Holy Brit

This passage, where Jesus tells the dead to bury their own dead, worries a lot of people. It seems heartless, as if somehow, Jesus is saying that death and rituals around death are unimportant – that we should not bother with them, and this, quite rightly, offends us.

But if we put ourselves in the context in which Jesus is speaking, at least as well as we can, we might find that we are not hearing a message about death at all, but about life and about the way we should align ourselves as we live our lives. Death, itself, is a fact of life, but the myriad complicated rules which the Jews had built up around it, did not have to be – and here is Jesus complaint, a core complaint which he makes of the Jewish establishment in the Gospels, that everything is so complicated that everything points to itself instead of God.

Add to this the bald language of the Gospels- that definitive, polar way of writing, that things are good or bad, up or down, in or out, there is nothing in between and you end up with something which sounds horribly unsympathetic.

The Old Testament reading has this same sense of direction – where do we follow, what do we follow. In the case of the Israelites in the Wilderness it becomes about paying attention to God who will guide them instead of their own corporate voice which wants easy, tangible and quick answers to the complex questions which beset them.

The journey in the wilderness is a sort of mapping exercise, and perhaps a rather too accurate one, as the people discover time and again what it is to follow God, to leave and return. And this motion, this moving towards and pulling away from God is certainly the story of the whole Old Testament.

And then by the time Jesus gets to it the map seems to be set in stone, no longer about relationship and listening but now about following the letter of the law. Jesus insists that if you want to follow him then you must let go of those things which tie you, that your map must be one which walks along paths which he walks as well as heading you off in a direction which he sets.

This is a challenge at the best of times. If the Old Testament narrative tells us anything is says just how difficult it is to maintain this sort of journey for any length of time without tripping ourselves up. But there is a beacon, for the Israelites there was the cloud of God's presence but more real and intense for us there is the presence of the Holy Spirit which enwraps us as we struggle to read the maps of life and make any sense of them at all.

The message Jesus gives is solid and intense – it is a message of heading in the right direction – but it is also a message of mercy. That Old testament paradigm of simply smiting the enemy is gone. It is important to grasp that although Jesus words about burial seem harsh he, in fact, instructs that the disciples are not to think about divine retribution for non-believers.

I often use Google maps to find my way around. What I quite like about it is that you can move from an old-fashioned street map to a photograph of where you are going taken from overhead and now, on may streets, you can also ask the computer to actually show images of what a place looks like if you walk down the street. This is a very different experience to a black and white photocopy of a slightly fuzzy street map.

Jesus is moving people from that rather indecipherable world of fuzzy black and white to a world of colour and even 3-D. He wants people to step inside not simply exist from a cold and distant outside. He wants to show them exactly what it might be like to be in a world which is more about reaching out and touching the divine than about being shielded and protected from God by rules and regulations.

The consuming angry god which Israel had imagined now reveals himself as wanting that same intensity of attention as the Old Testament pillar of fire and cloud of smoke demanded but also a more intimate relationship where attention is willingly and lovingly paid to God's map and God himself.

The point Jesus is making goes far beyond a literary style in the new Testament which we now find rather clumsy and unappealing and it is the point which we need to pay attention to – that is put Jesus at the top of the list – let the direction God leads us inform all our paths. This vibrant and colourful world of faith in which we are called to exist can be captivating but only if we allow ourselves to be caught.

Faith is not simply a set of actions, or even a direction – it is more, a wonderful more, it is setting our feet on a path which leads from and to the heart of God and trusting that way – trusting that through our distractions and frustrations that way is solid and carefully mapped for us. Laughing when we are happy and crying as we mourn, but always holding everything within this simple context of journeying with Jesus as our comforter and guide.