June 27, 2010
Luke 9:51-62
+ Let the dead bury their own dead.
What an unusual statement. It almost boggles the mind when you think about it. And yet….there is beautifully poetry in that phrase. And we hear this saying of Jesus referenced occasionally in our secular society. It conveys a sense of resignation and putting behind oneself insignificant aspects of our lives. Still, it is a strange image to wrap our minds around.
Let the dead bury their own dead.
What could Jesus mean by this reference?
In our culture—in our world we embalm or cremate our dead, we care for our dead and dispose of their bodies in a fairly quick but respectful manner. WE bury our dead. The case was not so for Jews in Jesus’ day.
Yes, they also buried their dead, but not the same way we do. When we find this man talking about having to go and bury his father, and Jesus’ response of “let the dead bury their own dead,” we might instantly think that Jesus is being callous. It would seem, at least from our modern perspective, that this man is mourning, having just lost his father. The fact is, his father actually probably died a year or more before. What happened in that culture is that when a person died, they were anointed, wrapped in a cloth shroud and placed in a tomb. This tomb was actually a temporary interment. They were probably placed on a shelf near the entrance of the tomb. About a year or so after their death, the family gathered for another service at which the tomb was re-opened. By that time, the body would have been reduced to bones. The bones would then be collected, placed in a small stone box and buried with the other relatives, probably further back in the tomb.
A remnant of this tradition still exists in Judaism, when, on the first anniversary of the death of a loved one, the family often gathers to unveil the gravestone in the cemetery.
So, when we encounter this man in today’s Gospel, we are not necessarily finding a man mourning his recently deceased father. What we are actually finding is a man who is waiting to go to the tomb where his father’s bones now lie so he can bury the bones. When we see it from this perspective, we can understand why Jesus makes such a seemingly strange comment—and we realize it isn’t quite the callous comment we thought it was. As far as Jesus is concerned, the father has been buried. Whatever this man does is merely an excuse to not go out and proclaim the kingdom of God, as Jesus commands him to do.
Now to be fair to the man, he could just be making an excuse, which really under any other circumstances, would have been a perfectly valid excuse. Or he could really have felt that his duty as his father’s son took precedence over this calling from Jesus. It doesn’t seem as though he doesn’t want to follow Jesus or proclaim the Kingdom. He doesn’t flat-out say no. He just says, not now.
Whatever the case, the son is being given a choice and he is choosing to first bury his father’s bones and then follow Jesus. In a sense, he is choosing the dead and dried bones of his father over the living Jesus who stands before him.
Jesus’ response, which may sound strange to our modern, Western ears, is actually a very clear statement to this man. He is saying, in a sense: “You are attached to these bones. Don’t worry about bones. Break your attachment, follow me, proclaim the goodness and love of God and you will have life.” But the man can not break that attachment, either to the bones or to his duty to his dead father.
How many times have we been in the same place in our lives? How many times have we looked for excuses to get out of following Jesus? We all have our own “bones” that we feel we must bury before we can go and proclaim the Kingdom of God in our midst by following Jesus. We all have our own attachments that we simply cannot break so we can go forward unhindered to follow and to serve. And they’re easy to find. It’s easy to be led astray by attachments—to let these attachments fill our lives and give us a false sense of fulfillment.
As some of you know my computer was attacked by a particular ferocious virus in April. There was a moment when I thought I was going to lose everything on my computer. I quickly found myself going into despair mode. To some extent, it was easy for me to say that my life in so many ways revolved around the files I had on that computer. My manuscripts (including the manuscript of the new book which is being published this year), my sermons, my poems, not to mention files and files of photos of family and friends were, I thought, lost for good. I was sick to my stomach with frustration and sadness over the thought of losing all of those things. I raged, I kicked the door, I pleaded with God, I pounded my chest with mea culpas. I tried to exorcise the little Lamisil-like demons that I imagined had possessed my computer. I felt miserable.
I couldn’t stop thinking, for a while anyway, what it would be like if I lost everything on that computer.
