Let’s go! Modern vernacular has turned an old phrase meaning let us go or “allow us to go” into a rallying cry, often emotionally charged and somewhat shallow. When you say “let’s go,” you are technically folding yourself and your listener into a shared “we should do this now.” Our passage today carries a similar enthusiasm, at least for one of our examples, as Jesus begins to build His ministry with what will become a simple: Follow Me.
Matthew 8:18-22 “Now when Jesus saw a crowd around him, he gave orders to go over to the other side. And a scribe came up and said to him, “Teacher, I will follow you wherever you go.” 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.” Another of the disciples said to him, “Lord, let me first go and bury my father.” And Jesus said to him, “Follow me, and leave the dead to bury their own dead.”¹
The verb follow, or akoloutheo, means to go behind, to accompany, to go the same road as another.² In the Gospels, it becomes the technical word for attaching yourself to a teacher as a disciple. The root carries the picture of a road. To follow is not to admire from the crowd but to take the same road the leader takes, which means the same destination, the same hardships, the same enemies.
Importantly, Jesus speaks to both men’s responses, targeting what many in the crowd were likely contemplating themselves. He has just told the group to cross to the other side of the Sea of Galilee, a trip of about five to seven miles by small sail-driven boat. What makes this interchange more interesting is what we will read in the upcoming verses of the impending storm and their demon-oppressed Gentile destination of Decapolis. He already knows the battles they are about to face as He communicates with them.
The first man, I’ll call Mr. Hasty, quickly responds to Jesus’ call, “Teacher, I will follow you wherever you go.” On the surface, we may appreciate this man’s enthusiasm and ruddy, jump-right-in attitude, but Jesus’ response suggests his excitement may have been less well thought out than necessary. “Foxes have holes, and birds of the air have nests, but the Son of Man has nowhere to lay his head.” In other words, where I am going is as rugged as you can imagine. We won’t be glamping.
The second man, I’ll call Mr. Hesitant, follows right behind the first but immediately starts dropping excuses. “Lord, let me first go and bury my father.” At first read, you may think this means the man literally needs to go to a funeral, but in fact, he is just delaying.
I imagine this as the Texas two-step we do when we get invited to something we really don’t want to go to, but also don’t want to offend our friend, so we fabricate an excuse instead. The problem here is that this is not an awkward invitation to your co-worker’s deck-building Saturday; this is the Messiah.
There are two ways to look at this “bury my father” figure of speech. One idea could mean the whole remaining season of caring for a parent until death, which could be years. This is a very common and defensible interpretation, and it actually makes Jesus’ answer sharper, because the man is not asking for a few days; he is asking for an open-ended postponement with no fixed end. When I’m ready, in essence.
The second reading ties it to a specific custom known as secondary burial, or ossuary reburial. In first-century Jewish practice, the body was placed in a tomb at death, and then about a year later, after the flesh had decomposed, the family returned to gather the bones into a stone box. On this view, the father may have already died and had his first burial, and the son is asking for time to complete the year-long obligation before following. This reading was popularized by scholars who studied the burial archaeology, and it has the advantage of explaining why the delay would be a culturally weighty, roughly year-long commitment.³
Both readings share the same point, and it is the point that matters for our application. The man is not refusing. He is invoking a genuine, honorable, commanded duty, honoring father and mother, as the reason to put off following. Whether the delay is years of eldercare or a year of completing the burial rites, the structure is identical. He is placing a real obligation ahead of the call, and the word that exposes him is “first.”
That is what Jesus is answering when He says, “Leave the dead to bury their dead.” He is not dismissing the duty to parents as worthless. He is saying that nothing, not even the most sacred family obligation, ranks ahead of the call to follow Him now.
And those two responses are where we land the first time we hear the calling or each time the Holy Spirit calls us to respond. Progressively, no matter where you stand, a choice needs to be made. As the saying goes, only two choices on the shelf: pleasing God or pleasing self.
Perhaps you’re reading this for the first time, or maybe you’re the one making excuses. The best lived lives are ones lived on purpose. And no better one awaits than the calling of the Creator.
The invitation is open. Let’s go, follow me!
Where are you on the journey?
No spectators in heaven.
Stay on Mission
The passage records two would-be followers. The first is a scribe, a trained scholar of the Law, who volunteers boldly with “Teacher, I will follow you wherever you go.” The second is already counted among the disciples and answers the call, asking to go first and bury his father. One is too eager, and one is too slow, and Jesus addresses each man according to what is actually holding him back.
Jesus names two different costs. To the eager scribe, He names the loss of comfort and security, telling him the Son of Man has nowhere to lay His head. To the hesitant disciple, He names the cost of priority, that following Him outranks even the most sacred family duty and has to come now rather than later. The cost of following Jesus is both your comfort and your control of the timing.
Jesus uses the word dead in two ways in a single sentence. The second use is physical, the body that needs burying. The first is spiritual, those who are alive in body but dead toward God. He is not forbidding funerals, nor is He dishonoring the command to honor father and mother. He is saying that the work of proclaiming the kingdom cannot be put on hold, and that the ordinary duties of the spiritually dead can be left to them when the call of Christ is on the table.
Most likely, the father had not just died. A son in mourning would have been at home, not out on the road, so the request probably means one of two things. Either he wanted to wait through the remaining years of caring for an aging father, or he was invoking the first-century custom of secondary burial, in which the bones were gathered into an ossuary about a year after death. Either way, he was asking Jesus to wait, and the request was a delay dressed as duty.
Luke records the same two encounters and adds a third man who asks to say goodbye to his household. Luke also adds the image of the hand on the plow that must not look back, along with the commission to go and proclaim the kingdom of God. The accounts agree on the core point that following Jesus is more urgent and more total than the most pressing family duty.
It exposes the two failures that quietly cancel commitment. One man over-commits with words before he has counted the cost, and the other agrees in principle while reserving the timing. Real commitment counts the cost and then acts now. For anyone who leads, a bold yes with no plan and a sincere yes with no follow-through both fall short of obedience.
Jesus was describing His own life with no exaggeration. His ministry was itinerant, and He depended on the hospitality of others, so He held less security than the wild animals He named. The line is a warning to the eager scribe and to every reader that to follow Christ is first to share in His hardship and rejection rather than in comfort or status. The takeaway of the whole passage is that the call is hard because the One who issues it is worth following all the way.
Footnotes
- Scripture quotation is from The Holy Bible, English Standard Version (Wheaton, IL: Crossway Bibles, 2025), Matthew 8:18-22. All Scripture quotations are ESV unless otherwise noted.
- On akoloutheo (Strong’s G190), see BDAG, s.v. ἀκολουθέω, “to follow, accompany, go along with,” and its developed sense of following as a disciple.
- The secondary-burial reading is argued in Byron R. McCane, “Let the Dead Bury Their Own Dead”: Secondary Burial and Matthew 8:21-22, Harvard Theological Review 83 (1990), and made accessible to general readers in Craig S. Keener, The IVP Bible Background Commentary: New Testament, on Matthew 8:21-22.
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