“I will follow you wherever you go.”
Jesus receives this enthusiastic request in Matthew 8 (from a scribe no less, who are almost always depicted negatively in the Gospels). It sounds like the ultimate discipleship declaration, something every follower of Jesus should say. However, he does not reciprocate the enthusiasm. “Foxes have dens and birds have nests, but the Son of Man has no place to lay his head.” In other words, the journey of following Jesus is one of always being displaced. “There’s no place like home,” we say. But here is his warning: if we’re going to be his followers, the saying becomes, “There’s no home but Jesus.”
Next, a disciple approaches Jesus and says, “Before you go, let me bury my father.” To be clear, this was one of the primary ways to honor one’s parents for the ancient Israelites (number five of the Ten Commandments). Even so, Jesus replies with apparent coldness: “Follow me and let the dead bury their own dead.” Why does Jesus respond like this? What’s so unreasonable about family obligations? Jesus’ words would have been nothing short of scandalous.
Since the beginning of the Sermon on the Mount, we’ve been told and been shown that following Jesus is a life of joy and healing, and also a life of sacrifice and suffering. When the scribe tells Jesus his desire to be a disciple, Jesus wonders, Are you sure? Have you counted the cost? And when a disciple asks Jesus to pause his ministry, his answer is, This boat is setting sail with or without you and your family obligations. Up to now, these two followers have enjoyed their time with Jesus. It’s exciting. It’s dramatic. It’s enlightening. But reality is setting in: following Jesus will rearrange our priorities (if not demolish them altogether). There’s an animal in us that wants to crawl back in its den when we start to realize this, and we must reevaluate: are we sure we want to be with Jesus?
Matthew tells us nothing of any response from the scribe or the disciple. Jesus gives the one a grave warning, and the other a scandalous challenge, but we don’t know their response. Sometimes in the Gospels we are told the response to Jesus. Some walk away from him and some cling to him. But here, Matthew is pulling us into the story. By refusing to narrate an answer from the scribe and the disciple, we are thrust into the story with Jesus looking us in the eyes, giving us one grave warning and one scandalous challenge.
What is our response?
Jesus is not pausing, slowing down, or speeding up for us. The union with God into which he is leading us is happening at the pace of Jesus and nothing else.
It is sometimes said, “Put Jesus first,” but that’s bad advice. If Jesus is first, then isn’t something else, separate from Jesus, coming second and third and so on? Jesus doesn’t want to be first. He wants to be all. We don’t get to have our family, work, finances, and politics just the way we like them. We don’t get to have our prayer and religious life just the way we like them. These either get absorbed into Jesus and redefined by him, or they turn into idols, and we suddenly look up and discover that Jesus moved on from us some time ago.
Foxes have dens. Birds have nests. The Son of Man has no place to lay his head.
Your move.