Week 4 October 2025, Devotion Part 2

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

We do understand that this is not about reluctantly having to do sad business with an undertaker, but resolutely signing on with the Uppertaker. Jesus invited the man he had seemingly just spotted, to plow the fields ripe for evangelizing yoked together with Him.  Did the son send word to those caring for his father or grieving for him, that unexpected “Good News” had suddenly excused him from all filial duties tied to the funeral? Were they all as “stone-dead” as the one shrouded for burial?  Did our Lord actually mean without a trace of life, as asserted by Paul in Ephesians 2:1, “And you were all dead in your trespasses and sins”? We grasp by faith, not with our finite mind, that the ”draft power” lifting the redeemed earthling into eternal life can only spring from Christ’s death on the cross.

The verdict is in that by nature we are all stone-dead. A stone is all “dead weight,” unable to move itself even when thrown into a pile of oxen manure. The undertaker gets paid to make his client smell good and look familiar. Still, the “stone-dead” one cannot jump up whether it is a pesky fly or a bag of cement landing on his face. However, it takes a reliable adhesive to make for sturdy stone walls, and that lands us in 1 Peter 2:4-5, “And coming to Him as a living stone which has been rejected by men, but is choice and precious in the sight of God, you also, as living stones, are being built up as a spiritual house for a holy priesthood…” His grace alone is the Gorilla Glue that makes us believers stick together and stick it out when the going gets tough.  Part 2 of 2

Comment: “One bad review,” I’ve read, “can kill a movie stone-dead.”  Cecil B. DeMille’s last of his 70 films, THE TEN COMMANDMENTS, remains a box-office legend. Topmost also in aviation, banking, real estate, and radio, he received tons of awards including two honorary Oscars.  Cecil B. DeMille ranks still highest as the most successful producer-director in Hollywood’s film history.  How many who eulogized him were biblically stone-dead, ignorant ot Christ’s foremost and highest commandment, “You shall love the Lord your God with all your heart and with all your soul and with all your mind”?  How many might have consigned me to hell for asking such an impertinent question, aimed at probing the icon’s iffy personal beliefs.  Just ask Peter how he used to squirm when Jesus, as the “Stone of Offense,” scandalized the Pharisees and Scribes for gloating in their superior religious pedigree.  But once His loving, patient Savior had replaced his heart of stone with one of flesh, the apostle wrote the epitaph to the most happily anticipated memorial service ever.  “But you are a chosen race, a holy nation, a people for God’s own possession, so that you may proclaim the excellencies of Him who has called you out of darkness into His marvelous light…”   Luke 9