Following Jesus is Priority #1

Matt 8:18-22

18 Now when Jesus saw great crowds around him, he gave orders to go over to the other side. 19 A scribe then approached and said, ‘Teacher, I will follow you wherever you go.’ 20 And Jesus said to him, ‘Foxes have holes, and birds of the air have nests; but the Son of Man has nowhere to lay his head.’ 21 Another of his disciples said to him, ‘Lord, first let me go and bury my father.’ 22 But Jesus said to him, ‘Follow me, and let the dead bury their own dead.’

With the crowds pressing in on him, Jesus needed a break and ordered the disciples, many of whom knew how to sail, to get a boat ready because he wanted to get away from the crowd by crossing the lake. As we will see in Matthew 8:28 they have sailed from the north-west part of the lake to the south-east part of the lake, about 20 kms. Jesus, fully human and fully divine, needed a break, to get away.

Two people want to join him. The first, a scribe, says he will follow Jesus wherever Jesus goes. Jesus’ response discourages the man, for Jesus says that to follow him will be difficult, not having a place to call home, not having the security of being in a place that is his own house. To follow Jesus is to live an uncertain kind of life. The only certain thing about following Jesus is following Jesus, everything else is uncertain. The text does not explicitly tell us what the scribe did, but the implication is the scribe decided he could not live that way. Jesus invites his followers to put following him above their personal comfort.

The second person wanting to follow is described as a disciple, someone who already has made a decision to follow Jesus, but who wants time to bury his father. The sense is not that the father’s funeral is that afternoon, rather the assumption is that the father is still alive and may be in relatively good health. The man is asking to delay his following until it is better for his family. Jesus is blunt, following Jesus is the priority even above family obligations.

The choice to follow Jesus is the most urgent, most important, most serious decision a person can make. Everything else is second to that choice.

PRAYER:

O Lord, we want to follow Jesus, but it often seems too hard, too demanding. Take our weak wills and make them stronger so that with faith in you we would choose the challenging path of being followers of Jesus. In his name we pray. Amen.