Let the Dead Bury Their Dead

“Let the dead bury their dead” is among the harshest sayings of the Gospel. Christ seems to forbid a son to bury his father, against the very commandment to honour one's parents. Read closely, it does not despise filial duty: it proclaims that the call of God comes before everything, and that even the most sacred obligation yields to it.

The request

A man whom Christ has just called to follow him asks for a delay: “Lord, let me first go and bury my father.” Matthew 8:21 The request seems just, and even pious: to bury a dead man, one's father above all, was in Israel one of the gravest duties, bound to the commandment received from God, “Honour your father and your mother.” Exodus 20:12 Yet the answer cuts sharply: “Follow me, and leave the dead to bury their dead.” Matthew 8:22 Christ does not grant even this delay, and it is this refusal that disconcerts.

The dead who bury the dead

The key lies in the two dead, which are not of the same kind. The first are dead to God, deprived of the life of grace; the second are dead in body. Scripture knows this death of the soul: “You were dead through your faults and your sins.” Ephesians 2:1 Christ says, then: let those who do not yet have life attend to burying the departed; you, whom I call to life, follow me. Luke's version says it plainly: “Leave the dead to bury their dead; as for you, go and proclaim the kingdom of God.” Luke 9:60

The word “first”

The word that stands in the way is “first”. The man does not refuse to follow, he wants to follow afterward, once this duty is done. But the call of God allows no “first”: nothing can be set before it, not even a holy obligation. The Kingdom is the supreme good, and whoever defers it for something else already puts it in second place. For the delay the man asks, Christ substitutes a mission: to proclaim the Kingdom.

Who can demand it

To demand to be preferred to one's own father, no man could without pride. Christ demands it because he is God, and God alone has a right to a love that comes before all others: “Whoever loves his father or his mother more than me is not worthy of me.” Matthew 10:37 The word does not lower the love owed to parents, it sets it in its place: God first, and all the rest beginning from him. What the commandment forbids to withhold from the father, Christ can claim for himself, for he is more than the father.

To another who wants first to go and say farewell to his own, Christ answers in the same way, and gives the image of it: “Whoever puts his hand to the plough and looks back is not fit for the kingdom of God.” Luke 9:62 The ploughman who turns round makes his furrow crooked; in the same way, the one whom Christ calls goes forward without returning to what he leaves.