart out; and let not them that are in the countries enter thereinto. For these be the days of vengeance, that all things which are written may be fulfilled" (Luke 21:20-22).
Footnotes:
1. Thomas Cahill, How the Irish Saved Civilization: The Untold Story of Ireland's Heroic Role from the Fall of the Roman Empire to the Rise of Medieval Europe (New York: Talese-Doubleday, 1995). This is a popularly written book, not a scholarly history.
2. Edwin Scott Gaustad, Historical Atlas of Religion in America (New York: Harper & Row, 1962), p. 44, Figure 33.
3. The church is called the Israel of God. "And as many as walk according to this rule, peace be on them, and mercy, and upon the Israel of God" (Gal. 6:16). This has always been a problem text for dispensationalists.
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