He said to another person, “Come, follow me.” The man agreed, but he said, “Lord, first let me return home and bury my father.” But Jesus told him, “Let the spiritually dead bury their own dead! Your duty is to go and preach about the Kingdom of God.”

Luke 9: 59-60

Whenever I see the exchange between Jesus and the man above I am reminded of another exchange when we were in Israel a number of years ago. Our guide was an Orthodox Jew who spoke convincingly of the Biblical sites we saw during our tour and he was just as convincing when speaking on the historicity of Jesus. Several of us engaged him on his faith and someone in our group asked why he didn’t believe in Jesus as the Messiah.

His answer was much like the response above. He admitted that believing in the Messiah would devastate his father and so he would wait until his father passed.

That was also the point made by the man above. His father wasn’t dead (yet). He prioritized his responsibilities to his parents over his response to Jesus’ call to follow.

We like to think we would never create an excuse, but I can think of a number of excuses I’ve heard over the years.

Notice that Jesus challenged the man. Jesus wouldn’t accept the excuse and He will not accept ours either.