I was reminded of this feeling of grief and frustration as I was flying back from the Provincial meeting in Des Moines yesterday. At the Province VI Synod meeting, there was a wonderful speaker, a self-described “very orthodox Lutheran theologian” by the name of Nadia Bolz-Webber. She is the pastor of this incredibly cutting-edge, cool, Emergent congregation in Denver, Colorado, called the House for All Sinners and Saints. This church is described, according to their website as:
“…a group of folks figuring out how to be a liturgical, Christo-centric, social justice oriented, queer inclusive, incarnational, contemplative, irreverent, ancient - future church with a progressive but deeply rooted theological imagination.”
I love that!
Nadia—who is 41, tall and thin, with dark hair—appeared on Thursday night in a sleeve-less black clerical shirt with a band collar and both bare arms covered in tattoos. My first thought when I saw her was: “This is the coolest priest I have ever seen in my life!” And at a meeting in which none of the clergy—even the Bishops—wore collars, it was refreshing to know that the only other person besides myself wearing a collar was this uber-cool Lutheran pastor.
Nadia proceeded, during the time she was with us, to blow us all away with her message of how the Church must become and stay relevant to those in our midst. I, of course, had to pick up her book: Salvation on the Small Screen: 24 Hours of Christian Television, a book in which she hilariously confronts the televangelists of the Trinity Broadcasting Network.
While she was doing research on the book, which involved essentially involved recording and watching 24 hours of broadcasting from TBN on her DVR, she had the unbelievable happen to her. The hard drive on her DVR crashed. She writes of this crash:
“[It] died. As in gone. Poof. Nothing. If you had come to my house that day you would have found me crying like a spanked child. After Kübler-Rossing my way through the stages of grief, denying the recording was gone, magically thinking maybe it been erased due to a buildup of unconfessed sin on my part and pleading with the cable company, my editor suggested that maybe I should just do it again.”
As I read that yesterday on the airplane home, I sympathized completely with her. That’s exactly how I felt when that stupid virus attacked my computer. I went through every one of those stages of grief in those days afterward before I finally took the computer into Best Buy and had the Geek Squad clean it up and deliver it (and all my backed up files) back to me. There was a moment of joy when I realized that I lost none of my files. Everything was saved. Only later did I realize that essentially these files were really my own “bones.”
And although, yes, my computer is fixed and I have restored some of those backed up files, I also have not restored all of them. In fact, I haven’t restored most of them. I realized that most of my backed-up files are just files I don’t need anymore. And even if I had lost all the files, my life wouldn’t have ended. The kingdom of God would still be proclaimed. And my faith in God, my following of Jesus and my striving to love and serve others wouldn’t change either just because I lost those files. In this case, I could’ve let these dead bury their own dead.
So, in a sense, we find ourselves confronted with that very important question: what are you attached to? What attachments do you have in your life? What are the “bones” of your life? What are the attachments in your life that cause you to look for excuses for not following Jesus and serving others? What things in your life prevent you from proclaiming the Kingdom of God? Whatever they might be, just let them be. Let the dead bury their own dead. Let’s not become attached to the dead objects of our lives that keep us from living and loving fully. Let us not become bogged down with all the attachments we have in this life as we are called to follow Jesus. But let us remember that this is not some sweet, nice, gentle suggestion from Jesus. It is a command from him.
“Let the dead bury their own dead. But as for you, go, and proclaim the kingdom of God.”
We proclaim the kingdom, as we all know, by loving God and loving each other. You can’t proclaim the kingdom—you can’t love—when you are busy obsessing about the dead, loveless things of your life. We who are following Jesus have all put our hands to the plow. We put our hands to that plow when were baptized, when we set out on that path of following Jesus. With our hands on that plow, let us not look back.
Let us not be led astray by the attachments we have in this life that lead us wandering about aimlessly. But let us look forward. Let us push on. Let us proclaim by word and example the love we have for God and one another. And when we do, we are doing exactly what Jesus commands us to do. We are proclaiming that Kingdom and making it a reality in our midst. Amen.
