What if you find in the New Testament two accounts of the same event, but they say some different things about that event? This morning we have two gospel texts, clearly reporting on the same incident, but not quite matching in what they say about it. As I read you Matthew’s report and Luke’s report, see what you think about how they are the same and how they are different.

Now when Jesus saw great crowds around him, he gave orders to go over to the other side. A scribe then approached and said, “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 his disciples said to him, “Lord, first let me go and bury my father.” But Jesus said to him, “Follow me, and let the dead bury their own dead.” (Matthew 8:18-22 NRSV)

As they were going along the road, someone said to him, “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.” To another he said, “Follow me.” But he said, “Lord, first let me go and bury my father.” And Jesus said to him, “Let the dead bury their own dead, but as for you, go and proclaim the kingdom of God.” Another said, “I will follow you, Lord, but let me first say farewell to those at my home.” And Jesus said to him, “No one who puts a hand to the plow and looks back is fit for the kingdom of God.” (Luke 9:57-62 NRSV)

Sometimes their story is word for word identical, and in other places they have some differences that can prompt us to ponder on this story in intriguing ways. So let’s take a closer look.

Once upon a time Jesus and his disciples were walking along the road, Luke tells us, and there were a lot of other people there too, Matthew tells us, as they were getting ready to get in a boat and sail from the northwest shore of the Sea of Galilee to the northeast shore, from the Jewish villages in the province of Galilee to the Syrian villages in the province of Syria. When Jesus is going somewhere, you can tag along with him and ask him questions, but you cannot assume that he will stand still for a long time while you try to figure out what your question actually is. The various manuscripts of Matthew, from the fourth, fifth, and sixth centuries, have an interesting variety of descriptions regarding the size of the group of those who were tagging along along with Jesus: some manuscripts say it was a crowd, and some say it was a big crowd, and some say it was great crowds. So you can see that the urge to tell everyone that there were a whole slew of people who wanted to listen, that’s not a new urge. In this case, nobody took attendance, as Jesus and his disciples were walking along this road; but there was a passel of onlookers and listeners and questioners calling out questions; we can guess that some of the questioners were from CNN and some were from Fox News, and some were unaffiliated individuals as well.

And Luke tells us there was this one guy – Matthew says this guy was one of the scribes – who wanted to sign up to be one of the disciples, declaring to Jesus “I will follow you wherever you go!” That’s a pretty strong affirmation of loyalty, right there. I think I could make that affirmation: “I will follow you, Jesus, wherever you go!” But I’m not sure. Wherever: that’s a pretty big word. “I will follow you wherever.” What if Jesus wants me to follow him into a comfortable career, with a nice salary and a nice house and a nice family? I’d be willing to sign up for that plan. What if Jesus wants me to follow him into a nice career but then something goes wrong in my family and we have to deal with severe personal tragedy? I think I might decide I want to check on some other options and then get back to you on that. What if Jesus is going to a place of deep poverty, with hungry children and illnesses and desperate needs, and he asks me to follow him? I’d be hesitating, and trying to hide that hesitation, and Jesus would be reading the hesitation all over my face, and he’d shrug and say, “Wherever? Remember you said ‘wherever’? Well, this is wherever.”

So this might be one of those Bible-reading moments where you feel anxious for a moment, and then persuade yourself that “No, that line couldn’t be about me, it’s only about this other guy who said it to Jesus once long ago!” I guess Jesus probably read the hesitation on that fellow’s face, too, and he didn’t make it easier; instead, he said the famous line, “Foxes have holes, and birds of the air have nests, but the Son of Man has nowhere to lay his head.” It’s a pretty strenuous reply. Jesus doesn’t have a house. He doesn’t have a hotel room. Want to be a disciple? Want to follow Jesus wherever he goes? Where to? Everybody’s got a home base, even the animals and the birds make homes for themselves, but when you don’t have anywhere to lay your head, then like so many people in the world, your life is one of homelessness. Want to come along, says Jesus, and be homeless with me?

So here’s where this story starts: this man who was maybe a scribe told Jesus, “I will follow you wherever you go.”

And Jesus said, “Foxes have holes, and birds of the air have nests, but the Son of Men has no place to lay his head.”

And I want to know: what did that guy say in reply? But whatever he might have said in response, neither Matthew nor Luke wrote it down.

