It was the answer of our Lord to one of His disciples, possibly as an old tradition tells us, to the Apostle Philip, who, before following Him, wished to go and bury his father. The extreme urgency of the command is plain, nor is its meaning mistakable: "Thou art living in a world of natural and of spiritual death; thou art called to a kingdom of life. Let the spiritually dead bury the physically dead. Follow thou Me."
I. And whither then must we follow Christ? In spirit, if not in letter. We must follow Him along the road He trod on earth; and that was a road of self-abnegation, of poverty, of homelessness, of the base man's hatred and the proud man's scorn. Let us not disguise it; it is no primrose path of dalliance, but a hard road hard and yet happy; and all the highest and the noblest of earth have trodden it all who have regarded the things eternal, not as things future, but merely as the unseen realities about them now. If we would follow Christ, we must shake off the baser objects of earthly desire as nothing better than the dust which gathers upon the cerements of mortality. So Christ taught us, and so He lived.
II. First then in self-denial; and secondly, you must follow Christ on the road of toil. It is not possible to misread lessons so clear and so heart-searching as those of the two sons and the labourers in the vineyard, and the unprofitable servant, and the stern apologue of the barren trees. It was the first law of Eden, "Work;" and though the work was changed to toil by a penal decree, even that toil by faithful obedience has been transformed into an honour and a blessing. It is, as St. Chrysostom calls it, "a bitter arrow from the gentle hand of God." But then the work must be approached in a right spirit, must be work in God's vineyard and work for God.
III. He who would follow Christ must not only follow Him on the path of self-denial and labour, but must also follow Him in the strength of enthusiasm,must be baptized with the Holy Ghost and with fire. And herein, too, he must let the dead bury their dead. For the dead of this world hate this fiery spirit. "Above all, no zeal," said the witty, crafty, successful statesman. "Fervent in spirit," said St. Paul; or, as it should be rather rendered, "Boiling in spirit." It was not the word of a fastidious atheist or long-robed Pharisee; but rather one of those words that were thunders one of the words that have hands and feet. And never was it more needed than now, for never more than now did the world hate enthusiasm, and never was it more certain that by a noble enthusiasm it can alone be saved.
F. W. Farrar, The Fall of Man,p. 55.
I. "Lord, suffer me first." That is the cry of nature. " Firstsuffer me to be disappointed, and then I will follow Thee; first build my house upon the sand, and then I will come, O Rock, to Thee.First worship and waste my affections on the clay, and then I will come to Thee. Suffer me first." But Jesus answered, "Follow thouMe." (1) Follow Me.I am Life, and you seek life; but then you have only death; as long as you linger there, you do but seek the living among the dead. Let your eyes follow Me from the place of graves. (2) Follow Me. You seek love, and here nothing loves you; that which loved you has gone, and if you would regain what loved you you must follow Me. (3) Follow Me; I am the only Life; I am the only Master of the kingdom of life; I am the Way to the life.
II. Thus the great lesson our Lord intended to preach was even this: Life is not a complaint, but an action; it is not to be spent in grieving, but in doing. Life is in action, in following more than in musing. The music of the harp is beautiful, but that has not served the world so well as the music of the hammer. The past should not be a tombstone, but a garden a place in which we bury, so that the buried may bloom.
III. It is only in our own hearts that we can find the verdict as to the sentiments with which we should regard the dead. I believe the highest love is furthest removed from the storm of passionate grief, because love is a prophecy; so I would say, Love your friends more, and you will grieve less. These words were an invocation from a living to a dead dispensation from dead ceremonies and observances. "I am the Life." To these also might Christ have said, as He said under other circumstances, "If ye seek Me, let these go their way."
E. Paxton Hood, Sermons,p. 284.
References: Matthew 8:22. H. W. Beecher, Christian World Pulpit,vol. iv., p. 145; Ibid., Plymouth Pulpit Sermons,10th series, p. 407.