Luke 9:51-62
+ Let the dead bury their own dead.
What an unusual statement. It almost boggles the mind when you think about it. And yet….there is beautifully poetry in that phrase. And we hear this saying of Jesus referenced occasionally in our secular society. It conveys a sense of resignation and putting behind oneself insignificant aspects of our lives. Still, it is a strange image to wrap our minds around.
Let the dead bury their own dead.
What could Jesus mean by this reference?
In our culture—in our world we embalm or cremate our dead, we care for our dead and dispose of their bodies in a fairly quick but respectful manner. WE bury our dead. The case was not so for Jews in Jesus’ day.
Yes, they also buried their dead, but not the same way we do. When we find this man talking about having to go and bury his father, and Jesus’ response of “let the dead bury their own dead,” we might instantly think that Jesus is being callous. It would seem, at least from our modern perspective, that this man is mourning, having just lost his father. The fact is, his father actually probably died a year or more before. What happened in that culture is that when a person died, they were anointed, wrapped in a cloth shroud and placed in a tomb. This tomb was actually a temporary interment. They were probably placed on a shelf near the entrance of the tomb. About a year or so after their death, the family gathered for another service at which the tomb was re-opened. By that time, the body would have been reduced to bones. The bones would then be collected, placed in a small stone box and buried with the other relatives, probably further back in the tomb.
A remnant of this tradition still exists in Judaism, when, on the first anniversary of the death of a loved one, the family often gathers to unveil the gravestone in the cemetery.
So, when we encounter this man in today’s Gospel, we are not necessarily finding a man mourning his recently deceased father. What we are actually finding is a man who is waiting to go to the tomb where his father’s bones now lie so he can bury the bones. When we see it from this perspective, we can understand why Jesus makes such a seemingly strange comment—and we realize it isn’t quite the callous comment we thought it was. As far as Jesus is concerned, the father has been buried. Whatever this man does is merely an excuse to not go out and proclaim the kingdom of God, as Jesus commands him to do.
Now to be fair to the man, he could just be making an excuse, which really under any other circumstances, would have been a perfectly valid excuse. Or he could really have felt that his duty as his father’s son took precedence over this calling from Jesus. It doesn’t seem as though he doesn’t want to follow Jesus or proclaim the Kingdom. He doesn’t flat-out say no. He just says, not now.
Whatever the case, the son is being given a choice and he is choosing to first bury his father’s bones and then follow Jesus. In a sense, he is choosing the dead and dried bones of his father over the living Jesus who stands before him.
Jesus’ response, which may sound strange to our modern, Western ears, is actually a very clear statement to this man. He is saying, in a sense: “You are attached to these bones. Don’t worry about bones. Break your attachment, follow me, proclaim the goodness and love of God and you will have life.” But the man can not break that attachment, either to the bones or to his duty to his dead father.
How many times have we been in the same place in our lives? How many times have we looked for excuses to get out of following Jesus? We all have our own “bones” that we feel we must bury before we can go and proclaim the Kingdom of God in our midst by following Jesus. We all have our own attachments that we simply cannot break so we can go forward unhindered to follow and to serve. And they’re easy to find. It’s easy to be led astray by attachments—to let these attachments fill our lives and give us a false sense of fulfillment.
As some of you know my computer was attacked by a particular ferocious virus in April. There was a moment when I thought I was going to lose everything on my computer. I quickly found myself going into despair mode. To some extent, it was easy for me to say that my life in so many ways revolved around the files I had on that computer. My manuscripts (including the manuscript of the new book which is being published this year), my sermons, my poems, not to mention files and files of photos of family and friends were, I thought, lost for good. I was sick to my stomach with frustration and sadness over the thought of losing all of those things. I raged, I kicked the door, I pleaded with God, I pounded my chest with mea culpas. I tried to exorcise the little Lamisil-like demons that I imagined had possessed my computer. I felt miserable.
I couldn’t stop thinking, for a while anyway, what it would be like if I lost everything on that computer.
