Foxes And Birds: The Choice We Cannot Make

Matthew 8:
19. Then a certain scribe came and said to Him, "Teacher, I will follow You wherever You go."
20. And Jesus said to him, "Foxes have holes and birds of the air have nests, but the Son of Man has nowhere to lay His head."
21. Then another of His disciples said to Him, "Lord, let me first go and bury my father."
22. But Jesus said to him, "Follow Me, and let the dead bury their own dead."

I have read numerous interpretations of this. There are a number of attempts to constrain it and fit it into something that agrees with what we think we already know about the divine will. It is first of all an incredible game of paradox: The Son of Man is standing right in front of us, and says He has no place to lay His head. Well, so what? Did He not hear us? We were talking about what interested us: following God - a pretty cool thing for humans. What does the response mean?

Since the disciple speaks of following, the response deals with following, just as the conversation with the other disciple deals with following. Jesus says you wish to follow, but there is no place to follow to; there is no "wherever", no end point, and actually nothing that we mean by a goal. If you follow me today, you will not reach any thing you expect, even the smallest thing at the end of the first day - no place to sleep. If you follow, it will not be like any trip you've ever imagined. You can't even imagine it now.

You think that at least you'd be able to eat the dinner you prepare...except for the fact that you won't have had the time to prepare food, and you had to rush off; you won't have a place to sleep...not even a park bench...you will be in a very different place.

To follow God is not to plan a cross-country skiing trip to Standish, Michigan.

To follow God is to abandon the plan, abandon the trip, and give up any thought of arriving at Standish...or even Omer, for that matter...or East Tawas.

Then choose between the quick and the dead. Jesus uttered this enormous paradox of unfilial lack of devotion, because He knew it would be the ultimate stumbling block for the disciple here, and this disciple would not, could not heed it...yet. If the disciple understood and could have obeyed, he would never have said that he must first bury his father. But he did say it, and showed that the demands of society learned as a child still ruled him, as they do us, even when we are face to face with God.

He knew it because we flee from these run-ins with God.

A run-in with God is like this: Choose, fool, between the quick and the dead...and do it NOW! AND it's going to be something you really, really, really don't like!

Well, of course we don't like it. We have our own way, so the heck with the impetuousness of the divine.

God is the Choice We Cannot Make, the trip we cannot plan, the goal we cannot envisage.

God's commands are never easy, because they are supposed to be things we cannot do easily. There is no fulfillment of God's Law apart from the struggle itself to fulfill the Law.