Luke 9:59-60
He said to another man, “Follow me.”
But he replied, “Lord, first let me go and bury my father.”
Jesus said to him, “Let the dead bury their own dead, but you go and proclaim the kingdom of God.”
As always, Jesus, call to this man is “Follow me.” This means so much more than the modified message that we today tend to put in Jesus’ mouth: “Believe in me.”
To believe in Jesus means to profess faith in Him, believe that His promises are true, and nod in agreement when we read that He was truly God in the flesh and that He paid for my sins. It’s all pretty intellectual, something we can do without even leaving home.
But to Follow Jesus is a whole other thing. To follow Jesus means to leave behind my old life as the fishermen did, as the tax collector did. It means to go where Jesus goes, to do what He is doing, and to take up not His philosophy, but His cross. It means to take up His life, to die to myself, and to commit myself to obey His every commandment. It means to continue to do His work in His power as the first priority of my life.
This man understood all of this when Jesus called him to follow. And so he asked to delay obedience to His call until other obligations were fulfilled. He asked to wait until he had buried his father. It’s important to understand that, at this point, his father was still most likely alive. What he was really saying was, “My father wouldn’t approve of me leaving everything behind to follow you. So let me wait until my father dies, and then I’ll follow you.”
Jesus was unimpressed. He knew exactly what the young man was saying. He would have had no problem if the young man’s father had just died. To bury a person in those days took less than a day. But to delay following Jesus to avoid conflict with family members was out of the question. He had only a few more days left on earth, and the clock was ticking fast. For this man, the call really was now or never.
Father, there really is a lot of difference between; simply believing in Jesus and actually following Him, living His life and continuing His ministry right where I live. The two are not mutually exclusive, but must be pursued simultaneously – to truly believe in Jesus requires that I truly follow Him. Lord, I commit myself to BOTH today. I believe, therefore I will follow with my whole life. Amen.