Luke tells us Jesus looked at another person in the crowd and said, “Follow me.” Matthew says this was one of his disciples. So that combination suggests that this would be one of the many people who came from their villages to hear Jesus and learn from him, people who had been part of the crowd when the multitude got fed, people who had seen some of the healings, and they believed in him: but they were not part of the group we call the Twelve Disciples. It’s like, “I’m just another face in the crowd, I’m glad I’m here but really I’m nobody special, I’m trying to listen to Jesus and follow what he says even though I’m not that great at it: but yes, I believe in Jesus.” And then Jesus looks across the crowd, and his gaze hits me. Our eyes meet; our eyes lock. I see him, and he sees me. He’s looking into my soul, and he says, “Follow me.”

And I think, “The funeral’s tomorrow. The family has been so roiled with conflict and drama, people have gotten so frustrated with each other and everybody is holding grudges against everybody, and now Dad has died and it’s just a mess. And Jesus says ‘Follow me’ and I think ‘Yes! That’s what I want to do!’ But if I go with Jesus now, if I skip the funeral, everyone will be even madder than they are, and as far as the family life of my family goes, it’ll be the end of the world.”

And so I say, “Lord, let me first go and bury my father.”

Many people find themselves quite unsettled by Jesus’ response to this: “Let the dead bury their own dead.” What’s that even mean? Let the dead bury their own dead? Like, the experienced zombies will do the ceremony to welcome the newcomer zombie? That can’t be right – can it? – but then how do we discern the meaning of this saying of Jesus? Let the dead bury their own dead.

And whatever it means, how can this be the right thing to say to someone in the midst of heartbreak and grief because their father has just died?

Matthew says Jesus told this nameless disciple, “Follow me, and let the dead bury their own dead.” Luke tells us Jesus said, “Let the dead bury their own dead, but as for you, go proclaim the kingdom of God.” Those aren’t quite the same sayings, are they?

We could ask the wrong question here: “Which of the two accounts is right?” It’s the wrong question because it presupposes that because they don’t match perfectly, one of them is right and one is wrong. We don’t have a video of this event, to play back on the slow motion setting, so that we can listen in to this conversation, and no one ever will. What we do have is the testimony of two different gospels, and Matthew testifies that these words, “Follow me,” were specifically emphasized to this disciple, and that rang in Matthew’s soul, and so that’s what he wrote down. Luke testifies that Jesus gave a “go and proclaim” mandate to this disciple, and that rang in Luke’s soul, and so that’s what he wrote down. And this morning I find that same “go and proclaim” mandate ringing in my soul, and so that’s what I must declare to you.

One of the things you want to notice is how this small word “go” is threaded through this passage. As Luke tells it, the first guy says to Jesus, “I will follow you wherever you go.” Then this unnamed disciple says, “First let me go and bury my father.” And then Jesus says “But as for you, go and proclaim the kingdom of God.” In each of these cases there’s the recognition that as a disciple I cannot just stay where I am while Jesus goes on to take care of the next thing on his agenda. Jesus is going somewhere, and I need to go with him. Jesus is going somewhere, and I’ll go with him, but first I need a time out so I can go bury my father. Jesus is going somewhere, and I don’t want to go right now, but I hope I can catch up before too long? The repetition of this word go implies movement: it contrasts against the idea of standing still, of stubborn stagnation, of stiffly staying the same. This sense that following Jesus implies going somewhere, going somewhere new, things are going to be different: that’s hard for many of us. So often we don’t want to have to change, we don’t want our church to change, we want things to stay as they are. Or as they were, back in the heyday. But here’s this word go. It indicates movement. Maybe other people are reading it, too, and maybe they’ll see that they have to move, too. But it particularly addresses each of us as individuals, it indicates that each of us must be moving, changing, going along as we follow Jesus, wherever he leads. Jesus gives this directive: don’t hide in a corner and pretend you’re kind of proclaiming the kingdom of God: go, go out in the world, actually go and actually proclaim the kingdom.

Perhaps someone in the room is making an excuse right now within your soul to the effect, “I actually don’t know what to say about the kingdom of God. That’s a theological concept I’ve never really understood. So it can’t be that Jesus expects me to go proclaim the kingdom of God, because really, I don’t know how. Whew.”

And if someone happens to be thinking something like that, I’m not going to tell them that that’s a bogus excuse. We all already know that it’s bogus, so there’s no need for me to scold anybody about it. If that’s someone’s excuse today – all right, probably not the excuse of anyone here, but maybe the excuse of your timid cousin? – will that still be your cousin’s excuse next year? Will it still be the excuse the year after that, and at five years, and at ten years? Was it actually the excuse last year, and the year before, has it indeed already been the excuse for ten or twenty years or more? What does it mean if someone has been aware of a responsibility for many years, and they are aware that they don’t know how to fulfill this responsibility, so instead of finding out, they just ignore it?

