The Other Jesus, Part 2, Week 2, Day 5
by David Joynt on July 12, 2018
LUKE 9:60
But he said to him, “Leave the dead to bury their own dead; but as for you, go and proclaim the Kingdom of God.”
This seems so harsh! Jesus himself was aware of the duties of a son and even on the cross made provision for his mother by assigning her care to John, the beloved disciple. Yet he also insisted that loyalties within the Kingdom superseded family ties when the two conflicted. When his family thought his ministry was going off track and tried to restrain him, he said “Who are my mother and brothers?—the one who does the will of God is my mother and my brother and my sister.” (Mark 3:33-35)
The Kingdom is a place where a new life, zoe, is operational. It is an indestructible, overflowing existence that defies the realm of dying and death. In one sense, those who live without it are “the walking dead.” Jesus’ invitation to the man in our passage is to keep people out of their graves rather than into them.
PRAYER
Gracious God, Help us to be good fathers and mothers, good sons and daughters, good brothers and sisters, good uncles and aunts, good grand and great-grand parents. Order all our loyalties to one another in relation to our commitment to you. Let us be agents of new life to our families and beyond them. Amen.
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