As Jesus and his disciples travelled along, they met a man
on the road who said to him: “I will follow you wherever you go.” Jesus answered, “Foxes have holes and birds
of the air have nests, but the Son of Man has nowhere to lay his head.”
Another to whom he said: “Follow me”, replied, “Let me go
and bury my father first.” But he
answered, “Leave the dead to bury their dead, your duty is to go and spread the
news of the Kingdom of God.”
Another said: “I will follow you, sir, but first let me go
and say good bye to my people at home.”
Jesus said to him: “Once the hand is laid to the plough, no one who
looks back is fit for the Kingdom of God”.
Upon first reading of the gospel, Jesus seems abnormally
strict in his requirements to be a follower of His. “Leave the dead to bury the dead”, he says to
the man who requested that he first be allowed to bury his father. “As for you, go and proclaim the Kingdom of
God.”
In order to understand the gospel, we have to first
understand that it has little or anything to do with providing funeral services
for ones parents, or saying good bye to ones relatives and friends. It has to do with our attachments. Jesus understood human nature well. He knew that if we were driven by an
attraction to one thing, then it would automatically be given a preference over
other things. And in fact, it would hide
from our view the very thing of greater importance. That’s why he said to his disciples: “You
cannot serve both God and money. You
will end up loving one at the expense of the other”. There’s nothing wrong with money. It’s just a medium of exchange to provide for
our needs. But if money becomes our
master, if it becomes an attachment, then God and His Kingdom will not be
revealed to us because it becomes hidden from us by our attraction to something else. The Kingdom will lie beyond our realization
because our focus is on other things.
We see this all the time in our human emotions. It’s very hard if not impossible to
experience two contradictory emotions at one time. If I really love you, it is impossible for me
to hate you at the same time. If I am
filled with joy for the success or accomplishment of a friend, then it will be
impossible for me to be envious or jealous of my friend’s accomplishment at the
same time. Well, the same is true for an
experience of the Kingdom of God within.
God is all around, God is present in all things including
ourselves. God manifests His presence to
all people at all times. His love is
ever present, but so few have an experience of this. Our culture declares God is dead. We feel on our own. Why is this?
Because we have been blinded by our attachment to other things. Other things have become the focus of our
attention. Our task is not to pass
judgement on those who have difficulty experiencing the presence of God, or to
consider them somehow lesser than ourselves.
Our task is to reveal to them, in the manner of how we live our lives
that there is something in our midst that is more important than what they are
attached to.
That was Jesus’ mission; to reveal to us that the Kingdom of
God is at hand, that it is present among us.
This is not an intellectual understanding, but an actual
experience. Jesus became the “way” to
that experienced realization through the life that He lived. So now He asks us to follow Him in the “way”
in order to make the Kingdom visible to others.
“As for you, go and proclaim the Kingdom of God” he instructs the man
who wants to leave to bury his father.
When I was working, I often ran into people who would
say: “I admire your faith and I should
go to church. Well, maybe after
retirement I’ll have more time for that.
Right now, I’m just too busy with my job, my family. I just don’t have time to pray right now.
These are the people that Jesus was speaking about in
today’s gospel. They were not bad
people, just people distracted and attached to other things. I want to follow you, but I still have
responsibilities for my parents. When
they are dead and gone, I’ll have more time then. Or let me say farewell to my relations and
friends. Perhaps then I can join
you. Really, what has one to do with the
other?
In following Jesus, we are not
making a choice between our parents and our friends and God. In following Jesus, we are acknowledging that
we have discovered something much more attractive, much more important, and
much more fulfilling than all those other attractions that we see around us
that compete for our attention.. We have
discovered the treasure hidden in the field, we have discovered the pearl of
great price, and we so much want to share that with those we meet, including
our parents and family and friends if need be.
We’ve been hearing a lot lately about the new
evangelization. For me, this is what the
new evangelization is all about. We
cannot offer to others what we do not have ourselves. Discover within yourself God’s Kingdom,
discover within yourself the guidance of the Holy Spirit, the presence of God,
be energized by a renewal of our own faith, and then we have something to
share, to be a witness too. The church
is in a crisis because, in many ways, we have failed to proclaim God’s Kingdom
in a manner that effectively touches the hearts of others. Through our own renewal, we will discover
our new ardour, our new methods, our new expressions that will reveal God’s
Kingdom, not only to ourselves, but also to those we meet.