Back in 1935 Johnny Mercer wrote a song, “I’m an Old Cowhand From the Rio Grande,” for the movie Rhythm on the Range, starring Bing Crosby, who sang the song as part of the movie. He sings,

I’m an old cowhand, from the Rio Grande,
But my legs ain’t bowed, and my cheeks ain’t tanned
I’m a cowboy who never saw a cow –
Never roped a steer ’cause I don’t know how,
And I sure ain’t fixin’ to start in now.
Yippee yi yo ki yay.

I’m an old cowhand, from the Rio Grande,
And I learned to ride ’fore I learned to stand.
I’m a ridin’ fool who is up to date:
I know every trail in the Lone Star State,
’Cause I ride the range in a Ford V8.
Yippee yi yo ki yay.

I’m an old cowhand, from the Rio Grande,
And I came to town just to hear the band.
I know all the songs that the cowboys know
’Bout the big corral where the dogies go,
’Cause I learned them all on the radio.
Yippee yi yo ki yay.

It’s the story of a man who thinks about himself as a cowboy, even though he doesn’t know how to do cowboy things. Apparently he is not concerned about not knowing about them: he’s sure he’s a cowboy, even though he doesn’t rope cattle or ride a horse or any of the other things cowboys do. He’s a cowboy who is all hat and no cattle. He likes cowboy songs, but he didn’t learn them on a trail drive as the cowboys sang them around the fire at night, camped out on the prairie; he learned them on the radio.

I like Bing Crosby, and I like this song, and I think it’s some lighthearted fun. But I also see how it illustrates this issue, how we are aware of our identity as the followers of Jesus, but we don’t quite know how we’re supposed to do it, and so we just don’t. Never proclaimed the kingdom of God, ’cause I don’t know how, and I sure ain’t fixin’ to start in now.

Another of the things you want to notice is this small transitional phrase, “But as for you.” Jesus speaks to this face-in-the-crowd disciple, and there is a very specific personal context that this individual brings to this moment. The only detail Matthew and Luke have revealed about it is that there has been a death in the family: “let me go and bury my father.” A couple minutes ago I spun out some additional possible details: this is a dysfunctional family, there’s a lot of anger and grudge-holding in it. I don’t know that that’s how it was; it’s just one possibility out of many. Into this specific situation Jesus speaks two ideas. The first is this: your father isn’t the only dead person back home, there’s so much spiritual deadness, so much bitterness and despair deadening their souls, so much deafness and blindness – they have dead ears and dead eyes, that whole crew is unable to hear or see, and none of that will get fixed by you going to the funeral: your best move is simply to let the dead bury the dead. And the second idea is this: there is a specific calling on your life. There is a call on everyone’s life, but your self-righteous brother doesn’t want to hear this call. Neither will your judgmental aunt, or that obnoxious cousin. This interaction is about you. The folks back home are creating stress and drama the way they like to do, they’re getting things into a twist, the same as always. But as for you, your assignment is the kingdom of God. A hundred people are going to do a hundred things, some good, some bad: but as for you, go and proclaim it, in word and deed.

In the last story in the gospel of John, Jesus tells Peter that when he gets old, he’ll get arrested and bound and, by implication, martyred. Peter sees one of the other disciples standing nearby, and he says, “What about him?” And Jesus says, “That’s the wrong question, Pete. No need to get in a fuss about him. But as for you, you just keep following me.”

That story in John, and this story in Matthew and Luke, both point us toward the same reality: maybe the other folks are doing a good job, maybe they’re doing a bad job, but I’ve got to make sure I’m being faithful at my job. Maybe I can proclaim the kingdom of God within my family. Maybe I can do it at work, or at school. Maybe all I can do in any of those places is to let the dead bury their own dead. It is what it is. But as for you: go and proclaim the kingdom of God.

There is a worldly way of looking at things: what’s in it for me; how can I work the circumstances to my own advantage; there’s only so much pie, and I intend to get all of my share, and also as much of your share as I can grab. And there’s a kingdom of God way of looking at things: how do we make sure that everyone has enough to eat, that all the children get the chance to go to school, that everyone can see a doctor when they’re sick, that everyone has the chance to hear the gospel of Jesus’ astonishing irrepressible love for the world. To go and proclaim the kingdom of God is to demonstrate, in word and deed, that that’s what we believe in.