Matthew 8:21-22 - Another of his disciples said to him, "Permit me first to go and bury my father." And Jesus said to him, "Follow me and send/leave the dead to bury their own dead."
This is, to me, a weird thing for Jesus to say for several reasons. First, why the urgency? Jesus is advocating foregoing societal norms. Maybe it's not urgency so much as asking the person to choose; God's way or the human way. Possibly he suspects the young man (probably) of wanting to have it both ways? He wants to follow but is not yet ready. The "world" still has a hold on his thinking. He is not yet free of the Law. I remember someone somewhere saying something like once you go beyond the Law to Love, everything you do is for the good of all. That ties it into the idea of going beyond. In fact, what he might be saying is we need to go beyond the Law to the Spirit of the Law. Calvin would agree. One must first obey the prohibitions but one must also perform the opposite tasks. Not only must we not murder, we must also perform life-giving/growing acts toward others. Going beyond the original prohibition. Because that is where God lives.
Another question I have is about "the dead." I imagine Jesus must mean spiritually dead. Those who are dead to the Spirit due to their focus on adhering to the letter of the law and ignoring the Spirit. Their bodies are living but their spirits are dead. They are lost. I think this happened to me as a result of my dad's alcoholism and my mother's attempts to deal with it. No disrespect to either of them. They were lost too. Yeah. Spiritually dead. I see many people on the right that way. Their focus is money over people. It breaks my heart that so many are caught in their web.
Beyond the Law.
B
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