I was reminded of this feeling of grief and frustration as I was flying back from the Provincial meeting in Des Moines yesterday. At the Province VI Synod meeting, there was a wonderful speaker, a self-described “very orthodox Lutheran theologian” by the name of Nadia Bolz-Webber. She is the pastor of this incredibly cutting-edge, cool, Emergent congregation in Denver, Colorado, called the House for All Sinners and Saints. This church is described, according to their website as:
“…a group of folks figuring out how to be a liturgical, Christo-centric, social justice oriented, queer inclusive, incarnational, contemplative, irreverent, ancient - future church with a progressive but deeply rooted theological imagination.”
I love that!
Nadia—who is 41, tall and thin, with dark hair—appeared on Thursday night in a sleeve-less black clerical shirt with a band collar and both bare arms covered in tattoos. My first thought when I saw her was: “This is the coolest priest I have ever seen in my life!” And at a meeting in which none of the clergy—even the Bishops—wore collars, it was refreshing to know that the only other person besides myself wearing a collar was this uber-cool Lutheran pastor.
Nadia proceeded, during the time she was with us, to blow us all away with her message of how the Church must become and stay relevant to those in our midst. I, of course, had to pick up her book: Salvation on the Small Screen: 24 Hours of Christian Television, a book in which she hilariously confronts the televangelists of the Trinity Broadcasting Network.
While she was doing research on the book, which involved essentially involved recording and watching 24 hours of broadcasting from TBN on her DVR, she had the unbelievable happen to her. The hard drive on her DVR crashed. She writes of this crash:
“[It] died. As in gone. Poof. Nothing. If you had come to my house that day you would have found me crying like a spanked child. After Kübler-Rossing my way through the stages of grief, denying the recording was gone, magically thinking maybe it been erased due to a buildup of unconfessed sin on my part and pleading with the cable company, my editor suggested that maybe I should just do it again.”
As I read that yesterday on the airplane home, I sympathized completely with her. That’s exactly how I felt when that stupid virus attacked my computer. I went through every one of those stages of grief in those days afterward before I finally took the computer into Best Buy and had the Geek Squad clean it up and deliver it (and all my backed up files) back to me. There was a moment of joy when I realized that I lost none of my files. Everything was saved. Only later did I realize that essentially these files were really my own “bones.”
And although, yes, my computer is fixed and I have restored some of those backed up files, I also have not restored all of them. In fact, I haven’t restored most of them. I realized that most of my backed-up files are just files I don’t need anymore. And even if I had lost all the files, my life wouldn’t have ended. The kingdom of God would still be proclaimed. And my faith in God, my following of Jesus and my striving to love and serve others wouldn’t change either just because I lost those files. In this case, I could’ve let these dead bury their own dead.
So, in a sense, we find ourselves confronted with that very important question: what are you attached to? What attachments do you have in your life? What are the “bones” of your life? What are the attachments in your life that cause you to look for excuses for not following Jesus and serving others? What things in your life prevent you from proclaiming the Kingdom of God? Whatever they might be, just let them be. Let the dead bury their own dead. Let’s not become attached to the dead objects of our lives that keep us from living and loving fully. Let us not become bogged down with all the attachments we have in this life as we are called to follow Jesus. But let us remember that this is not some sweet, nice, gentle suggestion from Jesus. It is a command from him.
“Let the dead bury their own dead. But as for you, go, and proclaim the kingdom of God.”
We proclaim the kingdom, as we all know, by loving God and loving each other. You can’t proclaim the kingdom—you can’t love—when you are busy obsessing about the dead, loveless things of your life. We who are following Jesus have all put our hands to the plow. We put our hands to that plow when were baptized, when we set out on that path of following Jesus. With our hands on that plow, let us not look back.
Let us not be led astray by the attachments we have in this life that lead us wandering about aimlessly. But let us look forward. Let us push on. Let us proclaim by word and example the love we have for God and one another. And when we do, we are doing exactly what Jesus commands us to do. We are proclaiming that Kingdom and making it a reality in our midst. Amen.
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