Let the dead bury their own
dead 

“To another he said, ‘Follow me!’ He replied, ‘Let me first go and bury my father.’ Jesus said to him, ‘Let the dead bury their own dead; but you go and proclaim the kingdom of God.’”
 

Outside, the weather is turning inclement. Autumn is unmistakable. Life in nature visibly winds down in November. This season has always been marked by days of remembrance for the dead, often linked to visits to the cemetery: All Saints’ Day, All Souls’ Day, the Day of Repentance and Prayer, Remembrance Day, and the Sunday of the Dead or Eternity. Jesus’ words in Luke 9:60, which most likely go back to the historical Jesus, seem almost irreverent to us at this time: ‘Let the dead bury their own dead!’

Certainly, Jesus is not advocating here that the dead should not be buried. As so often, Jesus uses rhetorical exaggeration to highlight something essential. With this statement, Jesus tells us across the millennia: You can do nothing more for the dead, but you can do something for the living. The Kingdom of God begins in the here and now. It begins with you. Do not put it off or miss it! The Gospel, the Good News, is not a message of mourning, but a message of and for life, so that all people may have life in abundance. Proclaim this!

Our departed, indeed all the departed throughout world history, especially those who were slaughtered or cruelly murdered, we can now only entrust to God. When we remember them, and do not push them aside, we do so first and foremost for ourselves. We remember our dead, for whom we have the hope that they are safe with God; they therefore do not need our remembrance. We remember them for our sake, the living, as we sorely need it in this world, as a warning and a realisation: Never again! In this sense, whilst we close the eyes of the dead, in essence the dead open our eyes. We humans need a culture of remembrance in order to shape a present and future worthy of human dignity. Without our departed, the people who came before us, we would not exist and we would not be Christians. This is a reason for gratitude and also a calling to pass on the faith to those who come after us.

Biological death is and remains for us a boundary that we cannot cross. But in Jesus, Christians have a hope that goes beyond death. Jesus’ final words in Luke reveal his surrender into God’s hands at the hour of his death: ‘Father, into your hands I commit my spirit.’ (Luke 23:46) Jesus had a perspective of the afterlife for himself and for everyone, even for the last criminal: “Amen, I say to you: today you will be with me in paradise.” (Luke 23:43)

Death limits earthly life; we do not have endless time. Death urges us to act, not to postpone essential decisions indefinitely. Our lives become urgent. We are called to live decisively and to actively shape our world: “But you, go and proclaim the Kingdom of God!”

For Jesus, the Kingdom of God is not primarily a future reality, but a present one. Feuerbach’s critique of religion, which condemns the consolation of the afterlife, does not apply to the historical Jesus. Out of his bond with his heavenly Father, he lived in this world and already made paradise powerfully present: “If I drive out demons by the finger of God, then the Kingdom of God has already come upon you” (Luke 11:20). God does not want dead believers (churchgoers frozen in traditions or prejudices), but living believers who, in the Holy Spirit, shape the Church and the world.

As the Church of the Lord, every Christian should take this to heart. With this in mind, I wish us all a reflective and vibrant November in the spirit of Jesus Christ.

Barbara Heitfeld