Another great passage from the NT which I’ve been meaning to post for a while. The context surrounding this is that he’s telling people to follow and some of them are resistant:

21 And another of his disciples said unto him, Lord, suffer me first to go and bury my father.

22 But Jesus said unto him, Follow me; and let the dead bury their dead.

What does this all mean? “Regular” Christians don’t seem to make a big deal out of this passage. Or when they do, they seem to take it rather softly with the “dead” meaning something like people with worldly attachments. Which I think is probably accurate but also probably incomplete.

Jesus isn’t saying let the living people with worldly attachments tend to those who have physically died. No, he’s saying, let the dead tend to the dead. He’s drawing no distinction between someone who is physically alive and someone who is physically dead. He is calling both simply “dead.”

The gnostic Gospel of Philip helps out here once again: “Those who say that the Lord died first and (then) rose up are in error, for he rose up first and (then) died. If one does not first attain the resurrection, he will not die.”

Still confusing, I know. But let’s parse what’s being said here a little further: “Follow me; and let the dead bury their dead.” When Jesus says “Follow me” he is not saying “Become my follower” (ample proof of that can be found elsewhere in the Gospels). What he is saying is literally follow me. That is: COPY ME. Do what I do.

So what did he do?