Today’s Gospel starts with “A scribe approached and said to him, “Teacher, I will follow you wherever you go.” Jesus answered him, “Foxes have dens and birds of the sky have nests, but the Son of Man has nowhere to rest his head.”
Jesus’ answer seems strange to us. We are always planning and storing food for the times that we might not have any or very little. This is especially true of the generation who lived through the Great Depression. And many of the children from that generation learned that you must have a house and store food in preparation for the worst.
Jesus was making the point that we should not be overly concerned about the things of earthly life, including places to live and food to eat. I think of Mother Theresa in our time who understood this concept and lived trusting on God to provide the daily needs of the Sisters and those they served.
In his book, The Gospel According to Matthew, David Brown writes, (I have paraphrased this selection because it was written in the King’s English and difficult to follow)
“Will you? Jesus replies. Understand what you are committing to do. There is no warm home, no downy pillow, or comforts that most people enjoy. The foxes and birds places to live. but Jesus doesn’t. Jesus has to depend on the hospitality of others, he even has to borrow a pillow for his head. Jesus does not reject the Scribe’s offer to follow him, nor tell the Scribe not to follow Him. Jesus only wanted the Scribe to know what he is committing to do and “consider the cost.” Jesus wants the Scribe to weigh the strength of his attachment to earthly things and determine if he will be able to follow Jesus through adversity and trials. If so, the Scribe is welcome to follow Jesus, for Christ will not turn anyone away.”
It is so easy to get caught up in the moment and want to do something about an injustice of support a cause, just as this scribe did, without realizing the extreme effort and possibly the personal cost required to follow the task through to actually change the world.
We try to provide for the future and get so involved with acquiring a house, food, things to satisfy our desires, and to have what we want right now, that it is easy to forget the real message of the Gospel. It’s not about this earthly life but our eternal life. And that is hard for all of us to truly comprehend in this culture.
Jesus was teaching an invaluable lesson – The comforts of earthly life have a strong pull on us. Are we too attached to the good things of this life to give them up? Has the good life on earth become so important to us that we are unable to turn away from them to serve God?
We don’t know whether the Scribe followed Jesus. The question for us is “Are we willing to give up the comforts we have acquired to follow Jesus and share his love with others?”
