Week 3 October 2025, Devotion Part 1

To another he said, “Follow me.” But he said, “Lord, let me first go and bury my father.” But he said to him, “Leave the dead to bury their own dead…”           Luke 9:59-60

Jesus might have unleashed a stampede of enthusiasts by simply saying, “Son, skip the funeral!” Most dread hospital visits to the dying and try to avoid them. Once the patient becomes the mortician’s client, it matters little whether we were planning to come down with a cold. A “cold,” mind you, so laced with germs it would have posed a danger to the suffering sick one!  At this point our own cold feet have no say. We must wade into the emotional quicksand of the funeral. Raw grief is sure to pull us under. Guilt, regret, or greed can be our undoing. Death attracts vultures. We, too, covet certain heirlooms. Cordiality may already fray at the edges, but civility must rule the family occasion.

Lest we bury our nose too deeply into the challenges of unavoidable human mortality, Jesus would have us dig deeper into the subject of obtainable immortality. In this case,  verse 62 makes the point driven home by Elisha’s story, “No one who puts his hand to the plow and looks back is fit for the kingdom of God.”  Oxen, not tractors, were the “draft power” that broke up the hardened soil to aerate it for planting. Old crops and even wood pieces were plowed under, thus adding nutrients as they decomposed. We had best heed the sevenfold counsel of Revelation, "He who has an ear, let him hear what the Spirit says to the churches."   Part 1 of 2

Comment:  I caught my love for Mozart’s music from my dad as a kid . And that’s just  how I behaved when we got a new TV that let me play the movie “Amadeus” on the VCR.  When a friend visited, we discovered the “reverse” feature and learned how to keep the composer from decomposing.  Mozart died at age 35 and when his body was laid to rest, we kept popping him out of the grave and back into the church.  In the film, the story of the hedonistic, remarkably gifted composer was told through the eyes of his worst enemy, the insanely jealous Antonio Saliery.  At the time of this writing, Andrew Lloyd Weber’s “Jesus Christ Superstar” is playing in town and the theater critic calls it ”a magnetic, heaven-sent performance that established God the Savior as a queer Black woman, as many of us suspected might be the case all along.”  The lyricist, Tim Rice, tells the story of Christ’s last week on earth through the eyes of Judas Iscariot, who betrayed Him.  He described the Bible’s characterization of him as a “cardboard cut-out figure of evil,” and set out to humanize him.  Mary Magdalene is the prostitute who falls in love with Jesus and they become that kind of “item.”  In 1973 Pope Paul VI was shown the movie version and remarked, “I believe it will bring more people around the world to Christianity, than anything ever has before.”  If I betrayed my taste in music, please note (pun intended) that my favorite songs were written by David. “Oh, taste and see that the Lord is good.”  His fields are ripe for harvesting!  Let’s bury our excuses.